3 True Grit Adventures : Climbing Argentina’s Aconcagua

Friday, Dec. 29

What an awful start for this adventure--I spend my last night in Los Angeles battling nausea. I haven’t had as much as a cold for two years.

Why now, O Lord? Prior to and during the flight to Miami I eat no food, just consume large quantities of water. I’m so weak I sleep through the flight. On the long (nearly nine-hour) flight to Buenos Aires, a cabin attendant takes pity and I am given four contiguous empty seats, albeit in the smoking section. For six glorious, uninterrupted hours, I enjoy a lateral sleep.

Saturday, Dec. 30

After rendezvousing in the bar at the Aspen Suites Hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, I and fellow climbers Greg Hargrave, a CPA from Los Angeles; Karen Pease, an office manager from Tacoma; Texan Steve Van Nest, Ross Berry (also an Angeleno) and our American guide, John Schweider, head off to dinner.

I don’t know if the beer did me in, or the steak. But I suffer five nearly sleepless hours with stomach flu.

Sunday, Dec. 31

At breakfast, I feel like a jerk telling John Schweider about my bug--this kind of thing is supposed to happen on the mountain. He gives me a Lomotil tablet which acts, more or less, like cement. I’ve been struck by the fact that I’m the oldest by at least 10 years of the climbing gang here assembled. It’s a strange feeling. Up to now in my life I’ve almost inevitably been the youngest-- the youngest professor at New York University, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s youngest TV correspondent, etc.

But these people are all 28 or 29 or 32 years old. And I’m 44, for heaven’s sake. I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face when I see the year “1963” on Ross Berry’s passport. That’s when I started college! Thank heavens, I think, for my running. I keep reminding myself that I fairly recently ran the L.A. Marathon in a very respectable 3 hours, 32 minutes--17,000 runners started the 26-mile race; 12,000 finished; I placed No. 2,264 (yes, I’ve memorized that number).

At the Buenos Aires airport, as we get ready for our flight to Mendoza, I meet two more expedition members, and discover that I’m not the only old man; Bill Borland is 47 (and balding!) and Steve Bridges is 42. Whew . . .

After a very bumpy two-stop flight we land in Mendoza, a graceful provincial capital in western Argentina from which you can see the foothills of the mighty Andes mountain range.

Tuesday, Jan. 2

Following an uneventful rest day, John Schweider and Joe and Linda Dalmas (they’re young IBM engineers from Tucson) join me for an early-morning run. Feels good. At 11:15 we’re on our way by bus to the Mendoza Stadium to obtain the permit for our Aconcagua climb.

Eventually we set out on the Pan-American Highway toward the Chilean border (the trail head for Aconcagua is close to the border). In the bureaucratic confusion at Mendoza Stadium, the permit itself was left behind, so Daniel Burrieza, our senior Argentinian guide, has to talk us through the military check-point set up on the highway near the border.

We arrive at the Hosteleria Puente del Inca at about 6 p.m. This is where we’ll begin the acclimatization process--Puente del Inca’s altitude is 9,000 feet.

Wednesday, Jan. 3

After a terrific, large breakfast, we set off for the trail head. On the trail itself we must cross a fast-moving stream (water to the hips). The views of the surrounding Andes are stunning.

By 6 p.m. we’ve covered 11 miles, gained 2,500 feet, and have arrived at the confluence of the two branches that join to form the Horcones River. Daniel informs us we’ll sleep tonight, not in tents, but out in the open, under the stars. Daniel is a great practical joker, and I assume he’s kidding. He isn’t. We’re treated to a startingly clear sky, fast-moving satellites, thousands of stars, a quarter moon and a ring of 18,000-foot peaks surrounding our meadow. This is a long way from home.

Thursday, Jan. 4

We’re all up at 8, on the trail at 9:50. We cover a long distance today (15 miles) under a hot and persistent sun.

I set a very slow, consistent pace, and rigorously follow the advice offered me by the old German woman who runs the Marengo Hotel at the foot of Tanzania’s Mt. Kilimanjaro. Up to 15,000 feet, she said, breathe always and only through your nostrils. That breathing system serves as a first-class regulator--it forces you to go slowly, thus reducing the chances of mountain sickness.

