Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch

January 4, 2013 – Good Food, Weather, and Excellent Progress

It is about 3pm on Friday January 4th, and I am calling you from Nido de Condor. That’s Spanish for the Condor’s Nest. This is our Camp Two; my altimeter on my GPS receiver says that where we are putting our tents this year is at about 18,300ft (5,578m) above sea level. That’s at least 1,800 or 2,000ft above Plaza Canada and we put our typical slow pace to work to get us up here today and it was remarkable, we were here in about 2 hours and 45 minutes. It was the guys’ first climb to this altitude on this trip, that’s an exceptional good level of performance.

Of course we’re feeling the altitude. We do have an average, what you have to call “exceptional good weather” for Aconcagua so far. Yes there is wind, yes it is cold at night, but compared to what we (Berg Adventures groups) have seen here on the past, the mountain gods are smiling on us so far. So, it is a really good report.

As you know for our schedule now, we carry high and we sleep low in two days stages up here. So after putting ourselves a good cache here, we will descend back to Plaza Canada. Maria is waiting down there in her little cook tent and no doubt she will have some excellent food. By the way, the guys told me that now that they have come on the mountain and Maria is cooking our mountain food, they had the best food on the trip which is a good sign as we go higher. Last night was taco night. Berg Adventures started the tradition years ago and had tacos on our first night at Camp One and we had some wonderful soup as well. We are enjoying life up here even though it is challenging and we will keep reporting day to day. Dan and Neil say hi.

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