Acclimatization
El Gato (the cat), my guide, picked me up from the hotel about 9:00 am and we headed for the two hour drive into the mountains with various other random guides (guia) and clients. Mendoza is a relatively small city. In a matter of less than ten minutes the medium rise buildings gave way to mountain vistas.
We traveled right through the heart of Argentina's wine growing region.
After arriving, a tag along "mountain virgin" from Santa Cruz, Bryce (on the right), joined us unofficially. He was an energetic guy with a great sense of humor.
Since the guide was known by a “nick name”, I only thought it fair that he be let in on mine and “langosta” became my nomer for the rest of the trip. We climbed to a base camp of sorts about 2,800 meters up the mountain.
After a lunch of crumblingly stale bread, slimy slices of cheese, and hard salami...
("Stinky" the base camp stray dog enjoyed most of mine.)
... we headed higher.
The evening brought Pasta Rapido and sauce, followed by an attempt at sleep. Rain beat against the tent heavily and thankfully turned to snow about 3:00am.
Not much later, Bryce knocked at the tent asking to join our moist crew. Apparently he had pitched his tent in a location that was very concave, resulting in sleeping in a veritable lagoon. In the morning the depth of water was really impressive.
("Stinky" the base camp stray dog enjoyed most of mine.)
... we headed higher.
The evening brought Pasta Rapido and sauce, followed by an attempt at sleep. Rain beat against the tent heavily and thankfully turned to snow about 3:00am.
Not much later, Bryce knocked at the tent asking to join our moist crew. Apparently he had pitched his tent in a location that was very concave, resulting in sleeping in a veritable lagoon. In the morning the depth of water was really impressive.
The camp took on a much different feel with a fresh coating of snow, which made me wonder what Aconcagua temperatures and conditions would be like at over twice the altitude.
After breakfast, we continued up to about 3,500 meters but couldn’t approach the 4,000 meters summit due to the newly lain snow.
One interesting byproduct of the snow was a monochrome perspective of the sliderock slopes.
El Gato took us on a crazy descent, practically straight down a ravine face, complete with very steep switchbacks. (Not the big roads, but the slight squiggles in the foreground.) I just hoped the extra leg stress wouldn’t impact the start of the Aconcagua expedition in the morning.
The slope couldn't keep Bryce and me from "clowning for the camera", with loyal stinky afoot.
Stinky was wiped out from the descent effort. We felt the same, but kept an upbeat bent on finishing the hike, completo con cervesa.
Although entertaining, this side trip felt like a giant “rip off”. There was no way this was worth $380! To make things more poignant I met a Canadian climber, Dan, who had paid his company only $200 for the same trip. Something is very rotten in Denmark!
The icing on the cake was that Aconcagua Expeditions, who arranged the total package, got me back to Mendoza so late in the evening that I missed all the pre-expedition orientation meetings and gear check. Something just wasn’t right and the wishy-washy nature of the beginnings was making me nervous.
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