At any rate, I arrive at Base Camp (at Plaza de Mulas--14,000 feet) just before 4 p.m. Sixteen miles in six hours, elevation gain of 2,500 feet--not bad.

Touch wood--no altitude headaches, no more tummy problems. Several other expedition members are given aspirin for their headaches.

I’m sharing a tent with our American guide, John Schweider. It’s a lucky break. Most other tents have three people in them, and that’s crowded. John, it develops, is a born adventurer--he’s spent months exploring northern Canada by canoe and has climbed McKinley many times. (The company that put together our group and for which John works--Genet Expeditions of Anchorage, Alaska--specializes in McKinley climbs.) He wants badly to climb Canada’s highest peak, Mt. Logan; it’s an ambition we share.

The sun doesn’t set until 10 o’clock--after that, at this altitude, it gets very cold, very quickly; we go to bed at 11.

Friday, Jan. 5

Still no headaches, and my appetite is alive and well--I wolf down several “eggs in a hole,” eggs fried inside a hole in a piece of bread. We have two “mother” tents at Base Camp--one for cooking, one for eating; it’s a system that works well.

In the afternoon, I go for a walk. Not far, but it’s the first time I’ve been alone in the mountains. And it’s a very emotional experience. I’m absolutely overwhelmed by the beauty and massive scale of these mountains, and by the (relative) insignificance of my Being. As I walk along, I have a good, old-fashioned cry. After the tears stop, I sit atop a boulder, with the mighty Andes surrounding me, and give profound thanks for everything I’ve been blessed with my health, loyal and loving family and friends, a challenging and rewarding career.

Back to far more prosaic thoughts: Nine climbers are plainly too many. Six would have been a far more manageable number. But the real problems with a group this size are going to occur higher up the mountain; it sounds as if we’ll move as slowly as the slowest member.

Saturday, Jan. 6

On our second rest day in Base Camp, I get permission from John to climb solo to 17,000 feet, just below the campsite at Nido de Condores (Nest of the Condors). I’m able to breathe through my nostrils up to 16,000 or 16,500 feet--not bad. Just think, when we settle in at Nido (18,000 feet), we’ll have just 5,000 feet left to go! (How’s that for blind optimism?)

Sunday, Jan. 7

A freezing morning (temperature about 20 degrees Fahrenheit--but it feels even colder at this altitude). Today we’re making an equipment and food carry-up to Nido, then back to Base Camp. At about 10:30, moments before the sun hits us, we’re off. Immediately, I give up any notion of nostril-breathing. My pack is heavy, and my spiffy new Koflach double-boots feel even heavier (up to this point I’ve just been wearing running shoes). On and on and up and up we go. Finally, at 3:30, I arrive at Nido de Condores. Bill and Steve Bridges (two of the three “old men”) are in the lead all day, followed by Joe and Linda, Greg, Ross, me and Steve Van Nest.

Karen Pease has fallen way behind, and during the descent we are all witnesses to a sobering scene. Karen has collapsed at about 16,500 feet, the victim of acute altitude sickness. The descent is painful. No one, of course, wants to stare at her, or stay too close to her. (The human ego is a funny thing--Karen tells John she’s embarrassed she got sick.) At the same time, it doesn’t seem right to charge down the mountain full steam ahead, so the descent is a stop-and-start effort, with very few words being exchanged. John ropes himself to Karen to help her descend.

After resting for a couple of hours, Karen, to her credit, joins us for dinner (although she eats very little). I’ve been saving up an awful Roseanne Barr joke, which I tell when we’re all together. It seems to help relax the atmosphere.

Monday, Jan. 8

A rest day at Base Camp.

Karen is diagnosed as having pulmonary edema, a condition in which fluids build up in the body. She is swelling up all over, and will probably be taken down off the mountain tomorrow. We’ve spent a fair amount of time together since the beginning of the trip and I know this will be heartbreaking for her. On training climbs for Aconcagua she ascended Mt. Rainier (14,410 feet) in her native state of Washington five times last summer.

The robust state of my health has become a running joke between John (who’s had his share of migraines) and me. “Have you still not had a headache?,” he asks, feigning impatience.

