As today was a rest day, we didn’t get a wake up call. I woke at 8.55 to hear the last calls for hot porridge, our first decent breakfast (other than dry cornflakes) since leaving basecamp. I moved pretty fast to get my bowl to the guides’ tent and woke my groaning tentmate in the process. He’s decided to sleep top to tail to give us both a little extra room in the tent. It works as long as I don’t have an urgent need to climb over his head to get out.

We had very little to do today, so we filled the morning with crampon training and a walk on the frozen river above camp. To make things extra difficult, we had to put on and take off the crampons wearing our heavy down mittens. This was to recreate potential conditions on summit night where stripping down to our liner gloves, even for a few minutes, could mean risking frostbite on our fingers. If you want to imagine it, putting on the crampons in mitts was a bit like tying your shoelaces wearing oven gloves. I tried to get additional summit practice by taking a piddle while wearing mitts – as the vet quoted in her blog a few days ago “Big mistake. Huge.” I’ve since decided that if I’m not willing to risk frostbite on my fingers, why would I risk frostbite on anything else. So henceforth all peeing will be mitt-free.

We crossed the frozen river on crampons a few hundred metres above camp. During the crossing we found a few bits and pieces of mountain junk, which Packie told us were left behind by previous expeditions over the past forty or fifty years. He described the area as a high altitude mountaineering museum. A few of us mused that we just didn’t want to find any high altitude mountaineers, which lead to a discussion on the movie ‘Alive’: where exactly in the Andes the plan with the rugby team had crashed; how far they had to trek to safety; and who we would eat to survive if it came to that. As a vegetarian, I felt I was at a distinct disadvantage.

My tentmate mislaid his crampon bag on the ice. He’s a big guy. Lots of meat. I think that minor accidents like his (which could prove dangerous in poor conditions), should be more of a driver of who eats whom on the mountain, rather than simply who has more practice eating rare steaks.

Back in camp we ate macaroni and cheese and had a summit talk from the Expedition leader and the Head guide. The plan is to leave for Camp 3 tomorrow with all our gear, get one night’s rest there and immediately head for summit early the next morning. We’re unlikely to sleep at Camp 3 due to the wind and cold, so resting there makes no sense. A carry day to Camp 3 also makes no sense as if the weather turns bad, we might need any or all of our summit gear with us wherever we are. Now the reality of carrying my full kit in one go is getting closer, I wish I had packed more lightly. It’s even pretty annoying to waste spare grams on spare underwear and socks. I  stink regardless and I’m caked in dirt and dust, so clean clothes seem pretty pointless.

There’s some talk about maybe hiring an extra porter to help with the gear. I’ve offered to give him a few kilos if it helps out the rest of the team. At $21 a kilo, I won’t be handing over too much.

In the afternoon we had a surprise visit from a doctor to check our statistics. As the cute female doctor threw her dreadlocks over her shoulder, crawled into my tent, and whispered to me in a thick accent to remove my clothes, something caused my blood pressure to rise. The body can react weirdly at altitude – I better cut down on those rehydration salts.

We’re really coming together as a team over the last few days. The tiredness and altitude headaches have made everyone a little grumpy, but we’re all making an effort to be patient and helpful. Yesterday I filled up two of the girls’ water bottles from the clearest cleanest little spring I could find. It took me half an hour to scoop up enough water for the three of us. Today they offered to repay the favour  but a few stones shifted as they were filling my bottle, so they handed me back a bottle of damp gravel instead. Delicious! Go team!

Start point: Camp 1 (5,000m)
End point: Camp 2 (5,500m)

As I was reading out yesterday’s blog to the group last night, a guide from the other team wandered up. Our guides had told him that I was a priest and that I would be saying mass. As he wandered up, I was just finishing a section on pooping and was moving to crampons and bribery when my entire team said “Amen” and blessed themselves. The poor man’s eyes opened wide before he also hastily blessed himself and cast down to listen to the rest of Father Dermot’s sermon.

I started today off very pleasantly with the offer of another bribe. I was asked by a team mate with a very sunburnt nose not to mention that after spending ten minutes rubbing sunblock into his nose and wondering why the more sunblock he applied, the more his nose burned, he realised that he was actually rubbing large amounts of alcohol hand sanitiser into his nose. As his hand sanitiser exploded in his pants pocket a few days ago, he should really have recognised the burning sensation.

