Aconcagua

If you think Aconcagua is a walk up then you're among the 70 percent. At 22,841 feet Aconcagua is the highest mountain outside of Asia. It is located in the Andes of Argentina, between the Malbec wine capital of Mendoza and Santiago, Chile. Aconcagua is one of the high points on the seven continents that includes Aconcagua, Denali, Kilimanjaro, Everest, Elbrus, Carstensz Pyramid and Vinson. 

I guided Aconcagua three times for Alpine Ascents International in 2005 and 2006. This winter Garrett at AAI offered me a private with JP Bailey, a Canadian living in  Manhattan. From previous trips I'd grown to appreciate the quality AAI offers when guiding the Seven Summits. On Aconcagua, AAI's recipe for success was developed by mountain legend Willie Prittie (imagine a high altitude version of Willie Nelson). Following Willie's recipe, and if the clients are healthy and strong, clients will get to Aconcagua's summit. Without Willie's recipe you'll probably join the 70 percent who don't summit. For comparison, Denali has a 46 percent no-summit rate.

I tore myself from the Alaska Wonderland and spent three sweaty and sleepless days in Mendoza preparing food for our 21-day trip. I packed the food and gear into mule loads, each able to withstand three days of mule treatment, which is equal to a turbo-charged paint shaker.

JP and I got to know each other over steak and Malbec at Francis Mallmann in Mendoza. The next morning we drove two hours to Penitentes, a 70's-era ski resort at 8,500-feet between Mendoza and Santiago, and unloaded our stuff at Grajales, our outfitter for the trip. Here's Pollo of Grajales weighing our loads. 

Then JP and I started the three-day trek into base camp. JP retired several years ago and spends his time travelling the world. Brazil is his favorite. 

We hiked with light backpacks in the sun. Easy walking through a Tibeten landscape. The movie Seven Years in Tibet was filmed near here. 

 

While we strolled, the mules and arrieros worked. 

It's a tough life for beasts of burden. The trail was lined with bones. It appears that Andean Condors don't like mule muzzle. 

The most unique part of the journey is hanging with the arrieros (mule drivers). These guys are real cowboys, with spurs and knives crammed into the back of their pants. Here we're sharing Argentina's legendary asado (barbecue) with arrieros at Casa de Piedra.  

Vegetation on the approach is covered with spikes. These pretty flowers have glass needles instead of spikes. 

After the approach JP and I spent three days at Plaza Argentina, the base camp at 13,800 feet. JP is explaining to Annita, the Grajales manager at Plaza Argentina, that she is beautiful, doing an incredible job, and that we'd like to further our five-day steak-eating streak. 

  

Bring your shoes! Base camp has bouldering.  

 

The Buff is Aconcagua's ubiquitous gear. By recycling breath moisture through the fabric it is possible to avoid turning your throat into 80-grit sandpaper from pressure breathing the dry, dusty air.  

 

Camp II at 17,700 feet at Ameghino Col. Success on Aconcagua is achieved by going slow, balls slow. We used the basic altitude recipe of climb high, sleep low and ascending 1,000 feet per day with a rest every three days. This means using the daily progression of carry a load, move camp, carry, rest, repeat. AAI uses two extra camps to achieve this progression. 

Acclimatizing is about patience. Movies and books help. JP educated me on essential guy movies. On his Ipad we watched The Lord of War, Seven, Troy, Connair, Black Hawk Down and Blow. I also read The Lost City of Z, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and No Angle. 

Camp III at 19,200 feet with Cerro Ameghino and Aconcagua's shadow beyond. Each guyline is rocked down to withstand over 100 pounds of wind force. Due to logistics and weather we made this our high camp instead of the traditional AAI Camp IV at 20,600-feet. Summiting from Camp III made summit day long. 

To the summit! Behind JP is the Polish Traverse that we just spent four hours climbing. Above this point we climbed at the rate of three breaths per step for 2,500 feet. 

 

Summit! Yeah! Party like you're running with a sock in your mouth!

Descending at 21,500 feet at 7:30 pm. The route follows this trail to the Canteleta (couloir) that ascends 1,000 feet to the summit. 

Looks more Fried than Chili out there.  

The morning after summiting we packed up and crossed to the Plaza de Mulas base camp on the Normal Route, passing a mule that had a bad day at 19,000 feet. 

 

JP descending to the city of Plaza de Mulas. 

