This Aconcagua adventure starts in the city of Mendoza, the wine capital of Argentina. After a day of preparations with equipment and permits we will travel by van to Penitentes. Penitentes is in the heart of the Andes near the Chilean border and is where we initiate our expedition. We will spend a night in Penitentes at 2850metres to help with our acclimatization. The next morning we start our 3-day trek into basecamp. This trek is great for acclimatization and it’s a nice relaxing hike to get the legs moving after a long flight. Mules carry the gear so all we need to carry is a light daypack. The views are incredible and we are likely to see some Guanacos and other wildlife. The trek follows the vacas (meaning cow in Spanish) valley for 3 days to basecamp.

From basecamp the style of the trip changes from trekking to expedition style climbing. Now we will start doing what we call “carry days” and “move days”. On a carry day we carry loads to the next higher camp and return to sleep at our low camp. This approach helps very well with acclimatization and it allows us to carry gear higher that we don’t need. On move days we pack up our current camp and move to the next higher camp. This is how we will climb until we reach Camp 4 (high camp). Now it’s time for summit day. We leave high camp very, very early in the morning. We will climb very slowly throughout the day making sure to conserve energy by taking regular rests. Summit day is a long day of anywhere from 10 to 15 hours return trip back to high camp. After our summit attempt we will spend another night at high camp. The next day we will descend the other side of the mountain to Plaza de Mulas which is the basecamp on the “Normal Route” and spend the night here. Finally we will walk out to the trailhead and drive to Penitentes. This is a long day but the trekking is easy and the views are incredible. The mules will carry our gear out so we only hike with daypacks again. We will enjoy showers and a great meal in Penitentes. Finally we drive back to Mendoza and we will enjoy our wind-up dinner and some great Argentinean wine.