We all need to be very careful with sunblock, even though it can feel cold, up this high the sun can burn you very easily. Horselady keeps repeating the question “Have you creamed yourself?”, and then starts giggling. It’s a long story that involves a German roommate, a South African vet and occasionally a helicopter. If you don’t get the joke, I won’t explain it.

It was very cold climbing up to Camp 2 and a difficult day for all of us:

The pants of one of the Clare lads had split, leaving him to resort to his backup pants, a shiny royal blue pair with gold trim. Another of the lads complained that these blue pants were too garish and reminiscient of a marching brass band’s uniform. I offered to patch up the crotch of the old pants with duct tape, but my offer was declined. So now we have Bruno out in front twirling his baton and one lad wearing half the appropriate marching uniform behind.

The doctor’s Kindle froze during the climb today. Extreme cold often causes batteries to lose their charge so all electronics are kept in our sleeping bags at night. Doc had been reading an account of an amateur climber who’d kept a daily record of his trip up Aconcagua and tried to squeeze little jokes and anecdotes into each day’s chapter. What a ridiculous idea. Luckily a coalition of the willing had volunteered to carry the Grocer’s solar charger up from basecamp so Doc’s Kindle could be … rekindled. (Sorry)

Camp 2 is one of the nicer camps. We’re at the base of a wide frozen river – it’s not quite large enough to qualify as a glacier but is just as beautiful. Once the sun gets hot enough you can fill your water bottles up straight from the melting ice, but it freezes again very quickly once the sun goes down. When we arrived in mid afternoon, we had to cross a wide and  noisy fast flowing stream, but going to sleep it has entirely stopped moving. All around the river are large boulders sitting on top of much thinner pillars of ice, which have been eroded away by the wind and water. They look like they could fall down at any moment.

There was a bit of worry when the Expedition leader’s crampons went missing. In a terrible case of unfair profiling, the Clare lads were initially considered persons of interest to the investigation. Their bags had been repacked so many times, anything could have found its way in there. Luckily their names were cleared when the crampons turned up in the tent of a member of the other team.

We’re staying in very small two-man tents, but this evening four fully grown men squeezed into one tent for a particularly harrowing game of draughts. Non-experts (like myself) were told in no uncertain terms that our presence was not welcome, even as spectators. We were relegated to standing outside in the wind listening to a cacophony of yelps, threats and curses in Clare, Tipperary and Argentinian accents. If I’ve done one thing right this whole expedition, it’s bringing along that feckin draughts board. I’ve only played one game myself, but it certainly keeps the others occupied.

Warning: this one deals with some of the less pleasant aspects of camping without proper toilet facilities.

Start point: Camp 1 (5,000m)
High point: Camp 2 (5,500m) and return to Camp 1

Today was a carry day, so we loaded our bags with fuel, food and our heavier summit equipment (ice axes and crampons) and moved up to Camp 2, 500m higher up the mountain – higher than I reached on Elbrus in July but still 1,500m below the summit. One of the the team has bribed me handsomely not to mention the fact that after carrying the crampons up to Camp 2, they grew so attached to having the heavy contraptions on their back, they carried them all the way back down to Camp 1 again, to carry them up again tomorrow. Thanks for the bribe, teammate!

Our plans have changed slightly again. In order to be closer to the action if the weather improves, it looks like we’ll be moving to Camp 2 tomorrow without a rest day at Camp 1. We’ll take any rest days at Camp 2 as resting at Camp 3 (6,000m altitude and very cold and windy) is counterproductive.

We started our climb today by zigzagging up the valley through on well worn but exposed and loose paths through the scree. I mentioned to Packie that on Ireland’s highest mountain we also have zigzags paths to help with the steep ascent. He asked how high Ireland’s mountain was. I told him 1,044 metres. As were at 5,250 metres when I told him,  I don’t think he was particularly impressed.

For the past couple of nights the team gave asked me to read out my blog post after dinner once I have it written. I assume they want the opportunity to get their revenge in early before we come off the mountain. Packie wanted to set me straight that the animals we saw a few days ago were actually guanacos rather than llamas. A guanaco is a wild cousin of the llama. The guanaco is a protected species while you can pretty much do whatever you like to a llama, including eating it or shaving it as suits your fancy. I admit that when I wrote the previous blog post I knew llama was the wrong word but I was a) doubtful that anyone reading this blog would know what a guanaco was, and b) I was far too lazy to find out the right word.

