Aconcagua

Summary of Aconcagua

A few days ago I was waking up to a sunrise on the beach in Con Con, Chile. We actually should have been up a couple of hours before since the sun doesn't rise in this part of Chile until about 7:30 or 8:00am in their summer. We should have been on the road a long time before this late morning rouse which quickly turned to a rout. Our group hurriedly stuffed our sleeping bags in our rented car, which was already loaded with three bikes, three backpacks and all our stuff we had used for the last 17 days of climbing and adventure. The three of us found spots among the gear, levered the doors shut and then drove 60 miles to the Santiago airport. On the way we were stopped by the army for something (speeding like bats out of hell in a rented car full of too much stuff most likely). They yelled at us for in Spanish while pointing guns at us, but we could not quiet get out of the car and our passports were so screwed up and we pretended to not understand them that they let us go because of the problems of dealing with citizens from two countries who did not look like they were doing anything really bad. We got to the airport very early having factored in time to be arrested. After one last three hour ride on our bike around the countryside of Santiago we packed up the bikes, boarded the plane and flew back to the real world. Been there, done it. What's to say? I am trying to figure out what went on myself. For seventeen days this was the twilight zone and the best adventure of my life. Now I have to come back to the flat earth.

People have asked me about the trip, but the only thing that came out was, "it was cold." These question were asked within hours of returning to the flat earth. "Was it fun?" is usually the next most people asked about the trip to the other side of the planet. Realize, I didn't go on an adventure to have fun, so it was as much fun as I expected and it fulfilled the thousands of other perfectly valid emotions that in no way can be described as fun. No answer comes out usually because it takes too long to explain. Most people ask, "Well would you do it again?" If a person was riding on a train and the train slammed into a large truck and the train derailed, overturned, caught fire, slid down the side of a mountain and you managed to pull yourself free with minor injuries and no one you knew was hurt, it would be an experience that would live forever in your mind and shape your vision of the world? Would you repeat the incident? Probably not, but that doesn't make that train wreck an invalid incident not worth having happened. This was an adventure: an extreme vacation. I was not in search of pleasure. I wanted an experience that I could not get from the world where I live day-to-day which is the flat earth. I wanted to find out where the real world was because the day-to-day world is not the real world; it is only a reflection of something that looks like the world. The world is beyond where most people are willing to go, but is not really that scary or “bad” and should be experienced because it is the place where life can take place minute by minute.

Summary: We landed in Chile… who are “we”? “We” started out as four: Adrian, leader of the pack, professional adventurer, British citizen, permanent resident of the United States living in Modesto; Brian, PhD doctor of something, director of curriculum for Modesto City Schools, super guy, funny, positive and all around good fellow; Miles, me, middle school science teacher, runner and bicycle expert brought along to keep the bikes running; Joanna who did not make it because she was getting married, what a lame excuse. All of us over 40. “Better do this before those long haired 20 year olds figure this out and do it first!” said Adrian when we started planning. “Once a bunch of old guys tackle it those young lads won’t have any part of it.” We had trained for about a year and a half to make sure we could do most of what we wanted to do and were pretty sure we had it in us to follow through with our plan, although we had never done this kind of a thing this high, this hard, or done it in a foreign language this far from home with no support. Our group was fused together from being hung out on every peak in California over 14,000 feet in the most ungodly conditions we could train in. The three of us were all tuned in to each other and were ready to go the distance for one another. Our project was one that could only happen in one place on the planet and we were here to do it. Old guys can read maps and figure out these cool things to do before those long haired 20 year olds could ever come up with it. The stupidity of youth.

