Feb 02-03, 2018- Today we woke up ready to ascend to base camp and gain some elevation. Our hike would take us from roughly 11,000ft to 14,000ft giving us our first taste of altitude on this trip. We packed up all our gear and then had to cross the Rio Vacas. We could have waded barefoot across the river but instead rode mules across two by two with an Arriero leading the way.
Here’s my team mate Annabel and I waiting to cross the river. Having grown up riding horses this felt no different and wasn’t too difficult. The mules know the deal and exactly what they’re doing. We just held on for the ride.
Once the whole team had made the crossing we started heading up into the mountains. The landscape continued to be absolutely gorgeous as we left the desert valley below and made our way up into the colder alpine climate above.
We arrived at Plaza Argentina aka base camp and I was surprised to see how large an operation it was. There were multiple companies running their own operations within base camp. We were using the largest and oldest of the companies called Grajales Expeditions. They were the ones that organized our mule teams and handled our logistics between base camp and the real world.
Our camp was the yellow and white domes in the bottom right hand corner of the picture below. Grajales was housing three teams including mine so the camp was busy. The cluster of domes is where we would eat, relax, and prepare our gear for the high mountain. The Grajales base camp even had beer for sale and wi-fi, although it was extremely slow.
We got settled into our tents and then explored the other camps a bit before dinner. After dinner we had a team meeting in one of the domes to talk about going higher up on the mountain. We talked about the two main risks of ascending higher, High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE) and High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE). I won’t go into each of these deeply but both are caused by the body failing to acclimate while ascending to a higher altitude. Both HAPE and HACE have similar onset symptoms as Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) which we would all get at some point during our climb. Getting AMS is expected and boils down to feeling like you’re hungover (headache, dehydration, insomnia, loss of appetite) and the best thing to do is to drink lots of water and ascend slowly. With HAPE and HACE having similar onset symptoms to AMS (which we knew we would get) it meant we would have to pay attention to one another but also ourselves. HAPE and HACE are fatal if not caught and treated quickly. The only treatment is rapidly descending so we would need to be honest with ourselves and our guides making sure to not let “summit fever” cloud our judgement. Our guides advised us not to worry too much as the odds were low and no amount of worrying will prevent them anyways. No need to fuss over something you can’t control. After our team meeting we made our way to the tents. Tomorrow was a rest day at base camp literally meaning we would do nothing. The day would give our bodies a chance to acclimate to 14,000ft thus helping us as we ascended higher.
Rest day (Feb 3, 2018) was one of the most boring days ever. Hence why I am not making a specific rest day blog post. We seriously did nothing all day. I spent most of my time in one of the domes reading Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer and watching movies I had downloaded to my phone. My tooth had been acting up through the night and now today. I wondered if it was getting worse due to altitude or if I was only noticing it more due to boredom? I had been keeping up my antibiotics but the tooth would start throbbing from time to time. I spent a lot of time wondering if it was going to get better or worse? If it did get worse how bad could it get and how far would I push through? I told myself if I went down because of my tooth it had better be so bad that getting it pulled in Argentina was the only option. Sounds crazy but I guess you have to be to do this stuff.
The park requires all persons climbing Aconcagua to be checked and cleared by the base camp doctor to ascend higher up the mountain. We all went over to the doctor’s “office” (really just a shack) and waited for our turns to get checked. He did the basics like temperature and blood pressure but also listened to our lungs for fluid which is a classic symptom of HAPE. During my check up the doctor found no issues so I was cleared to go higher. In fact everyone on the team got cleared to ascend so we were all excited. Tomorrow would be our first carry up to camp #1. There were no more mules from this point on so now I would be carrying everything. I trained especially hard for this so tomorrow was where I’d see if I was on point or off course.
Climbing the 7 