It was a very windy walk up to Camp 2. We had to put on extra layers to protect us from the freezing wind. It was both disappointing and terrifying when Packie told us today’s winds were only 40 or 50 kph, while at Camp 3 and above we could expect winds from 75 to 100kph.

We returned to Camp 1 just in time to see another team from the same company setting up camp right beside us. They’ve pushed up their schedule by a day to catch the same weather window we’re hoping to use. We’ll be sharing some of the camp facilities. While I’ve come to terms with my teammates potentially disturbing me in the morning on the far side of poop hill, I really don’t like the thought of a complete stranger climbing that ill-named hill to see my bare white arse rising along with the morning sun.

I got a great piece of advice from our spare doctor this afternoon. She had a very simple to-do list for the afternoon: fill up water bottles and visit the peeing facilities. Unfortunately she chose to fill the water bottles first which was a mistake as crouching by a babbling brook while your bladder is fit to burst is not pleasant at all. The poor spare doctor has had a tough day al around as only after using the facilities she discovered that someone had taken the big black bag, leaving her wandering around camp with a used poop bag in hand looking for someone to take it off her hands. Anyone who can do that with a smile on her face deserves to get to the top!

Start point: Basecamp at Plaza Argentina (4,200m)
End point: Camp 1 (5,000m)

We got two pieces of bad news just  after my last blog post. The first was about water: there has been no fresh snow at high camp (Camp 3) for a few weeks meaning no fresh water for us when we get there. Luckily this is a problem that can be fixed by throwing money at it. We can all chip in to pay five porters to carry enough water (about 100 litres) up to Camp 3 for us.

The second problem is less easily fixed. It’s been very windy at the summit and at Camp 3 for the last few days. Last night, 28 of the 30 tents at Camp 3 were damaged or blown away completely. Not only does this cause serious problems to the people who now have nowhere to shelter after their summit attempts (and most likely forcing them to abandon their attempt and retreat to basecamp), but it is an indication of how high the winds will be for us, i.e. too strong to even begin our own attempt as planned.

Neither of these two pieces of bad news, neither the extra bill for water, nor the high winds at Camp 3, dampened the team’s amazing and unwavering enthusiasm for the epic games of draughts being played by our Expedition Leader, our Chief Guide and the two Clare lads.  Each had their own particular style of play. Our expedition leader is quicker and aggressive, using sbock and awe to play for an early advantage. Our chief guide is cautious and thoughtful, playing out every option in his head before making a move. The Clare lads are veterans – they need no tricks and are quietly confident when playing anybody else (but they hiss, squeal and yelp like a bag of angry cats when playing each other.)

Today we climbed from basecamp up to Camp 1,  where we had dropped fuel, food and equipment two days ago. We were very lucky to have benefited from some good news a few days ago in addition to the bad news last night. As part of our expedition team, we have the services of two porters. These superhumans leave camp after us carrying our tents, pass us out on the trail, drop the tents to our next camp, and give us a friendly wave as they pass us again on their way back down. The real magic comes when we move to higher camps and they complete the same exercise still starting at basecamp, so they cover two or three of our daily treks, up and down, in a single go.

The guides accompanying us are also pretty superhuman – they never stop. When we arrive into camp exhausted after a hard day in the hot sun and cold wind, these guys immediately start preparing meals and collecting water for us. They cook for us in the same small tent in which they sleep. They make sure we get breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as hot water for soups, teas and coffee – they even cater for vegetarians, wheat allergies, gluten intolerances, and (as well as they can) for those on a meat-and-spuds-only diet. This is after they’ve lead us up and down the mountain.

Packie, our head guide, as well as being an accomplished draughts player and expert on local fauna, has climbed this mountain successfully 27 times. He’s also guided on other peaks in the Andes, twice guided people up Denali (aka Mount McKinley in Alaska, North America’s highest peak, a slightly lower, but colder, less accessible and altogether nastier mountain to climb.)
Bruno carries a little stuffed toy around with him, tied onto his rucksack, which he proudly tells people it’s a gift from his girlfriend. When he’s not taking the piss out of his clients (us), he marches ahead of us nonchalantly twirling his walking poles in his fingers like a majorette leading a troupe of cheerleaders.
Carlos constantly runs around after us making sure we have everything we need. When not combing his hair he makes a great tiramisu. I was afraid he might trip over his hair some day but then realised he might be preparing it to us as a rescue line.

