Aconcagua
Welcome to the section dedicated to information regarding my 2008/2009 Aconcagua expedition. Hopefully there will be enough here to entertain and inform you while I’m climbing the mountain. Due to certain constraints on getting this site going, this page is going to be a large scrolling page with lots of information on. You can follow the contents links up high to quickly jump to lower items.
Thank you and Namaste.
Brian “the regular climber” Kraus
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29 March 2009
Yes, it is confirmed, the new trailer for our upcoming film is now available on YouTube. Just head to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kmhvej6L8s to view. Head to the site root to read a quick blog entry about it. Stay tuned for more updates involving this film including release dates soon (I hope).
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- View and Track the Expedition!
- Quick facts
- Detailed Information
- External links
- Expedition Calendar
- Expedition Google Map
View and Track the Expedition
Welcome to our expedition! By utilizing the following link you will be able to watch us progress up the mountain in relatively real-time (note: data will not begin to appear until 29 December 2008). The URL needed is as follows:
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0qa7kdA9VFeVvXtTxUydW9svc4lvPn4B4
(remember we will be four hours ahead of Denver time)
Simply click on the link to be taken to the sharing page for my SPOT GPS tracking system. This item will allow us to signal that we’re doing fine (pre-programmed message), show our progress, and even allow us to notify search and rescue authorities should that need arise. Every 10 minutes while in track mode new points should be added (provided a connection is made to satellite). The web page should automatically refresh, so if you leave it open in a web browser throughout the day you should see new points automatically appear. The key date to watch for is 8 January 2009 as that is our first summit attempt day; we have three days allotted for summit, so if we aren’t moving on the 8th we are probably waiting out a storm and you should check back the next day. Feel free to check in anytime starting on 29 December 2008 as we’ll try to track our hike in and progress up the mountain as well (see calendar below for rough schedule of our trip). Also see important disclaimer below as to why you might be seeing data as well.
IMPORTANT NOTICE! For the many people following along, I strongly urge you to *NOT* expect to hear anything from us during our two weeks on the mountain. This piece of technology is prone to breaking or other random things which can lead to no signal being effectively transmitted (obstructions can block the signal at times). The technical specifications state the highest altitude the device works at is 21,000ft - we’ll be approaching 23,000ft so on summit day updates might cease to function for a while. This does not mean anything is necessarily wrong. We have emergency protocols established with reliable individuals who know when to instantiate those protocols - If you are not part of the emergency protocol setup DO NOT ATTEMPT to initiate any on your own, it will only complicate matters. If it doesn’t look like we are moving on a day we should be moving, it doesn’t mean something is wrong - expeditions often dictate that command decisions be made on the fly; we might have switched our rest days around for instance. Friends and family following along need to understand this. Any information you manage to hear from us or see here you should consider as bonus information and again understand that realistically you should accept not hearing from us until we arrive back in the US on January 15th. This is not meant to scare anyone but rather establish realistic expectations of how communications can function on trips like this; we are testing our meddle against ambiguous conditions in the wilderness and we ask all of you, our faithful friends and family, to test your meddle against ambiguous conditions in dealing with lines of communication.
As a preview, you can go to this page to see what the interface looks like and view some testing tracks and ok messages that I’ve played with already. The tracks are around my house and from Matt and me heading up around Longs peak the other day. The left side menu has some help features you can read through to familiarize yourself with the interface.
Quick expedition facts:
- Altitude: 6960m
- Location: Argentina
- Route: False Polish Traverse
- Length of stay: approximately 2 weeks allotted on the mountain
- Summit day: Hopefully 8 January 2009.
- Group size: 4 total
- Temperature range on summit: -20C to 10C
Detailed Information
Aconcagua, known as ‘The Stone Sentinel’ rises an impressive 6960 meters above sea level in the South American province of Argentina. Being one of the coveted Seven Summits, it is not only the highest peak in South America, it is also the highest peak in the Western hemisphere. The only other peaks higher are found in the Himalaya. It oft cited as allowing the highest “trek” in the world, a trek being a non-technical climb of sorts (a walk up if you will). Claiming to be non-technical is a bit of misnomer, even the easiest of walk-up routes require extensive planning, training, and experience as well as getting lucky with the random weather in order to grant success of the summit. That said, there are more traditional technical routes allowing a wide variety of skilled individuals to test their meddle in this remote environment.
