Once outside, I found that luckily there was still very little wind, but that the air temperature had evidently continued its nose-dive while I had been inside the hut. I put on anything that wasn’t already on, and did up anything that wasn’t already done up, just as I had done fifteen hours previously. I had Dan’s head torch in my pocket : I hadn’t found Jim’s.
Once I had established a rhythm, ascending was nothing like as arduous as I had anticipated. For some reason I had been expecting to feel the same as I had done the last time I had gone uphill, six hours previously, when ascending the final few steps to the summit. Of course it was nothing like as bad : I was a thousand metres lower. By 10:15pm I had already scrambled up the awkward little rocky step on the shoulder above Berlin Camp. Every few minutes I shouted out to see if Jim and Dan were within earshot. I also shone my head torch behind me every so often, to try to memorise my route back : by torch-light the path was nothing like as easy to follow.
I had decided that I would go to a point just beyond Piedras Blancas, from where there would be a clear view up the ridge for about three hundred metres. I would wait there until I started getting cold, and then return to Berlin Camp to warm up and decide what else could or should be done.
By 10:30pm I had reached the top of a steep section, a little short of Piedras Blancas. I sensed that the ridge levelled off slightly at this point, and once more yelled up into the blackness. This time there was an echo, but instead of “Dan, Jim” bouncing back, I heard somebody call “Malcolm?” rather weakly out of the darkness. I carried on upwards. After a couple of minutes I saw what looked like a glowworm in the distance, and beyond this, a couple more lights, scarcely any brighter. The first glowworm was Jim’s head torch with the batteries as flat as made no difference. The other lights belonged to the Brazilians who were groping their way along behind.
I reached where they were, and gave Dan his torch. It was then just a case of saying “follow me”. I had to keep stopping and looking behind me, to light the way for Jim, whose torch had now given up completely. Even with the path lit for him, he was moving desperately slowly. Dan was rather better off, but obviously very weary. The Brazilians took forever to get down the little rocky step on the shoulder above Berlin Camp – they were staggering down like zombies, barely capable of talking. The only words I heard from them were “muchas gracias”, once we had made it down the awkward little zigzags into Berlin Camp, and were standing by the two huts.
Any thoughts that Jim and Dan may have had of eating anything had long since been abandoned. All they seemed to want to do was lie down and close their eyes as soon as possible. They told me that Jim didn’t get to the summit until nearly 6:30pm – over an hour from when I saw him – and that they stayed there until 7pm. Apparently Jim took amazing amounts of time to get up the last few metres to the summit, while Dan gave him encouragement from above. He was so close that Dan was egging him on for most of the last fifteen minutes without even having to raise his voice.
Jim was too tired even to get into his sleeping bag at first – he just lay in his corner groaning occasionally. We decided that we had earned a lie-in the next morning, and alarms were all firmly turned off. Jim eventually made it into his sleeping bag.
If my various air holes failed to line up at some stage during the course of that night, I was too tired to notice. The next thing I remember was the sunshine streaming in though the door of the refugio at about half past nine the next morning.
We packed up in a leisurely fashion. Hunger was slowly returning, but not the desire to do anything as labour-intensive as lighting the stove. We could survive for a further three or four hours on trail food.
It was another gloriously sunny day, and the temperature was quite acceptable outside the doorway of the hut by the time we emerged. Some clown from goodness knows what country then succeeded in making him self unpopular. He came up to us just as we were starting to pack up, announcing “fifteen minutes”, and pointing to himself and then the hut. I tried a few words of half a dozen languages to try to politely tell him that he could move in when we were ready and that that would be after at least thirty minutes, not fifteen. However he seemed to know no major European language. He came back in a couple of minutes to announce “ten minutes”. There was still no indication of what language, if any, I could use to tell him that he would be welcome to move in when we were effing well ready, and not a moment sooner. We had to almost physically bar him from entering the hut, and he then went and sat on a nearby rock, with a wounded expression.
We finally got everything packed up, and gave the hut a quick clean out. There was no longer any sign of Mr Fifteen Minutes, as we had christened him. He had obviously become fed up with waiting.
We all took the descent slowly at first – it was then obvious that Jim wanted to take it more steadily than Dan or I did. We went on ahead and within twenty minutes were down at Nidos. The air was warming up rapidly, and I was almost starting to overheat. I went over to my old campsite to pick up the cache that I had left there, but an unpleasant surprise was waiting.
It appeared that the dregs of humanity were reaching ever-greater altitudes. What had been one of the better pitches at Nidos had been effectively rendered unusable : some imbecile had figured that the little walled enclosure would protect him very nicely for a minute or two while he went to the toilet right in the middle of it. I had no doubt that it was the very same imbecile who had then seen my cache, ripped open the bag, and decided that my ice axe would make an excellent trophy to take home from his adventures on Aconcagua. He had also evidently decided that my day sack might come in useful to carry any other loot that he might subsequently manage to filch. He hadn’t been hungry, however, so he had left behind the food that had been in the day sack. And he hadn’t managed to work out to what use he could possibly put the strange metal things with spikes on, so he’d left the crampons.
I had decided from the outset that if I were to return from Aconcagua with all my gear intact then it would be an unexpected bonus. I therefore couldn’t complain too hard about the ice axe. It did, however, seem a shame that the loss had been due to malice rather than the natural elements. As far as the day sack was concerned, it was good riddance : it was a cheap and nasty one that had been bought in an emergency following the theft of the previous one. I could only hope that it would mean more to its new owner than it had done to me.
