Aconcagua

One is in hospital rooms and wheelchairs and medications and appointments and watching someone you love slowly lose their physical independence.

And then on the other side, there's Everest in Antarctica, Denali in Aconcagua in South America.

and being in some of the most physically demanding environments on Earth.

And the book connects those two worlds, really.

So yeah, I think I stay pretty present with her during the times that I was with her.

You know, we did that as a family too.

Well, I'm going to encourage people to read the book to find out more about Everest, but another mountain that you summited, Aconcagua.

Now in that chapter, your guide warned you, your nose was beginning to freeze and

Our guest is an amazing lady.

She just finished climbing Kilimanjaro and Aconcagua in the last few years.

She's a marathoner.

She's done half Ironmans.

And I did it intentionally.

And I, I also didn't do it.

I just, cause I just climbed Aconcagua.

I also didn't do it then.

Like I'm going to South America in December and I, uh, only just decided to do that like this week, basically just like committed to it.

We're going, we're going to go climb the tallest mountain in the Americas, Aconcagua and, and, uh is very spontaneous and that's that's that's most of most of my sort of trips are just like based on vibes and i'm very privileged to have the the freedom to sort of live like that which is great um uh but yeah like there's so much in this world to see and hike there's no way any one human could hike every mile of trail in the world and so It's kind of hard to prioritize what I want to do next, but there's a never-ending list.

Mate, it looks so awesome that you can actually have the flexibility to be able to bounce into that.

I stepped into this podcast full-time maybe a bit over a year ago.

The journey was a steady climb with an average grade of three percent, and when the rack and pinion sections were reached, a maximum grade of eight percent.

The road goes up the valley of the Aconcagua River, which rises in Mount Aconcagua.

The stream is the color of putty and reminded me of the glacial streams of the Alps.

It is fed by the glaciers of Aconcagua and is loaded with the earth washings of the Andes.

In places where the valley widens, there are irrigated patches with little fields of alfalfa, barley, and beans.

Now and then we passed a straw-thatched mud hut.

The scenery of the Argentine Andes is less rugged than that on the Chilean side.

The way at first is through a desert and the tops of the mountains are rocky and barren.

There it stood, its snow-white summit, unsullied by the foot of man, towering up twice as high as Etna.

For many years it received the homage of the world as the highest point in America, but now the Aconcagua of Chile claims the palm.

Still, what a panorama from the top of Chimborazo could one reach it, for the eye would command ten thousand square miles.

Our road gently winds down the sierra, giving us at every turn sublime ideas of what nature can do in tossing up the thin crust of our globe.

Beneath the Southern Cross, out of a sea perpetually swept by fearful gales, rise the rocky hills of Terra del Fuego.

It is the starting point of that granite chain which winds around the earth in a majestic curve, first northwesterly to the Arctic Sea, thence to the Aleutian and Japanese Isles to Asia, crossing the Old World southwesterly from China to South Africa.

Skirting the bleak shores of Patagonia in a single narrow sea, the Andes enter Chile, rising higher and higher till they culminate in the gigantic perfect peak of Aconcagua.

At the boundary line of Bolivia, the chain, which has so far followed a precise meridional direction, turns to the northwest, and at the same time separates into two cordilleras, enclosing the great tableland of Desaguadero.

The weather was so bad.

From there, I went to Kilimanjaro 2017, went to Denali in, or sorry, Aconcagua in South America in 2018.

Didn't get so much wet, but went back the following year.

And then 2022, sorry, 2023 went to Denali in Alaska and then down to Kosciuszko in January 2024 and then into Mount Vinson in Antarctica, which was absolutely amazing to finish the seven summits.

And that's when I started, that's when I saw for the first time, I mean, 25,000 plus foot peaks.

So I've been to, I've seen Aconcagua in South America It doesn't compare.

It's a whole different class.

So I will always remember the first time I saw the high Himalayas.

Two or three months ago in South America, that's where we started to see some of the initial effects of this.

On Aconcagua, there was a huge dump of snow.

There was a gigantic storm.

And then it's kind of tailed off since.

I think it's related.

I mean, it may not be every single day or every week, but certainly it's contributing to kind of stack the deck in that direction.

And this kind of goes into another interesting sort of sidebar where in this sort of changing world, this shifting climate with El Nino reaching these levels, does this change the type of climbing seasons in those areas or ski seasons? We've sort of banked on typical windows in the past where people go climb Aconcagua.

December, January would sort of be the peak time for that.