Situated around 32 degrees south latitude the general climate of the area is akin to southwest to southern United States (a bit like San Diego or Texas). Situated in the heart of the Andes mountains the area draws a lot of moisture from the Pacific ocean which can result in a lot of snow. However we are ascending during the South American summertime and this area is known to be fairly dry. Our approach in the valley is in the rain shadow of the mountain and as such we do not expect any measurable precipitation on the approach. What the mountain is famous for, and what we expect to have to deal with, is the Viento Blanco or “white winds”. These are usually brutally strong winds that kick up in the afternoon usually with some moisture in the form of light snow which can cause whiteouts. These storms are usually short lived with any snow deposited gone by the following morning’s sun. We expect this, aside from the altitude, to be the key objective hazard on the mountain. Another obstacle which may present itself is a result of the viento blanco and that is the Penitente. These are snow spikes that form from extreme sublimation by the strong winds; they rise up from the ground and can range from a few inches to several feet in height. Climbers often have to spend time smashing their way through these to reach the higher camps.
The popular route that the majority of trekkers take is aptly titled “the Normal route”. This follows the Horcones valley out of Puente del Inca up to Plaza de Mulas which serves as the base camp area (so popular is this route that is an actual hotel built at Mulas). From here climbers proceed up to various camps on the west-northwest side of the mountain and hopefully the summit. The other side of the mountain offers a smaller base camp area called Plaza Argentina which is accessed via the Vacas and Relinchos valleys. A longer approach, this base camp offers access to more technical routes such as the Polish Glacier, as well as a trekking route called the False Polish. It is this trekking route that we will be attempting this year, but with a twist: in order to keep us challenged we will do a variation titled the False Polish Traverse. We will ascend from the east along the False Polish, summit (hopefully), and descend to the west down the normal route. Unlike traditional siege style expeditions, we will actually be taking all of our gear up and over the mountain - no small task.
Our expedition began some 240 days ago…as another expedition. Actually it was the same goal, however it was planned to be a larger group with leaders who had been to the mountain before. For a while the expedition planning proceeded normally however, as is oft to happen in matters of mountaineering, things don’t always go as planned. Circumstances eventually led to the cancellation of that expedition; many group members quickly made other plans leaving the outcome of this trip in limbo. Four of us (myself, David Olson, Matt Olsen, and Doug Lesch) decided amongst ourselves that this trip needed to continue and sealed the deal with a chaotic ritual of bloodletting and chicken sacrifices. Actually it was more of a blood pact in the way of everyone buying non-refundable plane tickets and committing the issues unto ourselves. We were in it now, for good or bad.
Tickets in hand, we stepped up the training schedule a few notches and began the extensive logistical nightmare of putting everything together. We have the benefit of not being guided and thus have a greater control of how things have been planned. We also have been training and getting to know each other over the last eight months; this extensive exposure to each other is a huge bonus to helping us function better when on the mountain. Typical guided companies pull several individuals together from all around the world who almost never meet for the first time until they arrive on the mountain. Not being guided of course means we’ve had to do that much more work ourselves; also we’ll be more the explorers when we get to the mountain never having been there before.
Random external links
Summitpost.org Aconcagua page
Weather information (not all links may work properly)
Wikipedia entry
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Our Trip Calendar
The embedded calendar below is a rough outline of our expedition plan. While we will try to follow the plan as stated, this is a pure mountaineering experience, and the number one rule in mountaineering is to be flexible. Depending on how we are doing, we might skip a rest day, we might move rest days around, we might go all the way from camp 1 to camp 3 and skip number 2, etc. Considering we would like to spend as much time down there, we’ll try to stay close to this schedule but we need you, our faithful followers to be flexible with us and not worry if we aren’t always where the calendar plans says we should be.
How to use the calendar: use the arrows at the top to scroll between months. Click on a green highlighted bar on any day to see a rough description of what we might be doing that day. The new info-window that pops up will have some useful information in it, some of these will have a link *at the very bottom* titled “MAP” (all-caps). If you click on that a new browser window will appear taking you to a Google maps view showing a marker roughly estimating where the location is at.
Google Map
The following inset map shows our main points of interest for our expedition. There are locations we’ll be visiting or staying at in Mendoza as well as trekking locations/camps. If you follow MAP links from the calendar descriptions above, you’ll see the same map in a larger window with the same points (it is the same map). Also, if you click on “view larger map” underneath the inset, you will get a new window with the map and more viewing options.