In January 1994, Carol (my climbing partner from Columbia, Maryland) and I took a long flight from Baltimore to New York to Miami to Santiago (Chile) to Mendoza (Argentina). Our luggage tried to follow but got confused somewhere.

After a night in Mendoza, we took a bus ride into the Andes along with the others in our expedition - Pete, Christi, and John (tourists like us); and Chuck and Stu (our guides).

The bus took us to Puente del Inca, a pack station for expeditions. Puente del Inca is located at a scenic pass on the border between Chile and Argentina. It is the site of ruins of a Spanish hot springs spa above the Mendoza River.

We took up two rooms full of bunk beds at the hosteria in Puente. The restaurant was quite formal and good. We spent the first night there to acclimatize (at 9,000'), and took a hike up to 12,000' feet on the second day. My luggage still hadn't arrived, so I was climbing in sneakers - not a good idea.

Finally, on the third day Hector (our Mendoza scout) brought the luggage up. We sorted all the gear and clothes and each packed a large duffel to be hauled up to base camp by mules. We filled day packs for the 2-day hike into base. The hosteria gave us bag lunches (cheese & fruit & extremely dry bread) and we took off.

After registering at the entry station (Aconcagua is a Parc Nacional de Chile) we took a leisurely stroll up to Confluencias camp at 11,000', where we practiced setting up camp while the gauchos (our mule drivers) cooked a steak dinner for us. The next morning we packed up again and finished the trek into base camp at 14,000'. There is about 1,000' of steep climbing on loose rock and dirt just before arriving at the camp.

We spent the next day resting, acclimatizing, and sorting our gear for the push up the mountain. We were catered by a very nice group of Mendozans (Lili, Victor [her husband], and Adrienna [a friend]) who provided most of our food and water in a relatively comfortable mess tent that doubled as our rec room.

The following day we loaded our packs and made the strenuous climb to Nido de Condores camp at 18,000'. Here we dumped food and gear for our Camp 2, then headed back down to base camp.

We took another rest day and then packed up again and climbed to Camp Canada (16,000') in a light snow. At sunset we did a little dance in hopes of stopping the snow and raising the temperature. The snow stopped, the sunset was gorgeous, but the temperature plummeted to below zero. We slept with our water bottles in our sleeping bags (real comfortable!) but some of them froze up anyway.

The next day we climbed back to Nido de Condores and set up Camp 2. It was cold and windy, but not unbearable. The following day we made a carry up to our Camp 3 site somewhere around 19,600, dropped the gear & food we had brought up, and cruised back down to Nido for another rest day. Finally we packed everything up for our summit attempt and headed back up to Camp 3.

The winds were picking up and we had a little trouble getting the tents pitched, but eventually we finished and had them weighted down with about 400 pounds of rocks each. We ate and planned to try the summit the next day, starting around 5 a.m.

Overnight the winds picked up and by morning the temperature had dropped to 0. We decided to wait another day to see if conditions got any better and to allow some rest time. The wind only got worse.

So for four days our team was stuck at over 19,000' feet with wind chills of 50 below or worse. We were running low on provisions but managed to scavenge some old crackers and M&M's from previous expedition caches (age unknown and somewhat stale).

Actually, after 2 days, Carol had had enough and was showing signs of cerebral edema, so she headed back to base. After 3 days, I sort of went delirious and got up at 5 a.m., put on my heavy clothes & climbing gear, and took off alone (nobody else would wake up). I'd been climbing for less than an hour when I started to lose feeling in my hands and feet, so I gave up and went back to the tent, where it took several hours for me to thaw. I headed down to base later that afternoon.

The rest of the group suffered another night and tried to go up the following morning, but only got a little further than I had before turning back. We were waiting for them at base camp with hot soup and open tents.

Four of us hiked out unguided the next day. The two guides stayed another week with John in an attempt to get him to the summit, but he was too exhausted to make it. Chuck the guide did manage to summit. We spent another night at Puente del Inca, bused back to Mendoza for two days of sightseeing, jogging and shopping with Hector, and then flew home.

Take me back to Gary's Base Camp.