Aconcagua Expedition Dispatch

January 14, 2016 – Climbing to 18,300ft

It is about 4 in the afternoon and I am calling you from 18,300ft above sea level. That’s Nido de Condor, The Condor’s Nest, our camp II.

It is a very serious place up here. We’ve got good conditions today, but you can feel the thin air of course when you try to breathe, the cold, there are high winds above us on the mountains and it is obscure but right here we feel pretty good.

This will be our camp, we will move in tomorrow night of course. Our first carry here today went well. It took the team about 3 and ½ or 4 hours to cover the 2,300ft from Plaza Canada to this elevation. We will descend to Plaza Canada now.

We took a group photo, the team put a little gap in the line, then Scott reached up high and Mac put his arms out, because we missed Woodie and Mathes. They are still part of our group. So, our group photo has an M, so right after that, we did another quick one with everybody making an M sign because we think so much about Mathes.

We love you guys, we miss you, you are always, you are a part of this team and we are going to have to take this a day at a time, as I said, we are on a very, very serious place here.

We’ve got our team together, we’ve got the Bolivian staff working really hard, and they are with us, every minute of every hour of every day and we are going to take care of ourselves. We will give you a report, as we go back to our second night at 16,000ft and then we move up here and we will see what’s like sleeping at this elevation tomorrow night, we will keep you posted.

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