We had a bit of minor trouble before leaving basecamp this morning as the drinking water was running out. It comes from a source high up in the mountains but had been gradually getting cloudier as harmless grit and dust got caught up in the melting snow. It got so bad last night that the IT guy commented last night that the soup was clearer than the water. I noticed something similar this morning when we stopped for a pee break – I had become a human filtration system with the water coming out clearer than when it went in. This is a very good sign for my own hydration but it’s probably not a great sign for the cook preparing the soup.

A few of the team have invented a game to pass the time while walking. When somebody mentions a word (any word), they try to sing a song that includes that word. As far as I can tell, they’re making the game a little more difficult by only picking songs where none of them know any more than one or two lines, so every round ends in ‘la la las’, ‘do do dos’, or ‘I don’t know the words’. At least all of the players make sure to sing in key, even if they do each pick a different key.

In totally unrelated news, I have a headache. The doctor says it’s a combination of altitude or sinusitis and has given me some strong pain killers. But I took the pain killers at the same time as I put in earplugs so who is to know whether it was the pain killers or the earplugs blocking the singing that cured the headache. I know that whenever hear the words “Let it go” in a singsong voice I will have nightmarish flashbacks to today’s climb.

A little while after reaching Camp 1 and setting up our tents we got “the poop talk”. This is our first camp without at least a little hut in which to do our business. The girls, who have been squating behind rocks for over a week seem particularly happy that the guys now have to do the same. Poop has a slight complication in that it must be bagged, collected and transported to basecamp by the aforementioned superhuman porters.

One member of the team, I won’t even mention their nickname, was particularly proud to be the first to make use of the newly designated pooping area – apparently they’d been waiting for hours. Thanks for sharing, teammate!

Yesterday, I made it to the top on Aconcagua. We’re all back in basecamp now. Toughest thing I’ve ever done even if we did have perfect weather.

Huge thanks to Jam and Joe  from Earth’s Edge, to Packie, Carlos and Bruno from Inka Expediciones, to the entire expedition team who made the trip hilarious and to all my hiking buddies who’ve trained with me over the past year or so.

(Individual daily updates to follow on BaldFeet over the next few days for anyone interested.)

Rest Day at Basecamp 4,200m

This will be the last blog post for about a week. Tomorrow we leave basecamp  (and its slow expensive WiFi) to climb to Camp 1. We won’t be coming back. All going well we’ll spend three nights at Camp 1 before moving to Camp 2, then straight on to Camp 3 and summit before descending to Plaza de Argentina, basecamp on the other side.

We started the day with a breakfast of double entendres. Horselady claimed that she could stuff anything into her at breakfast and broke into a fit of her dirty giggles that lasted a good hour. When one of the Clare lads wanted a volunteer for a magic trick, the vet screamed “Do me! Do me!”.

Today has been a day of preparation for tomorrow: another packing conundrum with one bag going up, one going around and one going down. The Clare lads started preparing for it early on to spend the rest of the day commenting on everyone else’s inadequate draughts skills.

We all have bunged up noses – a result of the altitude, the changing temperatures and the dust. The doc has one small bottle of Olbas Oil and he’s rationing it by doling out lines in little bits of tissue. We’re all addicted.

The grocer’s solar charger has become a valuable commodity as everyone tries to charge cameras, phones and kindles before we make our move. He’s also testing out his Walter-White-esque water purification system. At least he’s mixing bottles of chemicals and claims it’s to purify water. There are rumours he’s actually working on a way to bootleg Olbas Oil and shut the doctor out of the business. He had me blind taste two cups of water and watched me closely for adverse reactions. My nose is still blocked so he hasn’t succeeded yet.

During the morning one of the lads wandered around camp asking where the shower tent was. As he’d had a shower two days earlier and had walked past the shower tent to get to the loos about once every hour, this was a worrying development, so we all had a good giggle.
The rest of the day will be spent playing draughts, packing our three bags and practicing putting on and taking off crampons. First I’m going to try and get online.

Talk to ye all in about a week…

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.

Rest Day at Basecamp 4,200m

We’re currently at 4,200m altitude, where a breath gets you about 66% of the oxygen than it would at sea level. Your body needs to work extra hard to do anything, even just to keep you alive. The best way to acclimatise is to take a lot of rest (hence the rest day) and eat a LOT of high calorie food – my favourites are chocolates and jellies. On summit, we’ll be at 6,962m and the oxygen will drop to 43% so I’m really looking forward to an opportunity to stuff my face for a full day.

