Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch

January 22, 2014 – A Great Day Hiking to Nido de Condora

It’s morning time at 5,050m (16,570ft), Canada Camp, our Camp 1. I told you about Taco night last night, it was a great meal! We even had fresh avocado as well.

I think everyone slept well. We were in our sleeping bags in our tens for 13 hours last night. That’s a common thing in the mountains. It is warmer for me at Canada Camp this year from my memory, but still you’ve got to take being warm seriously. We had 20 km winds last night, a few gusts up to that speed anyways. It’s not very high, but in a nylon tent it will always make it seem more extreme. We are no doubt going to see much heavier winds as we climb higher.

Listen to Wally's call

Breakfast this morning was great! We had pancakes with maple syrup from Canada. We had scrambled eggs, granola and fresh pressed coffee. The team is still in our dinning tent, enjoying breakfast. We are also getting ready to prepare to carry our loads to Camp 2, Nido de Condors 5,579m (18,300ft). There are some high cirrus clouds today and as you know we are anticipating some increasing wind speeds on the upper mountain. For now our team is doing great. I look forward to informing you how it feels to climb all the way to Nido today. As you know we will be returning here to Camp 1 to allow our bodies to adapt more to sleeping at 5,050 m (16,570ft) before we continue higher.

Listen to Wally's call

Later this morning:

Okay we are just about packed up for our first carry to Nido de Condor. Those cirrus clouds I mentioned have dissipated and it’s surprisingly warm. It is probably about 6°C with no wind and clear skies. So the weather looks good for our carry today.

We really enjoyed our breakfast, the maple syrup on our pancakes. You know Marie-Jo has been particularly interested in all the dishes we are seeing here. Even here at 5,000m we are sitting around our dinning tent with a nice Bolivian cloth on the floor and we’ve had great dishes and she’s taking lots of notes. Her son back in Versegeres, Switzerland is very interested in food preparation and cooking and so is she. Dulce de leche, the dish that is so popular in much of South America, Rafael knows of them from Brazil, the Bolivians love them. We are having lots of Dulce de leche and Marie-Jo is taking lots of notes on how it is prepared and we all love it!

Interesting about sweet dishes, I mentioned the avocado that we had for our Taco night last night, well Rafael and Leila put sugar on their avocado and in Brazil it is served mostly as a dessert. It was interesting to us; we were putting avocado on our spicy tacos with lots of hot salsa and they were putting sugar on theirs! We have all our bases covered on this international trip. Several countries, several languages and several cultures living together at 5,000m.

Later today:

Wally called into the office and had this to report:

It’s about 5:30 in the afternoon on Wednesday the 22nd. I am calling you from Camp 1, Canada Camp, 5050m (16,570ft). We had quite a day since I checked in with you this morning. We did climb all the way to Nido de Condor, Condors Nest camp. On my altimeter, you may find something different in books and maps, but my altimeter, right where we camp there, reads it being at 5,580m (18,300ft). It’s a remarkable elevation considering it is only our Camp 2. We will plan to go there to sleep tomorrow, our bodies are still adapting. The team is doing great! It only took our team 3 hours and 15 minutes to climb all the way to Nido de Condor today. Osvaldo and the gang put up tents so we have our camp established. Obviously we stashed a lot of gear there. And now just as we are walking into Camp 1, Canada Camp, Leila called on the radio and announced her and Maria had popcorn and tea ready for us.

It was a great first day climbing above Camp 1, the team is doing great and we are happy campers here on Aconcagua!