Jussi Westergren’s Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch
February 5, 2011 – French Toast at Nido de Condor
The sun warms us after a cold night
It is Saturday, February 5th, and it is a beautiful, clear, ambient morning at 17,655ft/5,500 m above sea level. The sun has just hit the Nido de Condor camp. It was very cold last night. Osvaldo reported to me that inside his tent, where the three guys were sleeping, was 5°F/-15°C, and you can bet it was much colder than that outside the tent—not a surprise because we are moving to higher and higher altitudes. We are climbing high and sleeping low and now we have moved up another stage to our Camp II here at Nido de Condor.
The symptoms of a major mountaineering expedition like this one are ongoing and they are not simple. We have a lot of refuge or waste material that our expedition generates and that we have to move down the mountain. We keep up with it as we go. So last night, just before we started eating our dinner, Sergio left camp with a huge backpack full of waste material to move down the mountain. He went quickly down to Plaza de Mulas which is more than 3,850ft/1,200m below us. He called us a few hours later on the radio to say that he was down there enjoying a Coca Cola and getting ready to enjoy a meal that Diego was preparing inside the restaurant down at Plaza de Mulas. Amazingly enough, at 9:30 this morning, I saw this smiling face pop over the ridge and Sergio had already returned to his team. This guy is amazing; his strength and enthusiasm for working on a climbing expedition are awesome.
The jagged terrain of Aconcagua
Jussi continues to do well. Last night, he woke me up to discuss his altitude symptoms. There was nothing unusual or of concern, so we went back to sleep after that and we woke up quite refreshed this morning. We ate some French toast that Simon made in his kitchen just a few moments ago. Now we are getting ready to prepare some of our climbing gear, our crampons, ice axes and climbing harnesses, before we move higher on the mountain. Our ‘climb high sleep low’ philosophy will actually take us to our high camp, Berlin Camp at 19,600ft/6100m above sea level, today, but we will return here to Nido to spend the night.
Things continue to go well, you can’t imagine that clear, blue, ambient sky that I described when I began this dispatch. We hope that it will last and even if it doesn’t, we feel that we have what we need here on the mountain, we can take care of each other, and we can hopefully reach the summit of Aconcagua in the coming days.