Aconcagua Expedition Dispatches

January 21, 2009 – Another Beautiful Day at Plaza Canada

Sometimes when you are on an expedition to climb a big mountain, you’ll be in an elevation at camp that seems extreme and inhospitable when you first visit it. Later on the expedition, perhaps with the sun out and no wind, the whole area becomes very luxurious. A team will use this area to dry out gear, sort through things and relax knowing they have much higher to climb on the mountain. That’s exactly what the scene is here this morning at Plaza Canada Camp at 16,500 ft.

Leila and the Bolivian staff are turning out a very ample and ongoing type breakfast. Leila’s quesadillas, cheese melted on tortillas, are always a big high altitude meal for BAI teams, and everyone is lining up to get more and more.

It is very beautiful here today; we have a weather forecast that indicates that we have some less ideal weather coming but it still encourages us that in a few days this team can head up and make a good go for the summit.

The entire crew is doing well. We’ve got Mark and Ryan from Chicago. Mark, with his decades of adventure travel experiences on rivers and mountains around the world, is happy to have a shot, and to share it with his son Ryan, to climb to the very highest point in South America. Vaughan, who came to join us from summer-time Australia, and is quite thin because his metabolism is high, is always struggling to keep warm but when he gets his long legs moving both up and down he does very well. I can see the enthusiasm and excitement in his eyes. We’ve got Bill, our rocket scientist, who’s an aerospace engineer and a very experienced long-distance runner. Bill is very used to planning and evaluating his own body and all the hazards. He is constantly thinking about what lies ahead but at the same time I think he relaxes occasionally and looks at the mountain expanse around him and realizes that this is one challenge that is definitely one step and a time. Our Southern Californian climber Tom has loved mountain adventures all his life. I can look in his eyes as he looks around at these beautiful glaciers and ridges around us and I see his determination. We’ve got doctor Dan, a young orthopedic surgeon who is now just taken on some new goals in his life. They are going to require fitness and mental commitment and his excitement to play some of that out on Aconcagua is really inspiring to me.