We could have stayed at Grajales in Plaza de Mulas and walked 16 miles out to the highway the next day. But we needed a shower and a bed ASAP.

Thanks for an awesome trip JP! I really enjoyed hanging with you. Good luck on your Seven Summits bid! 

Cheers!

Mount Logan King Trench

Logan is huge. By some measures it has the largest base circumference of any non-volcanic mountain in the world. Skiing glaciers around Logan is 120 miles. The summit plateau has 11 peaks over 5,000 meters. My first view of Logan was from a Bagely Icefield nunatak at 2am in 1999. I couldn't comprehend the castle-like summits hanging over the sea of smaller peaks. It looked like a distant range. No one forgets their first sight of Logan.

Logan's other great feature is it's second highest. Although Logan is the highest summit in Canada it is still second in North America. That means thousands attempt 20,320-foot Denali each year, while less than 100 attempt 19,551-foot Mount Logan. On our 21-day trip we saw nobody after day six. Being second highest also means there's little information about the route. Adventure!!

Glenn and I first discussed Logan five years ago. Paul heard about our plans and jumped onboard, the Logan chapter in Steve Barnett's The Best Ski Touring in America was vivid in Paul's memory. Jeremy Allyn at Mountain Madness was keen to wrangle the permits. And Michael Thomas, who'd been on many Madness trips, is always ready for high points.

Mountain Madness guide Tino Villanueva packing in my garage in Anchorage. Sorting gear took a several hours. Planning, buying and packing food took two days. 

John and Ellinore Claus drove us five hours to Chitina where we met Paul Claus and his Turbo Otter of Ultima Thule.  Paul is the only show on skis on the US side. Flying from Haines Junction is another option, but the weather is worse. The flight to Logan crosses serious wilderness. Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park is America's largest and the glaciers are the largest outside of Greenland and Antarctica.

The crew: beside me are Glenn Wilson from Tulsa, Oklahoma who I first climbed with on Mount Baker in 1998 and have since been to Mount Bona and Ecuador, Paul Muscat and I went on an epic Arctic Refuge trip in 2009, Michael Thomas from California has climbed high peaks all over the world, and Tino Villanueva is from Seattle and works for Mountain Madness and Valdez Heli Camps. The thing about Logan is it attracts interesting people. We had an absolute blast together.

Paul dropped us 0.2 km from the Canadian border. We hauled our full kit, single-carry for six hours to the entrance of the King Trench.

At Camp I below the King Trench. The highest-looking summit is King Peak. See more information about our schedule here.

We rolled in style.

Paul chilling at Camp III at 13,400 feet on King Col. The crux of the route--the MacCarthy Gap--climbs through the icefall. 

King Peak (16,972 feet), the ninth highest in North America, is a toothy peak that dominates the view from King Col.

Glenn prefers his view dominated by a 10-inch flapper balanced on his ThermoServ 521. 

Paul freeze-drying his long undies. 

 Robert Scott would be proud. Proper style man hauling through the MacCarthy Gap. 

Camp IV on the Football Field at 15,860. Prospector's Col is in the notch above and right of the Mid.

We carried seven days of food and fuel to Prospector's Col, then spent a day at Camp IV eating, repairing gear and eating before moving to high camp.

High camp at on the great plateau. We spent four nights here. The last two nights in raging wind gusts. My high school super-hero and mentor, glaciologist Dr. Mel Marcus told me about spending summer of 1970 living on this ice plateau and climbing all it's summits. I kept envisioning his friendly smile appearing on each mountain top. 

After a rest day we set off at 9am for the summit. Wind and near-zero temps kept us layered-up all day.

On the summit ridge. 

Logan summit at 5pm: Michael, Tino, Paul, Glenn and Joe. This is Michael's fifth Second Seven including Ojos del Salado (22,615 feet) in Argentina, Mount Kenya (17,057 feet) in Kenya, Mount Townsend (7,247 feet) in Australia and Dykh-Tau (17,077 feet) in Russia. He'd like to go to Mount Tyree (15,919 feet) in Antarctica. And then there's K2 (28,251 feet). Nobody has climbed the Second Seven.

King Peak isn't looking so big anymore. This tool was locked into ice on the summit. 

Downclimbing the summit ridge. Our summit day was 15 hours. 

Descending the MacCarthy Gap. 

We GPS'd through an ever-present fog layer from 10 to 9,000 feet. Just like the fog that hangs from 9,000 to 10,500 on Denali's West Buttress.

