Aconcagua – the hike in
Saturday, January 8th, 2011
We hit the trail about 8am the next morning, incredibly excited and ready to go. We had a good nights sleep, a quick breakfast, and knew we had a long day ahead of us. The approach is about 22mi, and generally take 3 days. We had decided to do it in two because there wasn’t a ton of altitude gain, and we wanted the extra day in case we needed it on the actual mountain. So, we were going to bypass the Pampa de Llenas camp (eat lunch there) and head all the way into Casa Piedra.
The hike in is really just following a trail right next to a river. It’s pretty straightforward, although it’s tough to make great time since there are rolling hills, and the terrain is extremely rocky. It’s also tough at times to pick the trail back up, which resulted in us having to climb up out of the river bed on more than one occasion.
The other thing that slowed us down was the oppressive heat. While the humidity wasn’t too bad, the temps were easily up in the 90s and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, meaning the sun was absolutely beating down on us. Staying hydrated is absolutely critical, and it wasn’t easy under the circumstances. There were times where we literally were only able to do about 15 minutes of walking between rest breaks for water. It was brutal.
Despite that, we made good time on the first leg in of our hike. Although we were tired going into lunch, we took a nice long break, felt reasonably refreshed, and agreed to continue the hike as we had planned. It meant another 5-6 hours of hiking, but we were literally leaving on the day of the summer solstice and would have daylight until at least 9:30pm. Plus, with out lunch break during the heat of the day, it would be cooler for the second half of our long day.
We made pretty good time on the second leg, and rolled into Casa Piedra before the sun was going down. We set up camp just before the actualy campground, in what the park ranger told us was an acceptable area (but we would later find out actually wasn’t.) We were all pretty exhausted, cooked up some food, and went right to sleep – resolving to get a late start the next day in order to rest up.
The next morning, we found out that we were in a verboten campground, and had to break camp quick. We hung out, took a nice long break, and savored our first views of Aconcagua. At Casa Piedra, we would turn off of the Valley we had been following, and follow a different river valley up to Basecamp (BC.)
This hike was only 7 miles, much shorter, but had almost 3000ft of elevation gain. Once again, the heat was brutal – even dangerous. As we climbed up, I felt like we were in the opening scene of Star Wars, walking across Tattoine. The sand and desert seemed to go on forever, and there was little respite from the sun.
Nina and I were moving a little faster that Jeremy and Carly. We could see where we thought BC was, but we never quite seemed to get there. The heat was reminiscent to me of the Chichago Marathon, and I was pretty worried about heat stroke or severe dehydration – plus Nina seemed to be getting more sunburned by the minute.
We thought we had another 45min or so to climb, when we went around a ridge and were literally in the middle of basecamp. What a pleasant suprise!!
Unfortunately, we hadn’t seen Jeremy or Carly in a couple hours and they weren’t answering on the radios. Flashbacks of the Chicago Marathon heat dangers kept going through my mind, so we got some water, tossed up the tent, and I started getting ready to head back out to find Jeremy and Carly. Just then, as I was about to start retracing the route, they came walking in – a second stroke of great luck! I was so happy I literally hugged Jeremy.
We got our tents set up, explored BC a bit, and generally got ready for the evening.
Category : aconcagua
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