Aconcagua 2010 - A Success!

Gallery Updated: http://picasaweb.google.com/siggen81/Aconcagua2010#

Post-summit greeting from the Expedition leader:

After 14 days of struggle, hard work, radiating sun, dust, snow, windstorm (yes, really!) we managed to put 8 of the team members on the summit of Aconcagua. 8 out of 11 is very, very good, taken into consideration that the normal success rate for summiting Aconcagua is only 30%! That was great, but not without drama. 2 of our members got altitude sickness, the last one as high up as 5780 meter and had to stop the summit attemt. One member decided already in BaseCamp to give up, but eventually made it anyway to the summit! By pure will!

Except from the very, very heavy storm (22 m/sec) at the camp at 5380 meter (Camp Nido) the weather was fairly good. We had really few problems. Maybe the really critical one was that the luggage didn't show up at the airport in Santigo! Almost everybody lost their luggage, including Håkon who arrived the previous day. We were told to go to Mendoza in Argentina to wait for the luggage, and that was a loooong wait indeed! A nervous wait..., but during the next day it all showed up. Puhhhh!
The very long trek into BaseCamp was a nice one, although a long one for some (11 hours).
The most of us also climbed Bonete, a 5002-meter peak as part of the acclimatisation-process from BaseCamp, a real challenge on it's own, and the most members did new personal altitude records. Three of us needed some more acclimatisation in BaseCamp, so the group decided to delay the climb one day in BC, but I am sure that gave benefit to the whole group.
Unfortunately Avinash acclimated somewhat slower than the rest of the group and decided to leave Aconcagua in favour of the beach in Renaca/Vina after having climbed to Canada (4910 m) twice.
At Nido (5380 m) we were joined by Tove, who unfortunately lagged one day behind us other in acclimatisation. She eventually also decided later to go down, due to lack of speed and acclimatization.
The summit day started out as a fantastic day, with blue sky and no (very rare!) wind. The morning started with some drama; both Knut Roald and Mona had very low values on the oxymeter; 64, in addition Knut Roald felt really sick and decided not to climb that day. By a fantastic luck, Monas saturation-levels increased to the very good 77 just before leaving camp! These figures often showed mysterious numbers, and these new measurement proved to be correct indeed; Mona was the second strongest to the summit, only beaten by Sven. We started out from Camp Berlin at approx. 6 o'clock in the morning, the first period with headlamps. The first hour was in dusk and bad view but at 08:00 the sun rised and helped somewhat on the cold. The weather started out very good, with no wind and clear sky, only -16 centigrades, but during the day it started to snow quite a lot.
After 8 (effective +/-) hours, we made it to the summit! We ALL made it; out of 8 who started that morning, 8 made it to the summit! Fantastic! And all within approx 1/2 hour. Sven was first, and Mona, our only remaining female member, as second. The very best achievement was from Jarle, who was behind in acclimatisation but did a tremendous efford to keep up with the group all the way to summit, conquering both severe headache and fatigue. Fantastic Jarle!
Unfortunately the bad weather prevented us from the expected fantastic view from the summit, but we took quite a few pictures of the group and headed down. We reached down to Berlin at approx. 19:30(?). Totally exchaused, at least I was... But as a happy man on behalf of the group. Knut-Roald was still sick, had been sleeping the most if the day and had decided to cancel the summit attemt.
After a loooong sleep we hurried down to BaseCamp, out of the Aconcagua National Park and headed down to Vina del Mar/Renaca at the coast of Chile for some warmth, beef-steakes and wine, but that's another story... But a nice one!

Thanks to everybody, both members and viewers on this blog, for this unforgettable climb and tour!

Regards
Håkon