Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch

February 1, 2008 – Team One and Two – Summit Success!

It is the afternoon of the 1st of Feb, and I have some great news: Berg Adventures Aconcagua Expedition has put our first two teams on the summit of Aconcagua today!

The first team, Bolivian guide Juancho, Klaus and Steve reached the summit of Aconcagua at 1:20pm, one hour later another Bolivian guide Oswaldo and Mike stepped onto the summit.

This has been a big day for the entire team. I will try to update you on how everyone is doing as our progress continues trying to get the entire team to the top of Aconcagua.

My day began at about 1:30 am and I called Brazil to get our most recent weather update to confirm the weather was going to be as good as it seemed to be. It did turn out that the still air I felt outside my tent and the clear skies were forecast to continue, and we were going to have sunshine during the day.

Early this morning, the first summit team took off and Martin, who is actually by all accounts our strongest and certainly our toughest climber, realized in the early hours of the climb that his hands were cold and were not going to get any warmer on the climb. He knew that his hands had been numb for too long and he had to come down and not risk frostbite. So he was back at camp at 8:00am.

Klaus was having trouble keeping his feet warm. Klaus’s feet continued to be an issue during the climb, but at about 11:00am the team stopped and warmed his feet. Steve, Klaus and Juancho then continued up towards the summit of Aconcagua.

Back down at the Nido, our Camp 2, Leila and the rest of the team were waiting for the sun to hit their tents. The reports came in that Line’s nausea which has been a factor for the last three days, was still going on. This is sometimes an issue at altitude, but she wanted to give it a try today. Opus and Claire, as you know, came in much faster than the rest of the team and not surprisingly, especially in Opus’ case, they are experiencing some profound headaches, but as the morning went on, the Camp 2 crew decided they wanted to move up and try to join us at high camp so that the entire team could sleep here together tonight. Who knows, maybe on the 2nd or 3rd depending on our weather reports and the team's condition, we will have some more summit attempts going to the top of Aconcagua.

For now, it is sunny and warm here at Berlin camp. We are just hanging out. The team who is with me now is attaching part of their foam pads with duct tape on to the top of their ice axes, this is so that when they hold them tomorrow they will have some insulation from the cold metal axe. With the foam between the metal and their mittens as they climb, maybe they won’t have the same problem Martin had.

We are proud of the success at the top of Aconcagua today. We are also so proud of everyone who is doing so well on this challenging mountain. We are going to stay together, continue to have good times and I will report to you each day on how we are doing.