Meeting my team in Mendoza has been great. There’s 8 of us plus our 3 guides. Everyone comes from very different backgrounds and places, each with their own reasons for being here. We had a team dinner last night and spent today gearing up in a small village called Los Penitentes about 3 hours from Mendoza.
As with any group of strangers things have started slow but a common goal and an adventure ahead quickly unites. We packed all our gear and in the picture above you can see we have a lot of stuff! We organized our personal gear into two different piles. One for the trek to base camp which is all our basic backpacking and camping stuff- sleeping bags, pads, and light clothing. The other for all our high mountain gear we won’t need until we hit base camp in three days- double plastic boots, down jackets, goggles, etc. We have a mule team carrying most our gear to base camp so having things organized now means we won’t have to tear it all apart on the mountain.
Everyone has been training and prepping for this trip long before we arrived in Argentina. We’re all ready and pumped to punt it all to use starting tomorrow. In the morning we hit the trail and should be on the summit in the next 12-14 days. I feel like a kid trying to sleep on Xmas Eve knowing something amazing is waiting for me tomorrow. Hopefully my next post will be about the summit which will be incredible but really this is all about the journey, and so far what a journey it’s been.
Climbing the 7 