Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch

December 31, 2012 – Happy New Year From 14,460ft (4,400m)

Well it’s New Year’s Eve and it’s about 3:30 in the afternoon, and the team has arrived at Plaza de Mulas. Dan and Neil, and of course, Osvaldo, Maria, Sergio, and I got here in only about 7 1/2 hours time from Confluencia. We came up pretty well today. We were moving pretty well, taking it slowly, of course, with the new altitudes. We got a slight change in the weather: we got quite a few high, thin, clouds overhead. We experienced an extremely strong head-wind as we walked up the Horcones valley most of today. It got tiring to be walking into the strong wind all morning.

We left very early because our Muleteers told us, they asked to come pick our loads up, pick our duffle bags up and put them on the mules at 6:30 am this morning. The reason being, New Year’s Eve, there’s a big party back in town and the guys wanted to get the animals back into the corrals and get cleaned up in time for the New Year’s Eve party. I made the comment to a couple of people that if there’s any groups thinking that they’re going to be using mules to carry their gear to Plaza de Mulas tomorrow on New Year’s Eve, I have a feeling they’re either going to be getting not a very early start or more likely, probably not a start at all. Those guys look like they were in the mood for a big New Year’s Eve party tonight.

We actually are just glad to be here so I can tell we will be sound asleep at midnight. The guys look tired, but they look really happy with their own performance and the beauty all around here in Aconcagua…really proud of the team. As you know, this will be our home base for about the next 10 days. We’ll be climbing above here, spending several nights above here, but this is our base camp and it’ll be home for a while now. Were’ happy to be here!

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