Hola Friends, Family & Loved Ones,
Before we recap the events of today, we wanted to share with you the photos below of Aconcagua taken last night about 8:00 pm. It seemed like the entire basecamp poured out of their tents to admire the twilight illuminating the rock face, the myriad colors of the rock and the lenticular cloud which seems to outline the contour of the cliff. It was a spectacular sight.
Today, we carried some gear up to our Camp 1 at just over 16,000 feet. It took us about 3 hours and 10 minutes to reach the camp. We had lunch up there and cached the gear we carried up in anticipation of our moving up to Camp 1 the day after tomorrow. The team did a really great job getting up there and also navigating the scree on the trail back down to basecamp. The couple members of the team who were feeling the altitude this morning have improved over the course of the day and are feeling much better now. Weather today was blue skies like yesterday, but with noticeably more wind, which gave us some good practice for the days to come. We got back down to basecamp at about 3:30 pm, and devoured the delicious snacks that we waiting for us in our dining tent. Everyone is feeling good!
Tomorrow we are looking forward to a rest day around basecamp. On our hike down to basecamp from camp 1 this afternoon, we saw some more penitentes (the cool snow formations we mentioned a couple of days ago ). These penitentes look like we might be able to reach them on a short hike from basecamp, so our plan for tomorrow is to hike over there to check them out up close.
That’s all for now,
Carole & Vern Tejas
