Carry to Camp 1 (5,000m) and
Return to Basecamp (4,200m)

Today we carried heavy bags of food, fuel and summit gear up to Camp 1 at 5,000m before returning to basecamp. The bags each weighed between 15kg and 20kg but luckily we left most of it up there for when we return in two days.

It was another sunny day, but very windy too. I went to the loo before we left, and when I dropped some toilet paper down the long drop toilet, a gust of wind blew it right back up and through my legs. I caught it in mid air. You’ll be pleased to hear I used about two pints of hand sanitiser after that bathroom visit.

A lot of the hike today was alongside or on top of a very large glacier. Up above us we could see the Polish Glacier on the side of Aconcagua and directly ahead of us was a smaller glacier which Packie told me was the British Glacier. I asked him where the Irish Glacier was and he pointed down to the huge one underneath us. “This is it”, he said. I have a mild suspicion he wasn’t being entirely truthful, but the Irish Glacier was quite impressive.

Towards the top of the hike we had to cross long sections of very loose scree. Every step sent rivers of sand and stones and a few large rocks sliding down the  mountain, often with a trekker on top. The scariest part was when the ground moved before you put your foot down, especially if that started large rocjs moving above you. The grocer sent one stone the size of a car wheel rolling down the slope – we all watched it roll until it smashed into the ice at the bottom. Scary stuff.

Along the track we also saw fields of Penitentes – places where the wind had eroded snow into tortured hunched shapes resembling people kneeling for  confession. I thought they looked more like an army of snow hobbits, or a particular large and well made meringue.

We got up to Camp 1 and down again without major incident. Camp 1 doesn’t have any facilities of basecamp – in fact there are no facilities at all, unless you count rocks and a stream. One of the rocks looks a little like a cat from a certain angle – that cat rock looks like it’ll be the highlight of our three days at Camp 1.

Down below we had a great feed and began to notice how each of the tentmates are interacting with each other. The girls are very pleased to have synchronised their peeing cycles and the lads are all turning into married couples: the grocer and the IT guy were bickering over who was supposed to bring the headtorch that night; I uttered words I never thought I’d hear myself say “his hands are too big so he needs me to break his tablets for him, and the Clare lads were arguing over whose shoes were whose. “Those are your shoes”
“No, I know my own shoes. These aren’t mine.”
“Course they’re yours  – sure whose else would they be?”
“They must be yours so.”
And so on and on and on and on…

At one point our spare doctor shouted at the top of her voice, “Dermot, do you want some palm hearts?” Nobody knows why. Not even her.

Only the actual married couple haven’t changed their behaviour – they’re using the rest of us as ignorant helpless pawns in their marital wargames enacted through cards.