We landed in Chile on a Sunday and got a ride to the downtown Santiago in the back of a pickup truck from someone I met at the airport. No, “Hablo espanol”, but I got the ride I'm proud to say. We were dropped off at the bus station and hoped to make it to Porta Del Inca or Penetencia at the top of the Andes in Argentina by nightfall via bus by that day or maybe early the next day. Alas, no bus travels over the hill after 2:00pm and we moved on and fate, a tip from a strange, a stray dog, some graffiti, and a walk down random streets led us to a very strange doorway in the wall, but it turned out to be an excellent place to stay in Santiago. It was a "kind-of-hotel" or Hostel-wantabe with lots of eclectic people from worldly places. After knocking on the door and being accepted we took a room for the night with all the strangeness of a place in the middle of the earth. The next day we set out to the country of Argentina. It turned out we had to take a bus and there were 20 different companies competing for our business. How could they compete when they all charged same price to travel to anywhere in Chile or Argentina? We booked a bus to Mendoza, Argentina where the government offices issued official climbing permits and we could get reliable information about the mountain and government rules. Santiago, Chile was a great experience, but we left it only a few hours after arriving. We did fill the day and night we were there with as much of the city as we could absorb sleeping little because of lots to do and see because we would not be here again most likely.

Mendoza is the most beautiful city I have seen in any part of the world. Our hotel was the choice of the Lonely Planet Guide and was full of travelers and adventurers, lonely planet traveler and adventurers, from all over the world who had gathered there to share adventures and seek information about adventures to come and spend a few days very cheaply. We spent 3 days at the hotel mostly out in the city riding in the back of pickup trucks, riding our bicycles, and seeing every government official who would see us to seek permission for our project. The week before we arrived the government passed a new law, which stated that there could be no bicycles in the Parque Aconcagua the national park where the mountain of Aconcagua was. Bicycles it seemed had terrorized mules on the trails, caused erosion, killed and maimed hikers, and were wanted out of the park by the climbers who were in fear of a cyclist coming round the corner on a bike at 40 miles per hours. Officials were unmoved by our project and we got sick of spending time in offices talking to smiling people who claimed no authority to change the law or grant us any kind of disposition despite our previous pile of communication with the government and year of planning based on their assurance of being able to do this project.

So we regrouped and traveled back up the hill (the Andes) to the town of Inca (9,000ft) still in Argentina, a place above the timberline looking like an outpost in Antarctic without snow since it was summer. The first day in this remote town, we rode our bicycles up an additional 3000ft on the main road over the Andes. In the process we went through Argentina customs, and Chilean customs and then came back again to Argentina to see what the problems might be when we did this trip for real with the clock watching our progress. This was a very savage ride that turned into a big hassle with the officials and the elevation, and the 6k tunnels through the very top of the Andes at the boarder that we had to hitch hike through because bicycles are not allowed to ride the tunnel. Timing would be critical because the tunnel and the border are closed at night and there is a no-mans land between Argentina and Chile of about 15k where a person has left one country and not enter the other country and they could get trapped here on a slow moving bicycle if boarders or tunnels closed.

I blew it on the ride and did not put on sunscreen wearing only shorts. My reward for this act of thoughtlessness was fried skin: arms, legs, and face. Even the skin under the thin shirt and shorts at this altitude was sun burnt. That was the last time my arms, legs and hands saw the sun for the next 16 days. In Inca, the town of Inca, we stayed in a very inexpensive place with no windows, no lock on the door, no door handle on the doors, seven beds in one room the size of a closet, but it did have a rest room down the hall with a partial roll of toilet paper the first day. In Inca we arranged mules to haul some stuff to the “lower camp”, Plaza De Mule, and we talked with the rangers who had a house in the town. Their reaction to our project was “No bikes in the Park!” The rangers were great people, very dedicated to the park and to conservation. We became very good friends with them and ended up staying with them at their house later on. The rangers were conservation inspired and wanted the park and the country to become much more conscious of what causes problems and do something about it. We listened and really thought they had the best interest of the planet in mind when they talked, so we decided to change our project.

Our trip had to take a huge change from our original plan. We changed our original plan of riding to the sea and simply descend by human power to the sea from the top of the mountain. We would now try to descend 24,000 feet in 24 hour using just human power with all of the descent in the park being just running. We would pick up our bikes at the entrance and ride from there to the ocean. A Triathlon was taking shape: climb 24,000 feet (7,000m), run 50k and bike 200k. Theoretically possible, but there was a problems with time constraint on the trip because the borders were only opened from 7:00am to 10:00pm. Arrangements with Oscar (Scoobie, his handle on the radio) were made for mules to take out stuff up the mountain and to have the bikes to be at the ready at the entrance when we arrived after our run down the hill. We went up the hill with confidence and a promise for the project from Scoobie to have our bikes ready.