It’s been a full week since I’ve had a shower. My hair feels absolutely filthy. But thanks to some “Baby Wipes” I’m able to keep the rest of me relatively clean.

Tuesday, Jan. 9

A German climber from another group who we thought looked positively deathly last night had deteriorated so badly by 3:30 this morning that Daniel was summoned to give him an injection. He was then carried to the search-and-rescue tent.

At 10:30 we gather to silently watch a macabre scene as the near-dead man is carried on a stretcher to a waiting helicopter, which takes him down to Puente. There’s some sense of deja vu--a few days earlier a near-dead Japanese woman had been given an injection and then taken off the mountain. I don’t know what Daniel pumps into these people, but he seems to be the person everyone comes to when there’s trouble. More than a hundred climbers have died on Aconcagua. After getting all our gear together we set out at 12:10 p.m. for Nido. My pack weighs 40 pounds. Make good time behind Bill and Steve Bridges. They arrive at Nido at 4:50; I arrive at 5:15. They’d already set up the tent which “the three old men” (Bill’s phrase) are to share. The temperature is below freezing, with a cold wind blowing, and I’m deeply appreciative of the (relatively) warm tent.

We agree we three old men are going to climb together--and make the summit.

Later on it gets very cold--15 degrees, with a stiff wind. Dinner is the culinary low point of the trip--absolutely awful freeze-dried whole wheat fettuccini, served by John tent-to-tent out of a huge pot.

It is a frigidly cold night. Even fully dressed inside my sleeping bag (which is supposed to keep you warm to -15 degrees), and sandwiched between Bill and Steve, I wake up cold several times.

Wednesday, Jan. 10

It’s obvious the weather has changed. After several days of fairly benign conditions, this cold is paralyzing. My water bottle is frozen solid, and even putting it inside my sleeping bag for two hours won’t thaw it out.

Bill just took my pulse and, incredibly, it’s 60--a full 10 beats below what it had been at 14,000 feet. It’s supposed to work the other way around--the higher you get the harder the heart has to work trying to cope with the lack of oxygen. I am feeling amazingly fit.

This is an acclimatization day, for which we’re all thankful. By 11:30 a.m. it’s still only 20 degrees outside; inside the tent it’s a toasty 50.

People fight the inevitable boredom in different ways. Indulging in sports trivia--the names of football stadiums, the locations of Olympic Games, the names of football commissioners--keeps some folks busy. Others play a card game called Spades.

I get so bored I decide to hike higher up the mountain--maybe about 1,000 feet. It’s good to be away from the madding crowd, and to push the envelope of my high-altitude tolerance.

Thursday, Jan. 11

Today we make for the High Camp--Berlin Camp--at 19,300 feet. It is from Berlin Camp we’ll make our summit bid.

The climb up to Berlin takes Bill, Steve and me two hours. Most other members of the team come in 90 minutes after that. Most people, including our guide, John, are hurting because of the altitude. I tell no one (except John) that I’ve yet to suffer even a momentary headache stab.

Tonight my old beginning-of-the-trip nemesis appears--I have diarrhea. John gives me a Lomotil, which works.

In our tent tonight, we are quietly confident about achieving the summit tomorrow. When Bill slips and makes reference to “ if we get to the summit . . .,” I change his introductory clause to, “ When we get to the summit . . .”

Friday, Jan. 12

During the wee hours, everybody’s sleep is interrupted. The tent walls are flapping like mad. The roar of the 100-mile-an-hour-plus winds crashing into the face of the summit massif is awesome.

As the hours pass--neither sleep nor conversation is possible--two thoughts dawn: A summit bid on this “Summit Day” will be highly unlikely, and we humans are but tiny specks on this Earth.

Finally, dawn arrives. The wind is still howling. The temperature in the tent is 10 degrees--outside it’s below zero. Lord knows what the windchill factor is.

We’ve become used to the sun hitting the tent sometime after 10. But on “Summit Day” there’s virtually no sun. The jet-engine roar is omnipresent. Snow is falling--more correctly, blowing--constantly.

An image is burned into my brain: Steve Bridges, for hour-long periods, staring forlornly out of a tiny slit in the tent door, studying the depressing scene.