I woke up this morning to the sound of my tentmate snoring. This was disappointing as we’d made a pact that if he didn’t snore, I wouldn’t punch him while he slept. But when I opened my eyes he wasn’t even in the tent! I looked outside for him bit there was actually a helicopter landing 50 feet from my sleeping bag. I regretted getting my tentmate to stop snoring as he would easily have drowned out the sound of a landing helicopter.

The grocer and the IT guy took the idea of a rest day very seriously and realised early on that to enjoy it properly they would need somewhere to sit in the sun. Rather than borrowing the light plastic chairs from the mess tent, they spent the morning building ‘seats’ with the large rocks scattered around the camping area. It’s only with hindsight that I realised how much simpler it would be to borrow a chair as I did join them in building my own seat. Myself and the IT guy only built rough stools, while the grocer went all out to make himself an armchair complete with armrests, bottle holders and ergonomic lower back support. He decided he needed the extra lower back support after bending down to pick up the fifth boulder. If he ever gives up the grocery business, he is assured a successful future in the rock-based furniture business. IKEA must be terrified.
The IT guy wins today’s award for most innovative mid-trek gear adjustment. In Mendoza he bought a peaked cap with a neck cover to keep the sun off. Today he used a penknife to remove the entire top of the cap, leaving the top of his head completely exposed to the sun. Luckily when the sun is hot he can move the neck cover back up over his head. In one simple operation he has transformed a brand new and pointedly practical piece of headgear into a shitty and practically pointless piece of headgear. He’s also got sunburn.

In the afternoon we were told to prepare our high calorie snacks for the next eight days. A bag of snacks for each day, arranged for easy access depending on our location and activities that day. Advanced theoretical physics it was not. Yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of adults (me included) get so excited, confused and stressed about filling plastic bags with sweets. If you’ve ever seen The Cube, The Krypton Factor or The Crystal Maze on TV, this was like a puzzle from one of those shows played out with Pic ‘n’ Mix sweeties. As I was nearing completion the head guide brought in a whole stack of new snacks making my entire planning system redundant. I nearly lost my mind. As I left the tent sometime later, one of the lads was emptying everything he had packed back onto the table to start again, and a friend patted him on the shoulder and murmured soft words of consolation.

It’s a little worrying that our success (and our survival) over the next week depends on us having access to the right equipment at the right time, but I panic when it comes to deciding whether I should pack a bag of Haribo or a chocolate bar to eat in 5 days time. Climbing mountains is harder than I thought.

Start point: Casa de Piedra 3,200m;
End point: Base camp 4,200m

We started the day off by crossing the Vacas river. There is no bridge, so we had wade across in sandals or runners. While this was the same river we took great pleasure bathing our feet in earlier in the trip, a cool river in the midday sun after hours of hiking is very different from a freezing river at seven in the morning when the sun has barely come up and we’re all still yawning.

Despite carrying a medical kit so extensive it could resurrect Elvis, our  doctor hadn’t bothered to bring either sandals or runners, but our vet, in a lovely display of teamwork, offered to throw her sandals back over to him as we passed each of the five channels of the river.

Our guide motivated us all to get started by stripping to his boxers and shouting encouraging messages. Once the vet was over the first channel, she launched one sandle back across towards the doc. It was an excellent throw, only very narrowly missing our guide’s stripy blue undies. Bouyed by her initial success, she threw the second sandal – but her new found confidence was her downfall. She flung the sandal underarm and it flew high into the air, bringing ‘oohs’, ‘aahs’, and ‘oh shits’ from the watching team before plunging straight into the middle of the fast flowing water. Disaster!

But suddenly our expedition leader sprang into action like a giant ginger gazelle! We all watched open-mouthed as his lime green crocs shot through the rushing water more powerful than their scaly namesakes! He grabbed the sandal and with a flourish returned it to the foot of his grateful wife, like some messed up version of the Cinderella story. The poor doctor passed the rest of the river barefoot.

The rest of the hike was a bit of an anti-climax after sandalgate. Albeit a very warm anti-climax. We saw some llamas at the top of a distant cliff – they were so far away they could just have been furry cacti. We saw some hares a little nearer but they were smart enough not to move about in the heat. We found a large bone and the Clare lads entertained themselves for a worryingly long time posing for pictures with it. Our ridiculously photogenic doctor found a variety of rocks on which to pose. And the vet (from sandalgate) and one of our assistant guides, Bruno, had a competition to see who could do the best yoga moves on the doctor’s big rock.