Horconis at about 9,000ft is the Aconcagua Park entrance and is a few kilometers down the main road from Inca, a few k along a dirt road towards the ridge of the Andes. The central mountain in the cleft of the valley, Aconcagua (The Stone Sentry), filled the end of the canyon about 50k away, full of snow, lots of wind and beyond the scale of any mountains I had ever experienced. In fact when we entered the canyon of the Horconis River, I realized the mountains were also off the scale of reality when I remembered that every mountain in sight was far higher than any mountain in the continental United States. From our perch at 9,000 feet the mountains rose, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 ft and much more above us in every color and geologic origin imaginable. After a few hours of hiking and crossing the raging brown river of the Horconis glacier we reach Confluenecia where two rivers join together and is the best place to camp. This first camp was unbelievably beautiful, but held the last plants (no trees, or bushes only small grasses and a few flowers here) we were to see for the next 12 days. We had gained about 2,000 feet elevation in the day’s climb following the river and trekking into the maw of the mountain valley, but had hiked for many miles and were at a place where there seemed to be only up.

The next day was a long one through a braided river valley about 500m wide that seemed flat because of the vastness of the valley between the two giant mastiffs that marked the edges of this valley, but this river crossed alpine plain was definitely up hill. We had to cross the river several times through this endless flat rock strewn valley with no grass, plants of any kind, or animals except the climber going up or coming down. The “trail” was across a landscape that looked like the moon with rocks about the size of baseballs to bowling balls. The valley ended with a set of switchbacks that went up the side of the mountain of scree, gravely rocks broken from the mountain above, that caused ones foot to slip down as much as it did when trying to walk up. At the top of the switch backs we got to go most of the way back down to the river and back up to the side of the mountain several times as we crossed the side narrowing canyons with raging streams at the focus of the canyon. This roller coaster trail ended with a set of switchbacks up the side of the hard rock mountain one last time to the glacier where the stream had it headwaters. We came over the top of the glacier and saw the flatness and the place where we would have our home for a few days.

The top of the trail was Plaza de Mulas or just Mulas, “the place of the mules” where all the mules from Horconis transported backpacks and gear to the climbers. The mules would die if they went much higher or so the muleskinner told people. Besides the mules could not go higher because the mountain was straight up from here. Here was the base camp at the West face of Aconcagua, and at the base of the Horconis Glacier. Mulas is like the bar scene from Star Wars. 80 to 100 multi-colored high-tech tents with strange people speaking 20 different languages, wearing bizarre state-of-the-art and not so state-of –the-art climbing gear from every part of the world. A happening place. Wheeling and dealing, buy and sell, supply and demand the commerce system happening at a feverish pace before the winter shut them down. Beer 3.00 American, Burger, 7.00 American; dinner 15.00 or more depending. People buying, selling, trading ...crampons, boots, tents, food... We spent three days in Mulas hiking, exploring the glacier, the culture and the mountain, and acclimatizing to the altitude of 14,500 ft. Watched rocks the size of cars roll off the mountain and through the camp and watched an ice dam break above on the mountain sending down tsunami of water and mud that washed a gully 20 feet wide, 10 feet deep from the top of the mountain, through the camp and down the mountain out of sight. Unbelievable sights and sounds of the glacier moving under us and the mountain warning us it was a dangerous place to play.

We did a carry of gear to Nido de Condor (Nest of the Condor) at 17,5000ft straight up the mountain in infinite switchbacks a never-ending task that took forever. We dropped our stuff, put many rocks on it to keep the winds from hell from blowing it away and we went back down to Mules for our last night at the low altitude. We met the residents on our stop at Nido, about 12 tents at this spot. People who had been there two days were the old residents who had all the urban legend and the information needed by the newcomers. There was a dog up there that licked my climbing goggles and received the end of my ski pole in its side for its goodness. Paul one of the old guys at Nido, asked that we take the scruffy beast down to Mulas when we went so it wouldn't die by his tent where it had taken to sleeping the last few days. We took the beast down, but it ran back up the next day and was there to greet us when we arrive at our Nido camp. The next day our group loaded up all the stuff we needed and again and hiked back up to Nido de Condor knowing what was ahead of us having just done it twelve hours before. It was no easier the second day. Up at Nido we found a spot, set up our camp in the thin air and began our domestic chores. This is too high to live, to high to be. But here we are and it is ok, because our neighbors say it is ok until about 2pm when the wind comes in the temperature drops for about three hours. Then it will let up a bit.

