DAY 9 – Move to Camp 1
We moved to Camp 1 at 16,400 feet today, bringing the rest of the gear and food needed for the next 5 days. It was a repeat of the 2nd toughest day we did on Wednesday (Day 7), so I guess it was another tough day. It’s only onward and upward from here–no turning back at this point.
I loved that we took a slightly different route up the moraine on this repeat ascent.
The sheer size of this is incredible. Base camp can be seen way down there off to the right.
Lots of people were also on the move as we all tried to catch the next weather window before this Aconcagua climbing season came to an end.
Conga lines like this might look too long and crowded, but it really wasn’t. No one was really in any kind of rush since the process of ascending is typically super slow anyway. Maintaining that steady pace of a tortoise just increases a team’s chance of success while minimizing the risks of HAPE or HACE.
5 hours later, we arrived at Camp 1 feeling spent. At least I did since I remained interested in carrying my own load. I think my fatigue also came with not sleeping well for the past few nights due to all the excessive peeing! I dunno–I could have trained more too. Either way, I made it and happy to be here.
My watch screwed up today’s stats again, so here they are from my phone: 2.55 miles with almost 2,600′ of elevation…
…and there was no way our average moving speed was 5.5 mph. Not sure how this app calculates speed, but we were lucky to be moving at .5 miles per hour!
The rest of the afternoon was spent catching up with family and friends that were following from afar, thanks to a continued Starlink satellite signal from Inka (no, neither company sponsored my climb).
Our summit plans were still on for Tuesday. So instead of just doing a gear carry, we decided to move all the way up to Camp 2 tomorrow.