To preserve food for tomorrow (our back-up Summit Day), a decision is made to forgo lunch.

John has the unenviable chore of taking hot water from the “jock tent” (high school football coach Steve Van Nest, sports trivia master Ross, USC swim team alum Greg) to the “newlywed tent” (Joe and Linda who, actually, have been married for many years) and the “old-timers tent” (Bill, Steve Bridges, me) for the making of hot chocolate and the serving of dinner, which is some kind of utterly forgettable freeze-dried pasta.

It’s crucial at high altitudes that the body has liquids circulating through it. But those liquids have to exit the body--otherwise a person could have pulmonary edema. P.E., as it’s called by mountaineers, can mean quick and almost certain death at this altitude.

All that said, exiting the tent to go to the bathroom is torture.

Our 18-year-old “assistant guide,” Juan Pedro, is so badly affected by the frigid conditions that John and Guillermo send him back to Base Camp.

I’m beginning to realize that a summit bid may well be out of the question for this trip. Guillermo--who knows the mountain well--has told me that when storm systems hit Aconcagua, they typically last for five or six days. We probably don’t have either the food or the time to outlast this system.

Saturday, Jan. 13

Early in the morning it’s below zero inside and outside the tent. The wind has lessened. By 7 a.m. I’m wide awake--no wonder, I’ve been inside a sleeping bag, sleeping off and on, for 36 hours. It’s too cold to read (even wearing wool gloves, holding a book in your hands is cold business). I start to play mind games--naming cities and countries by the alphabet from A to Z.

At 10:15, shortly after the sun has hit the tent, John pops his head into our tent with what is, for me, a totally unexpected question, “Who’s going to the summit today?” Unexpected, because it’s so cold and because it’s relatively late in the day to mount a serious summit attempt.

The top 800 feet of the mountain is called the Canaleta--it’s infamous in mountaineering circles, a stretch of loose scree and boulders that requires a great amount of care and persistence to navigate. The best time from Berlin to the base of the Canaleta is three hours (and this would be really moving); the best time up the Canaleta (by all accounts) is three hours. Getting back to Berlin from the summit would take probably two hours. By the time the summiteers got dressed and got some food and water in them, an hour would have passed.

Add it up: the earliest the summit party could get back to Berlin would be 6 p.m. Yet for two days preceding Friday’s all-day storm the summit massif was, regular as clockwork, enveloped in a storm system, starting at 4:30 p.m.

Well, I conclude, I don’t fancy getting caught in a storm; back home I’d promised too many people whom I love too much that I wouldn’t take any undue risk in trying to achieve the summit.

I have an instant, simple and stark answer for John’s question: “Not me.”

Bill and Steve Bridges both say they’ll join John. So, later, does Joe (after conferring with his wife).

It develops that John’s theory is to divide our 10 people into three groups: strong summit team (led by him), a “play” (my term, not his) team (led by Guillermo) which would head up the mountain, but with no intention of achieving the summit, and those who want to stay in camp. The idea of the “play” group was to give those were those would like to get higher on the mountain but because of physical problems have no realistic chance of getting to the top. The composition of the groups is to be:

Summit: John (guide), Bill, Steve Bridges, Joe

“Play”: Guillermo (guide), Ross, Steve Van Nest, Linda

Camp: Greg, Russ

The idea of the “play” group is to give those with physical problems and no real chance of getting to the top an opportunity, at least, to get higher on the mountain. As for the “camp” group, Greg isn’t feeling well and (as explained above) I don’t feel the arithmetic is right for a safe, successful summit attempt. Quite frankly, if I can’t get to the top, I want to get back to Base Camp--pronto.

One look at Guillermo tells me something has gone wrong: In the midst of an intense in-tent conversation with John, he is bone-white pale, and shaking. John leaves the tent and announces to the group that Guillermo is refusing to lead the second team up the mountain. So, John announces, there will be no second team; the summit party (led by him) will leave as soon as possible (it’s nearly 11 by now, sunny and cold with low to moderate winds); everyone else will head back to Base Camp.

I tell Guillermo privately that, in my opinion, he’s made the right decision in opposing the three-group plan.

