My Aconcagua Adventure: Day 7, A Bad Day at Base Camp
Note: I’m publishing my entire Aconcagua journal serially. If you want to read from the beginning, start here.
A bad day that just got worse.
All last night we were pelted by snow and wind gusts. It was merciless all night. Our hope was that it might clear just enough to let us begin our ascent to Camp 2. (A hope against hope.)
When we awoke, things were fairly still, but we were buried inside our tent in a snowdrift. AlI wanted to do was to get moving up the mountain, but Michael refused to stir. Finally, I just got up to get some water, only to discover that the barrels of water inside the Inka kitchen were essentially empty. And what was there was frozen solid. Great.
Finally, Michael got up and we ate a meager breakfast, always watching the sky to see if it would clear. I felt like we had enough of a window to make it up to the next camp—which we did—but he refused to let us leave. I got more and more perturbed. I just wanted to get the fuck out of Base Camp. So, I started packing everything up. Michael did the same, cautiously. But the sleeping bags and tent remained. He wouldn’t let us leave, and I was getting full-on pissed.
He said he wanted to talk to Avo and Joyce so we sought them out in their Juan Herrera dome. Later we were joined by the Italians.
For the next couple of house, I basically sulked. Not super cool of me, especially in front of everyone, but to be honest, I was just bored and annoyed.
Around noon it became clear that we wouldn’t be leaving. I resigned myself to our fate. Soon thereafter, the winds really picked up and created what amounted to a blizzard for the next ten hours. (In fact, it’s still going as I lay here in our tent writing this.) They call it the “White Winds,” which has a very Game-of-Thrones ring to it.
All afternoon we were refugees in our frozen dome. Every few minutes the wind would blow the door open and blast us with frigid air and snow.
At some point, a guy named Ricardo Peña joined us at Joyce’s request. He seemed to be a fairly accomplished mountaineer who’s summited Aconcagua four times before and is here training for an attempt on Everest in April/May. He was a super nice guy, and we plastered him with questions about Everest, gear and recon about the mountain for hours. He also dispensed a few small but useful pieces of advice for us to stay warm up there. I hope it works.
The evening finally came, and everyone once again began discussing our summit plans. Our limited weather forecast said it would be sunny the rest of the week. As Chavi, the Juan Herrera chef/guide brought in more hot water for tea, she mentioned that she’d return in ten minutes with a full weather report.
Basically, we were right, yes, it would be sunny all week. But also very cold and extremely windy. All week the wind at the summit would be around 60 kph [43 mph]. And the temps look dismal. On Thursday, the day before we planned to summit, the high would be -18° C [-0.5° F] and the low… -32° C [-26° F]. Factor in the wind, and that’s instant frostbite.
In fact, we learned of a Cuban doctor who followed that Indonesian/Malaysian team last week and wasn’t properly prepared. He turned back at the Independencia Hut but already had severe frostbite on his hands and nose. Because of the terrible conditions, they sill haven’t been able to evac him out yet. It’s probably been five days now.
Also, we learned of a North American man who died somewhere below the summit. They still haven’t gotten his body down. It’s sitting in the Cuevas where the Indonesian/Malaysians had to seek shelter, and it’s been there for a few weeks.
It’s really amazing to be surround by so much death. All day everyone talked in excited breathlessness about all the famous mountaineers—most of whom are all dead from one accident or another. It’s truly people compelled by a certain kind of madness. And here I am, just sitting here bored because there’s nothing to do except drink hot peach Tang.
Anyway, the weather reports essentially put a kibosh to any of our hopes to reach the summit. Ricardo said that in all his seven times at Aconcagua, he’s never seen Base Camp so cold or windy. So at least there’s that.
