Into Thinner Air: February 24-March 5

After traveling with someone for two months where you are living together day and night, it´s weird to say goodbye, especially at six in the morning. We loaded up the trunk of the taxi with our backpacks precariously sticking halfway out the trunk. Lizz and I said our goodbyes (I don´t blame Sage for not getting up) before I joined the rest of our bags and the comatose bodies of David and Jeremy (who rallied through the night and were ready to crash) that were piled inside the cab. The ride to Santiago was gorgeous as it cuts right through the Andes and passes Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the Americas, and was only made better by eating fresh empanadas from a road side stand while watching Steven Seagal kill bad guys with a wine glass.

The only problem with the trip was crossing into Chile. Maybe the altitude slows them down, because at 12,000 feet at Paso de los Libertadores, Chile and Argentina seem to have worked together to develop as inefficient a border crossing as possible. It took them over two hours to give everyone on our bus the two stamps to leave Argentina and enter Chile. Maybe a few more of the soldiers standing around could have set down their machine guns and picked up a stamp to help with the process. At least they forgot to charge each of us the $135 entrance fee that Americans have to pay. I guess the wait was worth it.We arrived late in the afternoon to meet our friend Sergio Juarez. David and I met Sergio when we did a NOLS course in the Chilean Patagonia in 2005. After becoming close friends over the three months down there, we hadn’t seen Sergio in three years, who has since become a father of the most adorable kid Santi. David, Jeremy and I stayed at with Sergio, Santi and his wonderful wife Kara in their house in the hills above Santiago. Over the next couple days we hung out, went hiking, climbing and had some serious bro sessions drinking mate (Santi at one and half years already loves it), listening to Jack Johnson and catching up. It was a very welcome break from cities and hostels.

Our time with David came to an end, as he had to head off to Valparaiso to study, and Jeremy and I asked Sergio, an expert guide around the area, for a good backpacking or mountaineering trip to celebrate my 21st birthday. We decided to try and summit Cerro Plomo, a 5450 meter (about 18,000 ft) peak a couple hours outside Santiago. Sergio outfitted us with all the gear and clothes we didn’t already have, and we packed up our ice axes, crampons and 25 hot dogs we bought for a dollar at the supermarket.We headed out on February 27th, my birthday, and were driven up an endless number of treacherous switchbacks to the trailhead at 12,000 and said our goodbyes to David, who was starting his program in another day. Jeremy and I hiked in for several hours, every step revealing a more gorgeous landscape and intimidating Cerro Plomo towering over us. We set up camp below 12,000 ft that evening and took a break to watch the sun set over the valley we were camped in and the mountains beyond. Although not the traditional way of celebrating your 21st birthday, I can´t complain, as it was certainly one of the best birthdays I´ve had.

When we got some food and the stove out to cook dinner, when we realized something was missing. The stove pump. Sergio had loaned us a stove and we had two bottles of fuel, but in the process of a quick stove review at Sergio´s house, the pump was left behind in the kitchen. Without the pump, the stove was useless. I suppose we could have tried pouring some gas on the ground, lighting it and holding a pot over it while burning our hands to a crisp. We went with an alternative and went to our neighbors a few hundred meters away to see if they happened to have a pump for an MSR Whisperlite™, a very difficult task as Chilean Spanish most closely resembles gibberish. You may not understand what they say, but Chileans can be extremely generous and nice, and the couple, much more prepared than us with two stoves, loaned us a stove and some fuel for a day, allowing us to eat that night and the next morning.The next day was a six-hour ascent up to the highest camp at over 14,000 feet. When we were at the more popular of the two base camps (an hour below where we camped), we ran into a group coming down from the summit. They didn’t even get close to the summit, which had been the story for everyone that week. When it came up that we didn’t have a stove pump, they asked if we were returning to Santiago after, and when we replied yes, they gave us a stove and more fuel (again, they had two), wrote down an address and phone number in Santiago and continued on their way as Jeremy and I continued on ours, speechless.

We got into camp very tirebut hoped to attempt the summit the next day if conditions were good. After twiddling our thumbs for a few hours around camp we began to feel the altitude as headaches and nausea set in. Okay, Jeremy is much more a man than I am...it was my head and tummy that were hurting, and they continued into the night, a sign I probably wouldn´t want to ascend another 4,000 ft hours before the sun comes up. That afternoon clouds rolled in along with some snow, and before long we found ourselves literally in the middle of a thunderstorm surrounded by our metal gear. Our three stoves and accompanying fuel reassured us that if we got struck by lightning it would be quick and painless. The next day we were both feeling better, and took the time to eat plain hot dogs and enjoy the views of the most spectacular mountains either of us had seen.

