Attempting Aconcagua
2015-12
This was supposed to be a much more extensive story, but I never got around to fleshing it all out. For posterity, I'm leaving what I did write here.
In December 2015, my friend Yuchen and I attempted to climb the highest mountain in South America.
Why did we try such a thing? The most likely answer is that one of us brought it up as a semi-joke and the other one said "yes". It wasn't a totally insane idea: both of us had a fair amount of experience hiking and backpacking and climbing lesser peaks. So, we decided to give it a shot.
We spent the months beforehand each stocking up on insanely warm clothing and sleeping bags as well as legit mountaineering gear like boots and ice axes. I trained by loading up my backpack and repeatedly walking up the stairs to my apartment at the time, which was on the 32nd floor of a high-rise.
And then, we met up in Argentina, found our way to the trailhead, and set out. The next two or so weeks would be the most physically and mentally challenging weeks of my life. I won't sugarcoat it: we got altitude sickness and intense sunburns, endured unearthly wind and cold, had to carry our own poop down the mountain, each lost about ten percent of our body weight, and did not ultimately make it to the summit of South America. But it was an incredible and surreal experience with an amazing friend. We lived above the clouds in a barren icy landscape, reveling in the raw power of the Earth every day, and appreciating the dazzlingest sunrises and sunsets. After we came back down from the heavens to the real world, we had an appreciation for the strangest things: air that actually contained air, plants, water that you didn't have to melt and then boil just to be potable, food that already came hydrated!
Maybe one day we'll go back and try to make it to the summit again, having learned from our mistakes. Maybe we'll never feel ready to give another shot. Regardless, It was an ineffably extraordinary trip.