We spent three days staying at 17,500ft at Nido. There is no sleep at this altitude because sleeping slows the respiration and the amount of air into the body makes the person wakes up as if he or she were being strangled. Falling back to sleep repeats the process of slowing the breathing and waking up the sleeper. Not too good for sleeping. The third day we did a carry to Refugio Berlin at 19,5000ft. Straight up the side of the mountain through the ice and snow. Here at Berlin there were three broken down huts that stunk like an outhouse. We pitched our tent way away from these nasty wooden huts. On the way down the biggest and most deadly of the storms hit us. It was a sneaker that came up from behind the mountain. Nine people were trapped near the summit and one died. Many were frost bitten and most were quick-frozen. Every day there were storms that blew in and got cold, but this was a real surprise. I thought we were going to die on our hike down. Twenty below zero and gusts of sixty miles per hour while hanging on the face of the mountain in an ice field that was quickly becoming like the dance floor in the gym tilted at 50 degrees. Nido lost a few tents that evening. A guy got out of his tent to go to the bathroom and the tent blew away with everything in it. In these conditions if you lost an outer glove (we wore three pair at least) you could die. A guy stopped to put on his wind pants which zippered up the outsides and inside. A gust hit the pants, they ripped off before he secured them and the pants blew over the cliff 3,000ft down onto the Polish Glacier and were gone. Death sentence in minutes if he didn't wrap his tent around himself and crawl down the hill and get into someone else’s tent. There is no forgiveness for losing anything up here. There isn’t any help, no rescuer, no helicopters can fly this high, no rescue parties could get here in less than a week, and every climber is on their own.

The mountain is not forgiving and not predictable. We thought we had the storms pegged. Hide between 3:00 and 6:00pm and you were ok. If there wasn't much snow then that was a blessing. When the snow fell the snow blew off in the winds that followed and was called "White Wind". Exposed skin and white wind are incompatible. 20,30 below zero with winds of 30 to 60 mph are extreme combinations at 17,500 ft. Heat and water wick away so fast you are unable to do anything when you realize you are cold or thirsty. Get cold and you don't get warm until you go down to a much lower altitude if you can make it. Get thirsty and it's too late, you get sick and can't eat, which means you can't stay warm no matter what you are wearing, so you either stagger down to a lower altitude or die. We ate and drank constantly.

The next move was to Refugio Berlin. Not too happy of a place. One of the residents did not make it down the hill from the top. There were cases of frostbite and people scared nearly to death who did not come out of their tents very often. The last resident who did not make it had just been removed from the tent area a few days before and there were still people who had been packing the Frenchman in snow every morning because it would all blow off in the night. The mountain had not been kind this year. It was a very bad year for climbers. Many had not made it off the hill. Nearly all who came off the summit had frost bite or most cold or altitude problems. Not exactly the happy KOA with a pool and a rec room. An American was in the fresh snow waiting removal to the lowlands. Dead guy, keep the snow on him until someone came and took him. No one knew about the dead Frenchman, keep him on ice.

Berlin was a very bitterly cold, windy, brutal, but a very beautiful place. All the Andes could be seen from the 19,500ft perch on the side of the mountain. 2,000ft straight down to the plain where Nido was. We could see the tents come and go through the clouds below. After three days and three attempts at the summit we were the old timer on the hill at Berlin: Yankee Loco. We had run up the hill in the daytime to stay in shape and see where the trail leads and what was ahead everyday. We all been up to about 23,000 feet a time or two, and I sometimes wonder if Adrian had not been all the way in some of his excursions alone.

Here at Berlin If you want it, tie it down, put it away or put a very big rock on it. Unfortunately to bend over and pick up a rock was about all the lungs could handle. For the first day or so we used a lot of little rocks to secure things since picking up a big rock was out of the question. Sitting up in bed required minutes to catch the breath. Gathering snow in a plastic bag to melt for water on the stove was a task that would require a nap to recover from (if a person could sleep). Now just sitting and resting could reduce the respiration to a point that I felt strangled. There was no sleep.