Summit day. Since we were at the higher of the two base camps, the other which had a few groups, we figured we could get a late start and hit the trail around four that crystal clear and bone chilling morning. As we climbed along in the starlight, we could see the lights of Santiago far below us. A French couple caught up with us and we took turns cutting fresh tracks up the mountain through the knee-deep snow, pausing occasionally to try and catch our breath in the thin air. Watching the sunrise over the Andes was nothing short of incredible, and I came to the conclusion that although South America has some great cities, its real gems are outside, having seen beaches, waterfalls and mountains. Again, every step revealed a more spectacular view of the Andes as Santiago disappeared beneath a thick layer of haze and smog. Late that morning, we reached a plateau before the last push of 150 vertical meters below the summit. The French couple, by now wasted on altitude and struggling to put together coherent sentences, decided to turn around while Jeremy and I trudged on.

Our first steps up the incredibly steep slope sunk all the way down to our waists. The weather holding, we continued up but the deep snow and steep face were quickly sapping our remaining strength, and after a third to halfway up about to collapse from exhaustion with a long descent ahead of us, we made the difficult decision to turn around about 100 meters below the top. The top was so close right in front of us, but it probably would have taken another hour to get there. While the ascent took seven hours, it took us just an hour and a half to get back to camp. Once we got our boots off, we didn’t have the strength/will to do anything with ourselves for a couple hours, and I imagine our conversation went something like this: “Bro, that was sick.” “Yeah. Man. Legit.” “For sure.” “Word.” Pretty content with how far we had made it (I had never been much higher than 10,000 feet) we become very happy that we turned around when we did, as a large group we could see descending that we had passed on our way down, disappeared into a cloud of snow and lightning that engulfed us too. Hopefully they didn’t die. If we had been a little scared the day before in a cloud of lightning, this time we figured that the best thing we could do to hope we didn’t get struck by lightning was to pass out and dream about Argentine girls.

We hiked out the next morning at nine as we were meeting Sergio that afternoon. We were happy we weren’t going for the summit that day, as it had snowed 8-12 inches in the last 18 hours. We made it out quickly in less than four hours, Sergio showed up 10 minutes later and we headed down. We filled Sergio in about our trip and stopped at a roadside stand with a backyard patio overlooking the hills for steak sandwiches and mote, a delicious sweet drink made with barley (no it’s not beer). Let’s just say it beat the hot dogs we had been eating for the last four days. Back at Sergio’s house we unpacked, showered, repacked, chilled, slept and headed to the bus terminal at eight the next morning after stopping by our friend’s work. I felt very American walking into a very serious and formal office building in jeans, a t-shirt and a stove/gas in hand.

As we had come to discover while traveling, things just work out, and the trend certainly continued that day. We had no idea if we would be able to get tickets to Buenos Aires that day or even the next, but when we walked up to our friend Cata International at the bus terminal, they had two seats for us on a direct bus to BA leaving in 10 min. Perfect. We got on the bus, with all the usual suspects—hot meals, movies that made up stereotypes about the Northwest, hot stewardess, wine and whiskey (the stewardess kept insisting on refilling my glass)—and pulled into BA exactly 24 hours later. We settled into a different hostel this time that was very nice and met a friendly old man in his late 70s. He was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s but was heading home after a month of traveling. He could not stop talking about how great the army was, but I decided to keep the conversation friendly and not give him my piece of mind.

The next morning, after a night out in BA that is the antithesis of a good night of sleep, we headed to the boat terminal to catch our ride back to Montevideo. It was about two miles away, so we figured the taxi could get us there in a couple minutes. We pulled up an hour later, thirty minutes after our boat was scheduled to depart. Not too pleased, we went inside, checked in, went through security, got our passports stamped and realized our boat hadn’t even boarded yet. God bless (Latin) America. It was a long trip to Montevideo and we got to our host families’ houses that evening after another 10-hour trip. I don’t think it needs to be said we were both exhausted after a five-day mountaineering trip, a 24 hour bus ride to BA, a sleepless night out and another 10 hour trip. I was looking forward to settling down and having a life.