Aconcagua

Aconcagua Climb 2018-Notes from the Hotel Nutibara, Mendoza, Argentina SA

February 18, 2018

It is 5:17 am in room 102, just above the street entrance on the second floor of the Hotel Nutibara in Mendoza, Argentina. The street out side, lined down the middle with trees resembling the squares of Savannah, is now sleepy and quiet, but soon will be busy with the first shift of municipal workers digging holes in the open air storm drains so a second crew can come fix the whole after siesta.

I’m in bed wrestling with sleeping indoors after having spent the past 17 nights in a two person tent and extreme roughing it in South America. When the going gets weird in the world on high altitude mountaineering, the weird turn pro and the weirdness of traveling 7,000 miles to climb the highest mountain on 6 continents cannot be underestimated. Staring at the ceiling, I cannot psychologically get past the idea that my bathroom is within 6 feet of my bed and I don’t need a headlamp to keep from sliding into the abyss in the middle of the night while answering the bodily realities of a 52 year old american with a coffee addiction, a headline I could not begin to imagine. “Alpharetta lawyer found in a scree field at 13,000 feet on a remote Argentine mountain with his pants down.” Such impediments die hard in this universe and South America is no exception.

But with dangers such as these, even the Hotel Nutibara is a welcome oasis from the the back country desert of Mendoza province, home of mule transportation and deserted ski resorts made ghostly by global warming or if you don’t buy the whole science thing, you could consider the fact that inexperienced business decisions made in the high desert without someone whose been there never really end well. Somehow time does not matter here, only when the sun begins to retreat dragging in the deep blue light that precedes dusk behind the high surrounding mountains is there a need to really take notice, or cover from the temperature, which dives at least 20 degrees within 30 seconds.

This journey started ten months prior with the innocence -or naïveté- of a kindergartener. Sitting in my kitchen with Lala, I sent an email to my climbing partners who like me, never really know why we love such high places. Farmer Dave from Illinois, Denali Dawn and Canada Darcy, where shortly on board for a planned trip to climb Aconcagua, in January 2018.

At 22,841 feet Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the Western and Southern Hemispheres, three quarters of the world. Only in the land of Padmasambava -southern Tibet, northern Nepal, and western Pakistan- are the mountains higher with peaks above 8,000 meters. Aconcagua is a serious step up for a easterner whose previous high was the Cienfuegos Hut at around 15,000 feet on Ixtaccihuatl with an ironed-willed priest and 7 high school cross country runners from Leon, Mexico who learned English by watching daytime Telemundo-ingles game shows.

But the land of high altitude mountaineering is no place for the shy. You buy your ticket and take the ride. Dawn, Dave and I were ready to cash in our chips for a 21 day expedition. Canada Darcy would later decide to sit this one out, which although was a surprise, a serious concern as he is probably our most safety conscious and at almost 17 years younger than Dave and I, a very strong climber who could by himself pull out of a crevasse with the cool demeanor of a world poker champion . A pure mountaineer who you could count on when the going gets tough.

I spent the next ten months preparing physically, financially and mentally by reading about expeditions in the golden age of exploration. American determination and British pluck, with bit of Norwegian influence, formed filled my imagination with stories about Peary, Shackleton, Admonson, and yes Mallory. Particularly Wade Davis’s Into the Silence, the story of the 1920s Mount Everest expeditions after the Great War led by Sir Charles Bruce and General Howard-Bury. I tried in vain to imagine the struggles of large expeditions, sometimes more than 8 months long with several objectives including a great trigonomic survey of the Tibet-Nepal border and the discovery of a route to the top off Chomolungma from the Tibet side, but which ultimately ended in the last sighting of Mallory and Irvine near the Hillary Step, dancing there way to the top only to be held captive by the night and forced into legend in 1923. Some believe they never made it to the top, but it seems likely, as evidenced by statistics, that the descent is far more dangerous, and Mallory and Irvine bought it coming down on summit juice. Everest would not be summited for another 30 years by Colonel John Hunt’s second string, B-team, Hillary a New Zealand beekeeper and Tensing, a Nepalese Sherpa foreman and mountain guide.