When the sun went down the temperature went so low that when we got out of the tent with all our clothes on, there was no staying warm. We decided to summit and the timing required doing it at night. We suited up and all left the tent with the moon high the temperature low. Within 10 feet of the tent my feet were numb and my face was frozen under all the layers I had to stay warm. About 15minutes later Brian and I said this was stupid and came back to the tent and spent the next 5 hours trying to warm back up to normal body temperature. Adrian and Peter (a guy we met) came back an hour after we gave up saying it was definitely very cold out and they might need an additional layer of something.

The next attempt was in the daylight, but we couldn't summit because a storm might come up. We did get to about 23,000 feet. The last attempt I knew I did not have the gear to stay warm, so I gave my boots to Adrian, my thin gloves to Brian and agreed to pack up the camp. Adrian and Brian left at 2:00am and summited at 9:00 am. Adrian lost his toenails on one foot and had severe frost bite on the other toes. Brian had lost the feeling in his fingers and it didn't return while we were in Chile. I packed up the camp and went up to about 21,000feet and then started my trip to the sea. With Adrian’s boots and poor crampons I ended up slipping down part of the slope to Nido separating my shoulder a bit, but made it to the flat on the hill so I could take a breath.

We all ran down to Mulas at 14,500ft, got our day packs and ran to the park entrance about 44k away (the distance of a marathon). Main packs were to go out on mules that day or the next. At the entrance we got on our bikes, rode through customs, up the 3.000ft to the pass and down to the ocean a total distance of about 200k. Adrian made it in less than 24 hours, which was his goal. Brian and I made it alive which was our basic goal. Brian and I stopped in Los Andes where there was a festival of summer and we thought we should experience this cultural happening. Excellent food, and happening all night. We woke up and rode our bikes the rest of the way to the ocean where Adrian was waiting for us.

Once we recovered on the coast Adrian rented a car and we drove back to Inca to get our gear which was to be brought by mule down the hill. At the border the people would not allow the Chilean car into Argentina. Adrian said we would park it and hitch hike into Argentina. We lined up at the border and were arrested for trying to get into the country for false purposes. In the bowels of the customs office somehow we talked our way around the requirements that people can not walk across the 13,500ft border and were granted a pass of sorts. We were put on a truck and given a ride down the hill into Argentina. The truck did not stop at the Argentina border so we checked out of Chile but did not check into Argentina. The truck driver dropped us off at Inca and we went to find our stuff. Of course it wasn’t there. Scoobie had not done his thing. We found that idiot and threatened him with bodily harm and he got on the walkie talkies and said our stuff would come down in the next could of days. We found a place to stay at the ranger’s station the first night. Late the second night the mules came in with our stuff and we decided not to remove Scoobie’s testicles. All of our stuff was there, but we still had to get out of the country before the border closed. A pickup took us to the tunnel just as it was closing. We talked to the border guard and he just stood in the street with his rifle pointed at the next car and ordered it to take one of us and the gear. The next car was ordered to take the next two and our gear since it was bigger. At the border the guards were not going to let us through since we had “walked” in. There was no way we could leave this 13,500foot station without freezing to death. Somehow Adrian slipped away, got the rental car and drove it to the bar that blocked the boundary of the countries. Brian and I just said good bye picked up our stuff, took our passport, unstamped and ran to the car. The guys at the gate just wanted to go home so they just waved good bye.

It seems like if we spend 16 days of intense climbing at extreme altitude we really didn't feel much like immediately running a marathon at an average elevation of 14,000ft. After we ran the marathon we certainly didn't feel real positive about riding up a 3000ft hill in 15k from 10,000 ft to 13,000ft into a brutal wind and then riding into that same wind another 180k (110 miles) to the ocean. But, I guess that is what we did.

This summary is like taking a 12 gourmet course meal and grinding it in a blender and sucking it through a straw. Every paragraph is a story in itself with so many unbelievable things that occurred. I am a different person because of this trip.