One more time...

Hi Family and Friends!

Well, another one is done. Leading the trip sure is tougher and more stressful than being an assistant, but at the same time also way way more rewarding. I learned a ton and I look forward to the next time. 

So here's more photos. Here's all our stuff ready to be weighed. 440 kilograms. I bought too much food, a classic beginner mistake:

But that's OK, because we ate like kings. In our first camp the arrieros (mule drivers) cooked us up a feast. They were psyched that we brought too much food, for sure!

Soon enough we start cooking ourselves, a major part of the job. Matt and I are making cheeseburgers for the team our second night in. We also fed the team in the two tents behind ours!

Thank the clients for taking every one of these photos. I didn't take a single one this trip. That means more photos of me! Yay! Here we are on the carry to camp 1. I am waiting for a client, something else we do alot of. This job requires patience:

Another thing we do alot of is deal with medical issues. One client was evacuated from base camp with an O2 saturation level of 50%. 95% is normal at sea level, and it'll go down to 75% at altitude, but by all accounts, with an O2 sat of 50% at 13,500' this person should have been dead. Yet she was largely OK, just nauseated. This one left me and the basecamp doctor both scratching our heads. Ah well. I was sad to see her go, she was a nice person:

Matt and I have worked together and played together before, and we worked together great on this trip. Lots of laughing in the tent.  He's a good man and I hope he sticks around long enough to lead his own trips:

More cooking, here at camp 1, 15,300.' Frozen pizzas:

And once in a while a rest day, which means about 2 hours to relax, since on 'rest days' we are busy cooking for the team. Notice the themos to the right. We loaded it with instant coffee and sugar every night, so we (meaning I) could wake up and immediately drink coffee. No coffee, no workee:

Camp 2 at 17,800.' Warm in the sun, freezing cold in the shade. Ponds full of bad water that aren't fit for drinking. A beautifully desolate place:

Thunderstorms over the pampas to the east, at sunset. The line in the sky is the earth's shadow. This is from camp 3 at 19,200:'

We got 2 people to the summit, about on par for a 6-person trip. This is one of the most under-estimated of the 7 summits. It routinely kicks people's butts. To get to the summit requires disciplined self-care, and lots of fitness. The route is steep enough near the top that a fall would be fatal. Yet, people think that, since it's not on a glacier, it's a 'walk-up.' Whatever. Summit day started out somewhere around 0F with some wind, but then the winds calmed down on top. Very pleasant. Notice that I'm stubbornly preparing my little ice-axe tripod while bystanders take photos for us:

A happy team on top of the Americas. Aconcagua is about 22,800' high, just shy of 7000 meters. The only place with higher mountains is the Himalaya. I haven't been to the top in 5 years, and I'm glad to report that it was easier at 45 than at 40. Must be all the climbing I've been doing. This time I was only taking 2 breaths per step instead of 4. It felt great. Our team took 6.5 hours to summit from camp 4 at 20,600,' and only 1.5 hours to return to camp. Good times:

I had a little personal business to take care of too. Last year I told Suz to do a pushup on the summit for me. This is the photo of her cranking one out:

So I figured it was only right to do one myself in her honor. I think she was helping me:

We had good enough weather to allow a second day to summit, to give two others a chance to recover a bit. One of them decided not to go, but the other wanted to. So the next day I got up at 4:30 to take one other to the top. Unfortunately his pace would have led to a 10-hour time to the summit, and that's too long. I had to turn him around. This is one of the toughest things I have to do in my job. He put in alot of time and effort for this trip, and it wasn't enough, and there's nothing I can do about that. It was a bummer.

So after trying to summit with this man, we returned to camp, packed up, and began the long descent to Plaza de Mulas, the base camp on the west side:

A happy team enjoying steak at Plaza de Mulas:

The next day started early, with 18 miles to the trailhead. A special thanks to Arthur Kearns at Mountain Trails in Winchester, VA, who sold me a pair of boots for the trek. Not a single blister!

Back at the hotel in Penitentes. 11 days without a shower. 11 days of sunblock. Would you trust this guy???

So, there we go. I sure am looking forward to getting back to Bellingham. 2 months is a long time away from home. Yet, it's been great. I've discovered that I like this guiding thing, even without Suz being alive. We had planned to work together down here, and I was curious to see how it would feel. She's still with me, we still do it together, it's just different. I still like it. I made some new friends here, and I look forward to seeing them again next year. But right now I'm looking forward to seeing my friends in Bellingham, and getting some skiing in!