One of the potential problems with the earlier plan, of course: what happens if the “A” team gets into trouble? In the perishing cold, “waiting” for them could be deadly. Two Americans who summited before the storm hit later tell us the maximum time (without suffering frostbite) that gloves could be removed to take pictures was 10 seconds.

It’s a moment of some high (!) drama when the four-person summit team takes off up the mountain as the rest of us prepare to vacate our Berlin Camp outpost. Our descent to Base Camp takes a leisurely three hours. I team up with Linda, who’s a fine actress: she’s gracious, considerate, a fine conversationalist; I know under the surface she must be in turmoil--her husband, after all, is thousands of feet above us, battling the altitude and the elements.

Back in Base Camp, we are greeted as long lost friends by Daniel (and Guillermo, who has preceded Linda and me into camp by 20-30 minutes). Daniel asks me to corroborate Guillermo’s version of what happened at Berlin five hours earlier. I do. It’s obvious that Daniel applauds his younger brother’s decision.

For dinner, we enjoy fresh boiled potatoes and a thin steak. To our food-deprived bodies, this Heavenly Feast is sublime.

What is not sublime is that, like clockwork, the summit massif of Aconcagua is enveloped in a late-afternoon storm system. Even at Base Camp, the temperature dips precipitously and we have snow squalls. We get a report from the search and rescue people, who have a telescope trained on the peak, that immediately prior to the storm they spotted four people on a traverse just below the Canaleta.

Sunday, Jan. 14

Greg Hargrave and I team up to “hit the road “ to Puente, and it becomes my best day on this adventure.

Even though we’re covering the same territory as when we hiked in, it seems so much more dramatically beautiful this time. It helps, of course, that we’re going down, not up.

Greg and I fall hopelessly behind Ross and Steve Van Nest (Linda has headed back up the mountain from Base Camp, hoping to rendezvous with her husband). We stop, literally, to “smell the flowers” and listen to the birds. We cover the 26 miles in a little less than seven hours. The shave and shower at the Hosteleria are glorious. What a great feeling it is to be clean!

Monday, Jan. 15

At 11, whom do I see but Daniel and Guillermo--they’ve been able to hitchhike a ride on a helicopter (along with Wolf, Daniel’s German Shepard) from Base Camp to Puente.

Daniel has great news--John, Bill and Steve Bridges all made it to the summit on Saturday, returned safely to Berlin for the night, and returned to Base Camp on Sunday; they are hiking down to Puente as we talk, along with Joe and Linda. Joe hung back from the summit 10 feet or so, to symbolize the fact that Linda was not at his side during what he had hoped would be a shared moment of triumph.

Tuesday, Jan. 16

All of us have arrived, by bus, back in Mendoza. Over breakfast at the Hotel Balbi we get details of what happened Saturday.

John and Joe climbed together, and they climbed fast. They made it to the base of the Canaleta in not much more than three hours; they made it up the notorious Canaleta in just two hours. (This is a fantastic pace.)

They got to the top shortly after 5 p.m.

Bill and Steve Bridges fell behind John and Joe early on, but they maintained a fairly steady pace. They got to the summit closer to 6 p.m. Steve later tells me it was “the toughest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

Ironically and thankfully, conditions were far less stormy than they appeared to be from Base Camp 9,000 feet below.

Not surprisingly, resentments have surfaced. I don’t blame anyone, really, for anything. I made the decision that freezing morning of the 13th that, given the time of day and the probability of storm conditions, it was not wise for me to join the summit team.

Did that decision reflect a prudent subjective evaluation of objective conditions on the mountain? Or did it reflect a critical loss of nerve at high altitude? I honestly believe it reflected the former.

That said, I’m not a person who accepts failure easily--and not achieving Aconcagua’s summit does, for me, represent failure.

So those who know me will not be surprised to read that I’ve already begun planning a return to Aconcagua. It will be a much more tightly-organized affair--just two weeks away from L.A. (with several “summit insurance days” built into the schedule) and with only two or three people (one of whom will almost certainly be one of the Burrieza brothers).

Will the mountain be “conquered?” No. But maybe, God willing, conditions will permit me to stand for a few moments on top of the Western Hemisphere.

Next time.