Jussi Westergren’s Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch
January 28, 2011 – Acclimatization Along the Crest of the Andres
It is Friday morning at about 11:00am on the 28th of January. I am calling from the top of a small summit at 13,190ft/4,020m above sea level. I am standing here with Jussi, Osvaldo and Sergio, and there is nothing but an absolutely clear, ambient blue sky above our heads. There is not a hint of wind. We are on the crest of the Andes. We look down in one direction and we see the slopes leading down into Chile. We look in the other direction and see Argentina.
This morning we drove Osvaldo’s car from the hotel where we will spend two nights, last night and tonight, at 8,530ft/2,600m, to our first destination. We traveled just a few kilometers up the road to where we got our first good view of the goal of this expedition, the summit of Aconcagua. We sat around and took some photos and marveled at what a great mountain it is and how big it is. Then we got back in the car and continued towards the Chilean border up the steep winding switchbacks that led us to the pass between Argentina and Chile. After a while we were at 9,186ft/2,800m and climbed up 3,940ft/1,200m to the point where I am calling you from now. It is good for our acclimatization, of course. Jussi just told me that he feels good, surprisingly good, for his first day over 13,000ft/4,000m. We feel a bit short of breath, as expected. Jussi says in his own words that he is humbled, but happy.
So it is a glorious day, as you can tell. We are going to go back to the hotel to pack our duffel bags, organize them, and take them out to the corral to be loaded onto the mules. We won’t have them with us tonight, we will just have our day pack for tomorrow’s hike. One duffel bag will be labeled ‘Confluencia’ and that will be dropped off at our next camp at 11,155ft/3,400m. The other duffel bag will say ‘Plaza de Mulas’, and the mules will take that all the way to our base camp. So here we go. Our expedition is underway and we’re feeling great. We’ll keep you posted every day.