Plaza de Mulas Aconcagua Basecamp

Base camp is just full of tents. All the mule and guide services have big tents set up. There is beer, coke, and a telephone available. Snow covers most of the area. We set the tent up but every bit of work took so much energy. Inside the tent, we got out of the snow. We now have all our gear and food. We cooked the first decent dinner in several days. I went to the bathroom. It was worse than the one at Confluencia. They make the toilets like humans are some sort of livestock. You walk into this little 4 foot by 4 foot tarp enclosure. You are standing on what looks to be a barbeque grill with missing bars in the middle. While snow is dumping on you, you must balance on these bars, squat and go. One misstep and your leg falls into the hole. Lets just leave it by saying it is difficult to squat over a few seconds while performing a balancing act. Finally I was back in the tent for the night. We decided to get some sleep before doing anything. The sleep was the worst part of the day. Because we were camping at 14,000 feet, our bodies have to take in far more O2. When you go to sleep, for some reason your body forgets to inhale. You wake up gasping for air. Finally, we got some sleep or rest and we lit the candle lantern. This is how I am finally writing the day down. It stopped snowing, it is mostly clear out and there are some occasional strong gusts of wind.

Today was just a rest day. Nothing important happened. Awoke to nice weather, got some nice pictures of the area. Filtered some water and found a better place to go to the bathroom. The weather turned bad once again this afternoon, snowing like crazy again. It is around 7 p.m. Probably have dinner soon, still not adjusted to the elevation. I really do not want to go into it but I feel I need to write down some of the things I am thinking about. This expedition will probably be my last. Maybe I am just caught in the pain of the trip but I am not enjoying the trip the past two days. The traveling part was actually awesome but I was not focused. When I climbed McKinley, the mountain was all I thought about. I wanted it more than anything. I thought it would be the same for Aconcagua. I was concerned at home because of my lack of excitement for the climb but I truly thought I would get it once I started climbing. Instead I have felt like crap above 12,500 the past day and a half. I still know we will climb the mountain but it will be physically and mentally exhausting. If I wanted this summit, nothing would bother me. It is not like I hate or dislike being here, I just do not have mental control. I would rather be doing other things, and that is dangerous. We are resting tomorrow and hopefully once we start climbing the day after, I will get some drive.

OK, things are looking better. Today I feel great and I have the mental control I blabbed on about yesterday. We are nearing the end of our acclimatizing period and about to climb this mountain. I once again am getting summit fever. I got to see the summit and the route to it today. We hiked over to Hotel Refugio. Wow, what a nice hotel for being in the middle of nowhere. It is the highest hotel in the world. The highlight of the day was buying a hamburger and coke, 10 bucks but well worth it. Boyd (the New Zealander), Bob and I had a good time in the hotel. After lunch we hiked back over to base camp where I talked with Colorado. He took another load to Camp Canada. I guess a storm is coming in tonight. We hope to make a load carry to Canada tomorrow. As for now, we are just hanging around camp. The weather has been pretty good with a few small snow showers.

Plaza de Mulas (Basecamp)