Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch

January 1, 2013 – Preparing for Our Climb

It’s about 4pm on New Year’s Day at Plaza de Mulas. We’ve got some high puffy clouds, it looks like almost no wind up high on Aconcagua, and for the most part it’s a beautiful sunny day here, a beautiful sunny New Year’s Day at Plaza de Mulas (4,400m).

Today, as you know, is an acclimatization day for us. We will spend a minimum of three nights at this elevation before we move higher. Today is an easy day, in that we’re not taking any long hikes or doing anything other than just hanging out at this elevation, allowing our bodies to adapt. Now while Neil and Dan and I are doing that, the Bolivian team is hard at work of course. Osvaldo and Sergio did a carry to our Camp One, Plaza Canada. They’re only gone about four hours moving up and down and they carry very heavy packs up there. Maria was down here organizing and doing some housekeeping chores with the expedition gear. All in all, it’s been a good first full day working out of Plaza de Mulas.

Tomorrow we’ve already packed light loads of high mountain gear to carry up and deposit at Plaza Canada tomorrow. So, the plan is we will all move up there, drop some equipment and all move back down here for another night of acclimatization sleeping at this altitude.

Things are right on track, I can report that Neil and Dan are both looking good. They had very high oxygen saturations when we measured them this morning, being their first night at this altitude. So things are right on track, we’ll keep reporting day to day as we work higher towards the summit of Aconcagua.

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