The 1987 Aconcagua trip was Marcia’s and my first foray into organizing an expedition. Joining us were fellow Mountaineer friends Craig Rowley, Bob Bergstrom and Larry Anzalone along with John Arnold and Scott Darsney, climbers that Bob knew and recommended from a previous trip.
We planned for a 3-week trip flying from Seattle to Miami, Miami to Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires to Mendoza in one push. 1987 being before the current practice of airlines extracting revenue at every opportunity, we strove to get our many duffel bags onto the airplanes without paying excess baggage. One tactic was to demonstrate how light they were by having Marcia heft the bags onto the baggage scales. We figured the mostly male counter agents would assume that any bag hoisted by a female couldn’t be overweight.
At the frontend of the trip we spent several days in Mendoza getting our permit (at the time, the Argentine government required all foreign climbers to present a doctor’s medical statement and an EKG) and supplies. Finding white gas for our stoves wasn’t possible so we ended up with paint thinner for our stoves (MSR XGK). That fuel later created problems as it repeatedly fouled the stove’s fuel jet and its fumes were noxious.
Mendoza, though, was charming. The hotel we stayed at had a lovely courtyard in which we were able spread out our gear during the repack. The food and wine were excellent. Even today, I remember the meals featuring thick steaks and wonderful red wine.
Our original thought while in Seattle was to attempt the more difficult Polish Route rather than the Normal Route. After we arrived at the lodge (Penitentes) from which you choose the drainage to ascend, we quickly changed over to the much easier Normal route.
It is a 2-day trip from the road to the base camp, Plaza de Mulas. While mules carry most of your equipment, they travel separately from you, so you must carry your personal and camping gear to be self-sufficient for the walk to basecamp.
Once at basecamp, there are 3 intermediate camps before a summit attempt. To help with the acclimatization, you typically take at least 2 days between camp by carrying some gear to the next camp on one day, caching it, returning to the lower camp and then moving your camp on the second day.
The Normal Route is not technical, but its challenges are the altitude, your health (i.e., avoiding respiratory or travel illnesses) and the weather. First Craig, then Larry turned back because of altitude issues. The difficulty in getting the stoves to reliably melt water while spewing noxious fumes from burning paint thinner probably contributed to Craig’s and Larry’s turning back.
On our summit day, John, who was battling respiratory issues, turned back and Bob accompanied him back to camp. It was Scott, Marcia and myself who summited. We were the only people on that summit at the time but there was the body of a climber who had become disoriented on the summit in a white-out and died just a few days earlier.
The trip out took a couple of days. Scott and John remained on the mountain (I think John subsequently summited). While Bob, Marcia & I returned to Mendoza. Larry had stayed at the hotel until our return while Craig returned home.
The four of us (Larry, Bob, Marcia and I) toured Mendoza for a few days then returned to Buenos Aires. While Larry and Bob continued to the USA, Marcia and I detoured to the border of Argentina and Brazil where we visited Iguazu Falls. Afterwards we headed to Rio De Janeiro but by this time we were getting tired of carrying large duffel bags of outdoor gear through airports and headed for home rather than spend more time in Brazil.
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