But we are the music makers and the dreamers of dreams. Even I, a fantastic dreamer, know that legends never die and I suppose that is what makes a legend. It was with this psychology that I pursued all aspects of the experience for the ten months prior to the climb. As the date approached, so did the fear, but also so did the motivation. Busted flat on the stairmaster, dying only to be reborn on the Appalachian Trail, running on Christmas Eve, fighting a flu with massive amounts of electrolytes for a straight 24 hours, steroid shots to get back on the road again, running in 20 degree weather, all in a daily monastic sort of ritual that unbalanced my life from October to January.

In mid January, after making contingencies for my absence from the practice of law and giving my best to Lindsay, Kelly and Mindi, the people I would have to learn to trust while incommunicado, we left the comfort and security of our Milton home for Hartsfield-Jackson. As La drove and Carolyn sat, I looked long at my daughter and wife. I could not help but ask myself why a 52 year old lawyer, a business owner whose livelihood depends on avoiding physical and mental disability, with two kids to put through college, who speaks really bad Spanish, and at least ten years of prime earning capacity remaining after building a 20 year career, would ever even consider mountain climbing in a remote desert in South America with 70 pounds to his back and while balancing one foot on snow covered rock with a 2,000 foot slide to the left and the Republic of Chile to the right. But as Hemingway said, there are only three real sports: mountain climbing, auto racing and bull fighting, the rest are just games.

It was with these thoughts that I kissed my daughter and said good bye to my wife; partner, base camp director and biggest fan, who dropped me off in the frenzy of Atlanta airport curbside baggage handelers, the best in the world. I struggled with the

two expedition special order 120 liter Eddie Bauer duffel bags, one sky blue and one black, 48 pounds each and filled with a 120 liter Mountain Hardware backpack, black diamond crampons, an ice axe signed by mountain guide Brent Okita (only because Denali Dawn talked me into it in 2016), 12 pounds of food, sox, down parkas, La Sportiva high altitude mountaineering boots, a feathered friends sleeping bag good to -20, a helmet, electronics, an entire assortment of homeopathic and pharmaceutical remedies including 12, 600 mg anti inflammatory tablets left over from a 2015 injury, diamox for altitude and dextimethazone just in case things get real hairy and a quick steroid is needed to get off the mountain in a hurry. I also figured 17 days in the bush could use an IPod loaded with mountaineering literature and four months of grateful dead live show podcasts ranging from 1968 to 1980. Specifically the Donna years, because nothing gets the blood moving on a cold morning like a strong Scarlet Begonias from 1977.

I headed into the unknown still wondering why. As my friend Mark, the mad scientist from Berekely, who sponsored me with 2 pounds of electrolytes he called Marsha’s Skunk Brew, which he manufactured in powder and pill form in his bathroom laboratory and named it for the unpleasant taste and his alter ego, said that you really don’t have to know why. The answer is indeed bigger than I could comprehend or need to understand which removes even reasonable expectations from a simplistic response such as “because it’s there.”

I entered the international concourse praying my duffel bags would meet me almost 6,000 miles away at the lower end of the next continent. At gate 17a I met Farmer Dave, wearing his trademark Pioneer Seed baseball cap with American Flag for a visor, who somehow managed to manipulate a flight through Atlanta so we could fly together to Buenos Aires. There was no mistaking two gringos from the land of milk and honey, and so be it,better for them to see us coming.

We boarded the plane unceremoniously, a lawyer with everything to lose and an Illinois farmer who spent 20 some years as a flight attendant, two of the most unlikely amigos to grace the Argentine desert, but thicker than thieves and able to walk through walls as brothers. We, as well as Denali Dawn,were about to start a journey in the wine country of north-western Argentina, for reason we could not, nor need to know why.