Charlie O'Malley dispels some myths about Mount Aconcagua
I am not exactly a mountain person. Train platforms make me dizzy and the only peak I ever reach is after a few glasses of Malbec too many on a Friday night.
The German explorer Hans Stein met the same ambivalence amongst the locals back in 1876 when he tried to persuade them to help him out conquering Aconcagua summit for the first time. They were just not interested. The clever German had to invent stories of buried treasure at the top to coax them into action and even then they failed to get there.
Aconcagua means "Stone Sentinel" in Quechan. The Huarpe Indians regarded it as the gate to heaven and left it at that – somewhere to go only when you die. Climb it? Are you crazy? The Incas regarded the mountain as sacred and sacrificed royal princes and princes on its higher slopes to pacify the Gods when the heavens rumbled or the earth shook.
In 1987 a group of mountain climbers from Mendoza University came across a stone cairn holding the remains of one such mountain mummy, perfectly preserved in a beehive shaped mound of rock. Salta City in the north west of Argentina has three such mummies discovered on Mt Ishiguato in 1992. The disinterment was filmed by National Geographic and the three bodies can be seen in a specially constructed Mummy Museum in the city center. Their freeze dried remains look like sleeping children, one of which is half black after being scorched by a lightening strike during its lonely 700-year sojourn on the mountain top. The Mendoza find remains in a freezer in the University basement with no plans to display it though you can see its feathered head dress and golden adornments in a small but fascinating museum at the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras.
At 21,000 feet, Aconcagua is the tallest mountain in the Americas and one of the big seven; one for each continent, that avid mountain climbers have on their hit list. 10,000 people attempt the summit each year and maybe 1,000 make it. It induces a phenomenon known as "summit fever" in many. This is an obsessive drive to reach the top that can be dangerous and life threatening as the altitude can be lethal. Medics at the different camps are constantly forcing belligerent climbers to turn around if they find any health issues. Many are reluctant to do so, especially when they have paid up to $5,000 US for a professional guide to take them up there. One such guide had to punch his client in the face to make him turn around. A German couple once tried to reach the summit with their newborn child. When forced to turn around, they tried to sneak up at night and were promptly arrested. One year, one woman did reach the top and promptly committed suicide.
I imagine I might do the same if I experienced the pure agony that comes from exerting yourself at such extreme altitudes. Headaches, nausea, cramps, diarrhea, loss of appetite and insomnia are just some of the milder symptoms that must become somewhat unbearable when stuck in a tent in freezing temperatures waiting three days for a storm to pass. All this, plus the fact that you have to carry around your excrement in a special tube for two weeks, has to be a little trying on even the most resilient optimist.
Most guide books make it out to be a walk in the park - a non-technical climb that requires no ropes or crampons, just two weeks of aclimatisation. The fact is two weeks is barely enough. A month is more like it. Two months better. Seasoned guides really can treat it like a stroll, though the steep shale slopes must sometimes have even them muttering oaths beneath their Goretex. Some crazy Italian once made it from the base camp to the summit in one day, in tennis shoes. An 11-year old once climbed it as did an 86-year old.
Don't let such stories give you a false sense of ability. The fact is Aconcagua is not an easy climb for the average citizen who spends most of his days no higher than six storeys up in an office block. This is the biggest mountain outside the Himalayas and anybody who climbs it deserves a hug and a handshake (after they've cleaned themselves up of course and got rid of the turd receptacle). You just have to hang around the park entrance to see the gaunt men and women coming down with only two things on their mind, a shower and steak, to appreciate their achievement. Look across the road and you'll see a craggy mound that is the climber's cemetery holding some of the 120 people that have died on the mountain since it was first conquered by an Austrian called Ivan Dostoy in 1937 (who commited suicide 10 years later as it happens).
You may be tempted to do as I do and cheat to reach the summit. Just pop into the small visitor's center beside the car park. There you can watch a video that takes you to the summit in three minutes flat. Look! I can see the Pacific.
For more information on climbing or visiting Aconcagua visit http://www.aconcagua.mendoza.gov.ar/.
