Jussi Westergren’s Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch

January 29, 2011 – Entering the Provincial Park

Today is Saturday, January 29, and our team is finally entering Aconcagua Provincial Park on our way to climb Aconcagua. At about 9:30am we left our hotel and drove in Osvaldo’s car, the one with Bolivian license plates that has made the long journey all the way from La Paz with Berg Adventures equipment and our great staff Osvaldo, Simon and Sergio. The five of us drove the short distance from the hotel to the entrance of the provincial park. The Aconcagua area is a provincial park in the province of Mendoza in Argentina. As you know from our adventures yesterday, Aconcagua is right on the Chilean border, but is entirely in the country of Argentina in the Mendoza province. We had our climbing permits that we were issued back in the city of Mendoza, at hand, of course. In just a few minutes time, we were checked in and on our way.

We had a beautiful walk today. I am calling you now from the Confluencia Camp which is at 11,155ft/3,400m from sea level. It only took us 3 hours and 15 minutes after we began walking to arrive here. We were walking for probably two of those hours, and we took a couple of breaks totaling about an hour of just sitting around talking and enjoying the day. We had a great time sharing our thoughts and telling stories.

The weather has been very nice, so far, though we may be seeing some changes. We had some dark clouds develop today and even a few drops of rain. We are not far from the Pacific Ocean, so when the warm air masses that come in in the early part of the day hit the mountains and rise, clouds form. Sometimes when this cloud formation combines with another weather front, we can get a significant amount of precipitation. As many of you know from past Berg Adventures trips, Aconcagua can also be a very windy place, again because of the proximity to the ocean. So, we will see what happens. I am looking up now at a sky that looks like it will stay cloudy overnight. Often the clouds go away during the nighttime, but we might have clouds through the night tonight, and who knows, we might have some white snow on the ground tomorrow or some rain.

We are here to take care of ourselves, regardless. Remember we are still acclimatizing, and our bodies need to adapt now to a new elevation, 11,155ft/3,400m. Osvaldo, Simon and Sergio are taking great care of us. We walked up today with very light packs because the mules had gone up before us with all of our food supplies and equipment to climb higher on the mountain. It is beautiful here, we are enjoying it and we will continue to keep you posted each day.