It was a gruelling last slog into basecamp in the heat, but what a reception we had! The staff welcomed us with hugs and kisses, despite none of us having washed in days. We passed a sign advertising pizza, beer and cigarettes. We were even told the team would get one free hot shower! (Once we figured out that this was a hot shower each and not one collective team shower, we decided this was good news too.) Finally we were lead to our mess tent, headquarters for the next few days, where we got cold drinks, fruit punch, watermelon and little cubes of cheese. Horselady demonstrated her inability to use a ladle when helping herself to punch, claiming it was an obscure Argentinian utensil unknown in Ireland.  She then informed us that people who eat almonds instead of chocolate bars and burgers have smaller waistlines. Naturally this newsflash shocked us all.

After we all nearly died putting up our tents – which involves carrying around rocks the size of basketballs, we spent the evening resting: playing card games designed to make us distrust each other; and finding out about our new plans. We’ve replaced a few rest days at the higher camps (where the air is so thin we won’t get rest anyway) with extra rest days here in basecamp and at Camp 1 (5,000m). Our planned summit day of February 7th hasn’t changed but with the extra access to showers we’ll be very slightly cleaner when we get there.

Start point: Las Leñas 2,800m;
End point: Casa de Piedra 3,200m

I slept pretty well last night even without the mattress. We were called at 7. Packed the bags and tents together, had breakfast and were on the trail at 9. We were so proud of how fast we got ready that we’ve asked for an extra half hour in bed in the morning, confident that we can get it all done.

Today was a fun day. It was a lot cooler than yesterday but everyone was a little paranoid about the sun and heat so we were extra careful. I wore a long sleeve t-shirt and liner gloves to keep the sun off my sunburn, a wide-brimed sunhat to protect my head, a buff from my neck up over my nose and ears to keep the dust out of my mouth and nose, and sunglasses – I was nicknamed the invisible man, which is one of the nicer things I’ve been called – so it’s the only one I’m blogging about.

When we were getting ready to set out, the mules arrived into camp. They arrived in pairs – two tied together and one hobbled. They had to stick together and work together even if they disagreed about everything. Comparisons were drawn to a couple on tent buddies from Clare, but no comments were made on which one was hobbled.

During our walk today we were able to soak our feet in the river mid-walk. It was lovely. When we started walking again i ended up between two girls. Before I joined them they were comparing notes on arguments with their respective partners, after I joined them they started talking about horses and ponies. One’s a vet and the other owns a horse so I was quickly out of my depth, but i did learn what the withers are/is.

Every day we get a little goodie bag and a packed lunch. Everyone gets a packet of ‘Tang, which is some kind of luminous sugary drink mix. Only our expedition leader likes it so every day he does a few dodgy deals exchanging Argentinian Bounties for extra hits of Tang.

The grocer asked me about using two walking poles rather than one. I told him they were occasionally awkward but generally useful. The horselady told me I was the same.

The horselady has a little competition with herself each day to see how much water she can drink. I mentioned that it was amazing with all the cold water that goes in each day, only hot water comes out.

Before we got to camp we had our first view of Aconcagua itself. It was beautiful and terrifying. Very terrifying. It’s huge.

In Casa de Piedra, the grocer had to convince the nut smugglers that smoked salmon which has been out of a fridge for a week and spent two days in 30+ heat was no longer good to eat, even if it says “refrigerate AFTER opening”.

The toilets in our camp are long drops – basically a little hut with a great big hole in the ground underneath. Our IT guy dropped his extra-strong, extra-long Andrex down the hole. He’s very depressed – it had 80 extra sheets!

The horselady has a little bottle of flavoured drops to help her reach her daily water target. The instructions are to add a single squirt to each litre of water. A big discussion point of the day was the lenght of each person’s squirt – as one of lads pointed out, a squirt can last for 5 seconds or 5 minutes. Fair play that man and his 5 minute squirts!

The best thing that happened in camp was that our basecamp duffels arrived with my inflatable mattress – my trip is saved. I happily blew up my mattress to the distant sound of (I’m reliably informed) muleteers smoking cigars, racing their mules in a circle, drinking wine straight from the bottle, and tearing chickens apart with their bare hands for our dinner. Those guys are hardcore.

Basecamp tomorrow…