Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch
January 5, 2013 – Nido de Condor Camp – the Waiting Game Starts
It is Saturday, 5th of January, and I am calling you again from the Condor’s Nest, Nido de Condor. This time our team has moved in though. We carried it up from plaza Canada in even faster time than we did yesterday, it was about 2 and ½ hours to cover the distance to climb up here. Neil noted that we did have much heavier packs today but acclimatization and a steady pace got us here in a good order.
Two and a half years ago when Neil and Dan were in Kilimanjaro with Berg Adventures they slept inside the crater of Kilimanjaro, an elevation within about 400 feet than where we are tonight at Nido de Condor. The difference is that night we had already climbed Kili and we knew we were going to get up and leave early the next morning and descend but this is our advanced base camp, we moved in Nido de Condor tonight knowing that we will be at this elevation or above for the next four to six nights in order to ascend Aconcagua.
Aconcagua is the highest point in the world outside the great ranges of the Himalaya and the Karakoram in Asia. Of course it is the highest point in the western hemisphere but there is really nothing in comparison in most people’s experiences in the mountain to climb in this altitude so we got to take slow and take it very seriously. The Bolivians have been stocking this camp all along and we moved up a great deal of gear today and we are here to stay until we can get this thing climbed. The weather reports are coming in from Guilherme in Brazil, very detailed weather reports, and so far they have been spot on, as he told us that we are getting slight snow showers right now as I speak and winds are negligible.