Hello everyone, this is Ben, Danny, and Jangbu here with Team #5. We are now going to be called El Teamo here on Aconcagua. We’re doing great. We’re here at Base Camp. I apologize for not getting a call out yesterday, but we’re doing very well here at Base Camp (it’s 13,800 feet here).
And we arrived yesterday in the late afternoon. We started out at Casa de Piedra yesterday morning , got up pretty early as the arrieros needed all of our stuff to bring up to Base Camp so they can then go all the way back down to Penitentes with the mules. So we had an early start, which meant that we had to cross the river when it was very cold. So we crossed the Vacas River before heading up the Rellenchos Valley. It was very cold but it was pretty brisk, it was a good wakeup in the morning. Everybody did great crossing that and then we continued hiking. The sun finally hit us and warmed our feet back up and we did great the rest of the day. We ascended about a thousand feet or so in the first couple hours up through the Rellenchos Valley and then got up on top of kind of a plateau and then headed towards Base Camp. Took us about seven hours, just over seven hours to get up here to Base Camp and yeah, everybody did fantastic yesterday. Taking really good care of themselves, and acclimatizing well here at Base Camp.
Today we woke up, slept in a little bit, had a 9am breakfast here at Base Camp at Plaza Argentina. And then decided to go on just a very short hike, just to get the blood flowing a little bit, and just for about an hour and a half or so, came back and we started organizing the loads for a food and group gear and fuel to bring up to Camp 1 tomorrow, which is up at 15,600 feet or so. So the rest of the day we’ve just been hanging out, we just had lunch, and just getting our things organized for tomorrow and preparing ourselves for that. Just getting ready to have dinner here shortly but it’s been a great successful rest day here. People have been reading, playing cards in the afternoon, and just hanging out enjoying the amenities of Base Camp here before we head up on the mountain. Tomorrow we’ll head up and do a carry up to Camp 1 and then come back down here to Base Camp.
We’ll let you know how tomorrow goes. Thanks for following along. Ciao.
