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We hit the road to Los Penitentes today after breakfast and loading our gear into the van. It’s a three hour drive and we stopped for lunch at restaurant in a small town along the way. For some reason the waiter there really didn’t like me – bringing out my pasta with meat on it, then grumbling about having to go fix it. Clearly herbivores are disliked around these parts!
Anyway, shortly thereafter we were at Penitentes. I can’t really call it a town – it’s more like a couple of hotel buildings – and nothing else, in the middle of a valley between giant mountains. In the summer months it services the Aconcagua climbers and in the winter it appeared to be a ski resort – though the runs on the now-dry mountainside looked pretty depressing. Still, this place must be gorgeous in winter being surrounded by such high peaks. Altitude here is around 8,500 ft(2,600 m). Though at the low altitude that most would call high altitude, Luke advised us to start taking Diamox here, if we planned on using it. Which I did.
After checking into our hotel, I helped out a bit with the weighing and tagging of our bags and got my own bags ready for the expedition. We’ll be doing what the guides call a duffel shuffle – we’ll send all of our climbing gear on mules to expedition base camp at Plaza Argentina. We’ll have another duffel for mules to carry to each camp along the trek to base camp – things like sleeping bags, extra layers, etc. Finally we have our light day packs that we’ll carry on each day of the trek. Once we arrive at base camp, we’ll retrieve our climbing packs and gear, and put everything else into a duffel. Then when we’ve climbed to Camp Three, Luke will radio Plaza Argentina to have the mules bring our gear to the Plaza de Mulas – the larger base camp on the other side of the mountain.
Dinner was at the hotel. This would be our last dinner in civilization for two weeks, as well as our last night sleeping on beds or having a proper bathroom…something we’d come to sorely miss.
Planetary Muffin Expeditions 