Having packed what remained of my cache, I went over to the centre of Nidos, where Dan and Jim were struggling to fit all their kit into their rucksacks. They were concerned at my loss, especially as they had left another cache down in Plaza de Mulas. Their things down there were also left out in a plastic bag in the middle of the camp. Dan announced that he had even left his air ticket down there, which had been rather a bold move. At least the cache that I had left at base camp had been entrusted to someone. We had originally been told that caches could safely be left anywhere on the mountain, because everyone respected the fact that taking someone else’s cached food or gear could put that person’s life in danger. Clearly this was no longer true.
Jim said he would rest a while and then potter down at his own speed. Dan and I headed straight for base camp : I was looking forward to a cheeseburger or three.
There were numerous wide-eyed, fresh-faced hopefuls heading up to Nidos. They all looked exactly as we had looked and felt, a week previously. We recalled the people who we had seen returning from the summit a week ago, and how they had appeared to us then : weary, brooding, slightly aloof. We had no doubt that that was exactly how we appeared now.
We went through Alaska Camp without a pause – it no longer held any interest. Nobody we knew could possibly be staying there any more. The only things that held any interest were the prospect of some solid food at base camp, changing back into training shoes, and making a quick exit to the comforts of home.
Just down the steep zigzags from Alaska we came face to face with a mule train, and had to pause to let it past. I was surprised to see mules so high up. Then I remembered that the guardaparque who had been at Berlin Camp had said that mules would be coming up within a few days with building materials. Apparently someone had sponsored the construction of a new refugio up at Piedras Blancas, that would accommodate six people. Sure enough, these mules were laden with prefabricated sections of timber.
In a little under an hour the multicoloured dots of Plaza de Mulas appeared below. Descending this slope was taking longer, and felt a lot more tiring, than it had done a week previously. This proved what I had been suspecting, that I was in considerably worse shape physically than I had been before going above 5700m. Clearly my time in the death zone had taken its toll. I remembered that the Irishmen at Puente del Inca had said that the thing to avoid at all costs was an aborted summit day. Nobody turns back in the Canaleta on one day, and then tries for the summit again the following day. You carefully pick your day to try for the summit, and you then either make it or you don’t. If you don’t, then you go home and try again the following year – unless, that is, you have enough time and food to spend a week in base camp recovering from the failed attempt.
The valley felt very hot, and I was looking forward to getting out of my plastic boots. Just before passing through the final penitentes and crossing the steam, I managed to trip over and cut my hand. Although this was the only physical damage I received on Aconcagua, by this stage many of my fingers already had bandages on them. This was because my hands had got so dry that the skin split at the tips. My hands were also covered with ingrained dirt – mainly soot from my stove.
We went straight to Andrea’s tent, but somebody told us she was out rock-climbing for the day, in a nearby valley. I retrieved my bag of things from Andrea’s store tent, and it appeared that the bag was untouched. This wasn’t surprising, especially since many of the contents were repellent to some extent – dirty underwear, smelly trainers, rubbish etc. It felt wonderful to take my plastic boots off, but the consequent air pollution in my immediate surroundings dampened the pleasure somewhat. I wished that the wind had been blowing slightly harder at that moment.
Andrea being absent meant that the cheeseburgers would have to be obtained in the other fast-food joint. However, I first went over to report my ice axe to the guardaparques. More than anything else this was to try to spread the word that people could no longer assume that caches wouldn’t be stolen. The guardaparques were surprised at the loss – they said such thefts were very rare. They took my name, and the details of the axe, in case it later turned up. I had to spell my name, and as I was doing this, one of the other guardaparques said to his colleague : “…you know, like in the newspaper!”. This seemed a strange thing for him to say, but I didn’t ask what he meant.
I moved all my gear over to where Dan and Jim’s cache had been, where Dan was now gazing in despair at the huge mountain of kit that they were going to have to carry back. He wanted to wait for Jim before attacking the cheeseburgers, but I was far too hungry for that and went straight to the fast food tent to have my feast. I had already polished off two cheeseburgers, and was sitting there feeling better than I had done for many days, when Dan and Jim came into the tent. They wolfed their cheeseburgers down in much the same way as I had mine, with the difference that they wanted photos taken of them as they wolfed.
We staggered back to where our gear was, feeling remarkably full, and I set about the formidable task of getting everything back into my rucksack. Being without my day sack compounded the problem slightly, and it looked as if it was going to take me a while. We exchanged a few words with a Brazilian who was in a nearby tent. When he found out that we had been on the summit the previous day he told us that some of his compatriots had been on the summit the previous day as well. He added that they had been so late coming down that someone had had to go up in the dark and rescue them.
We told him we knew all about that…
Jim and Dan wanted to wander up to the hotel, to have a taste of pseudo-civilisation before heading down the valley. I decided to forgo the pseudo-civilisation in the interests of making tracks towards the real thing. I was itching to be off, and couldn’t pack my rucksack fast enough. Jim and Dan were expecting to reach Camp Ibañez that night, the same as me, so I said I would probably see them there later. In any case I expected to see them at Puente del Inca the following night for some beers.
Eventually, at about 4pm, I succeeded in getting everything inside my rucksack, apart from the large yellow rubbish bag, which I tied to the top. The yellow bag flapped around and looked a little silly, but I didn’t care : I wanted to be off. I had gone about fifty metres before I noticed that some part of me was missing, and realised I had left my ski sticks behind : I had grown accustomed to having four legs rather than two. The missing appendages were retrieved, and with my two proper feet itching to be off, I could at last bid farewell to Plaza de Mulas.