Back at Base Camp. We considered rationing the beer in case Paul couldn't pick us up for a few days. We didn't ration. We sat for 48 hours. In the grand spec of things it wasn't too rough. The first ascent team had bones gleaming through blackened toes as they walked and floated back to McCarthy.

We were cozy in our sacs at 10:30 pm when Paul flew in with his drill sargent, pack-your-crap-NOW! routine. We packed in ten minutes. Paul said only George Dunn has packed faster. Thanks for a great flight Paul!

After a buggy night at the Ultima Thule airstrip Paul flew us back to Chitina and we drove home. 

Back in Anchorage. Thanks for an unforgettable trip guys!! (We may look clean, but we haven't showered in 21 days.)

Ecuador Volcanoes

Some trips are so smooth I feel I've cheated. This Ecuador trip was one of those.

Last July Glenn and I were brainstorming trips and thought of Ecuador. Glenn and I met in 1998 on a six-day mountaineering course in the Cascades. In 2006 we climbed Mount Bona (16,550'), the tenth highest mountain in North America. James and I have been to Denali's West Buttress (2002), Mount Marcus Baker (2004) and Mount Iliamna (2008). 

Over ten days James Kesterson, Glenn Wilson and I bagged peaks and enjoyed Ecuador's timeless haciendas. Javier Herrera at Andean Face compiled impecible logistics. Our driver Louis Tonato taught us about Ecuador: pasillo music, how to eat granadilla and tree tomatoes, and where to find the belt stall in Muchachi. I highly recommend Andean Face for your Ecuador logistics. 

 Louis, James, Glenn and I on the summit of Guagua Pichincha (15,696'), our second acclimatization peak after Pasachoa. Guagua sits just east of 1.4 million people living in the capital city of Quito. In October 1999, Guagua blew out the west side, spraying ash 3.5 miles into the sky. 

Iliniza Norte was our third peak and first real climb. Beasts carried our kit to the refugio at 15,400 feet at the saddle between Iliniza Norte and Sur. 

As the evening the fog lifts, James checks our route up Iliniza Norte, the right ridgeline. 

Summit ridge of Illiniza Norte (16,818'). We roped up for the final 300 feet of exposed frozen snow slopes. 

 

Estancias are the second reason to visit Ecuador. After climbing Illiniza Norte, we stayed at La Cariona, a 200-year old spanish hacienda. We didn't ride around in that 1952 Benz. Louis drove a 1992 Nissan Patrol capable of climbing 5.3. 

Ecuador's high-class, apres-climb is demanding for a Palouse country boy. Lucky for me, around back of La Carriona I found a wooly paramo donkey who could relate. All four feet of him. Dmitry Sidrov in Anchorage was sympathetic of our situation. He recorded us an accordian song. 

Our second major peak was Cayambe. We drove to the Cayambe Refugio at 15,250 feet. Cayambe is the only snowy place on the equator. 

Climbing out of the bergshrund 200 feet below Cayambe's summit. We were lucky. This shrund is often wide open and hard to pass. 

Freezing mist on the 18,994-foot summit of Cayambe. James' GPS read 19,084 feet at 7:17am. We went beyond the summit. 

Six hours after summiting Cayambe we were at Guachala, the oldest hacienda in Ecuador from 1580. Guachala was my favorite rest day place until...

...we moved to Chilcabamba, below Cotopaxi to finish our rest day. Serious tranquilloness. 

Our third big peak was Cotapaxi. We stayed at the Jose Ribas hut at 15,729 feet on the normal route. An ice avalanche nailed the hut in 1996 - maybe hire an avalanche consultant for the next hut! 

 

James at 18,500 feet with Cotopaxi's shadow beyond. We started climbing at 12:15 am. It's bright enough to see at 5:45am. This means we didn't see anything except black crevasses and stars for 5 1/2 hours. 

On the 19,347-foot summit of Cotopaxi.  

Cotopaxi's last major eruption was in 1904. In the distance near Banos is Tungurahua, belching away. Beyond Tungurahua is El Altar and Sangay. 

I first visited Ecuador in 2001 and worked with Tim Connelly and Derek Elliot for the American Alpine Institute. Our local guide was Santiago Quinteros, a very psyched climber. He soloed this rock face on Cotapaxi called the Yanasacha (Quechua for large black rock). I'm glad Santiago is still alive. 

One more 6,000-foot step to the base. 

Thanks for an incredible trip Glenn and James! I'm stoked to climb with you again soon!