Aconcagua. Start
Aconcagua. Puento del Lenas
Aconcagua. Casa de Piedra
Aconcagua. Base camp. Plaza Argentina
December 23
It was below zero during the nights on Plaza Argentina. The frost covered the tent’s ceiling at night and started to meltdown with the first rays of the sun and dropped on the sleeping bag. Before this moment it was necessary to leave the sleeping bag and turn it upside down to protect feather from soaking. Every morning fan.
Today we are carrying part of our stuff to the Camp One.
In the first part of my story, I wrote about the principles of the acclimatization to high altitude. From this moment we started to move back and forward on the mountain for acclimatization. Today we ascent to the Camp One, drop the part of our stuff and descent down to Plaza Argentina for the night. Tomorrow with the rest of the stuff we will ascent to the Camp One and spend a night there. Next two days we will do the same with the Camp Two (Guanaco), and another two days will be devoted to the last camp Colera. These movements should give our organism possibility to acclimatize.
Our GPS-track. It is marked by December 24, but it was the same both days.
Thus, it is a day for Camp One (it even doesn’t have a personal name). In the morning we packed our backpacks and had breakfast.
Our neighbours around very busy: the guides explain to their clients how to put on sock and boots properly.
Morning helicopter exchanged toilet containers.
Mules came, brought some useful cargo.
Time to start moving.
The elevation of Camp One is 5000 meters, so we need to gain 800 meters. It takes about 5 kilometres one way, but at such altitude, the elevation gain means much more than a distance.
The trail starts on the moraine and continues on the glacier that covered with dusty rock debris.
Plaza Argentina below us:
Dry lake
The trail goes through very nasty scree.
Cached up the commercial group.
The good thing about commercial groups that they tread out nice trails. Also, only because of them, convenient base camps exist. The bad thing that their temp usually much slower than ours, and in the situation than the passing is difficult it is annoying. Well, I am fussy.
Commercial group on their way:
Springs here are covered with ice.
The summit reminds us of our gain.
Came to the penitentes.
Penitentes are such hard snow formations that are typical for high mountains of tropical and subtropical regions. They are forms because of spotty snow melting at huge day temperature ration and hard insolation. The exact mechanism is unknown. As a result, we have meadows of hard snow pikes with different height.
Cam One. Glance on our way back.
Glance up, to our future route.
It was cold and windy in Camp One, and we didn’t bring warm clothes with us, so we didn’t spend a lot of time there and hurried back to Plaza Argentina.
Snow started.
The weather forecast (ranges put on a renewed forecast for five days every day) promised sunny and clear sky. In reality, we had snow. No way for me to avoid Snow Christmas.
