The Forgotten Side of the Zoo

Published in Bivmail (summer 2003), NZ Adventure Magazine (Feb/March 2004), NZ Alpine Journal 2003.

".wind, dust, avalanches, falling stones- all the elements seemed in league for the purpose of sapping our morale"

Rene Ferlet- Aconcagua, South Face. 1954

As Jo delicately climbed up to my belay position I glanced down at him. "Well, we can head left around that rock rib, move right and through that ice step or go straight up past the dead dude". Jo started, and looked up to where I was pointing. Above us, caught in a nest of old rope, hung the brightly clad body of some poor soul whose dreams and ambitions had ended here, high on the south face of Aconcagua. In the face of this grim reminder that, high in the mountains, the line between success and the ultimate failure is a slender thread, black humour seemed like the best defence. Jo went left and headed towards the summit.

Three weeks early we had arrived in Plaza Francia, the lonely basecamp on the abandoned side of the crowded Aconcagua zoo. We had left behind the leafy green paradise of Mendoza, Argentina's fourth largest city, a metropolitan oasis of café con leche and fine wine, and walked, with growing trepidation, into the arid desolation of the central Andes. Trekking into Aconcagua is like slowly arriving on Mars. On either side the flanks of the mountains sweep upwards in great, parched waves of decomposing rock, while beneath the feet, thick, choking dust spurts up with every step. The predominant hues of red are slashed in places by greens, blacks and greys, all often hidden from view by the great storms of dust that regular assault the valleys. It is a landscape impressive in it's barrenness, in its' utter contempt for life. And it is into this landscape that the hoards of hardy hopeful's stream, toiling their way up the Horcones valley to do battle with the altitude and the dry, cold atmosphere high up on the slopes of Aconcagua.

At 6962m, Aconcagua- 'The Stone Sentinel', is the highest point in the Americas, indeed the world outside of the Himalayan Ranges. This statistic alone is enough to ensure a long line of would be suitors. When combined with the fact that the normal route is, technically, an incredibly easy line to the top of one of the coveted seven summits, the highest points in the world's seven continents, the peak becomes a magnet for literally thousands of climbers each season. Almost all of these aspirant summiteers, drag their weary bones around to the north-west side of the mountain, where a high altitude trekking track leads them to an encounter with the heads aches, nausea, cold and wind that stops most of them in their tracks. Those that manage, through incredible acts of determination, to overcome all their bodies' attempts to make them see sense, arrive eventually at a small place that scrapes the sky between Argentina and Chile. They can go no further. Climbers still capable of surveying their surroundings, peer nervously over the edge of the steep, forgotten side of the mountain, the South Face. Far below them, nestled in the Martian landscape like an insignificant piece of fluff in a deep shag pile carpet, is Plaza Francia, our basecamp.

Some of the worlds' mountain basecamps are fantastically beautiful. Plaza Francia is not one of them. Starkly awe inspiring perhaps, but certainly not a cheerful, comfortable or welcoming place. Above it the South Face scowls over the valley. Amongst the biggest of the worlds' mountain walls, its towering 2800m is made up of appallingly rotten rock, collapsing icecliffs and steep, plunging slopes of snow and ice. It seems custom built to repel anyone with any sense of self-preservation, and, once we arrive, the inevitable doubts lurking in our brains, are mercilessly preyed on by its constant, overwhelming presence. Sitting in basecamp, aware as the days passed, that soon enough the time for waiting would be over, it seemed almost impossible to look anywhere else and our eyes were constantly drawn to the avalanches sweeping the face and the route we were hoping to climb, searching, wondering, worrying. The knowledge that we'd soon be up there, ensconced in the vertical world, brought immediacy and a cold reality to our gazing. Familiarity however, is a wonderful salve and slowly, as we studied every feature a thousand times, we began to feel more comfortable with the walls' looming, bleak demeanor, and with the idea of spending days in its embrace.

Our growing sense of belonging was to be short lived however, as we headed around to the Zoo for an acclimatisation foray up the normal route. Camped just under the summit we felt desperately sick for two days, unable to eat anything and battered by the infamous viento blanco, the white wind. Despite a careful approach to gaining altitude we had not adapted well and, after Jo's previously frost nipped toes fell to bits and I swallowed a liter of precious red blood cells during a prolonged nose bleed, we limped back to Plaza Francia with our fears and worries freshly exposed. Once above two-thirds height on the South Face, descending would be an almost unthinkable option. With a two thousand meter abseil staring us in the face we'd be committed to going up and over, and, if we reacted badly to the altitude, we'd be in serious trouble. As if sensing our insecurities, Aconcagua chose to make life even less pleasant for us, sending incessant winds to sweep the valley, rising billowing clouds of red dust to cover everything, both inside and outside the tents, with a fine, rouge grit. Everything we ate crunched between the teeth and our tea became soup-like. After three weeks of waiting and preparing, even our souls were dusty and our resolve seemed to be weakening by the day. Eventually, as the time began to run out on our permit, the decision to start climbing the next day came as a huge relief. It was time for action to take over from worrying and waiting. In the morning we woke to a meter of new snow.

It was a body blow to our new found resolve and we retreated to the tent, wallowing in our disappointment with a bottle of Glenfiddich, waiting for the snow to melt enough for us to start walking out. It seemed as if it was all over before we'd even set foot on the climb, but again time came to our aid. As the games of chess continued to go Jo's way, we started wondering if maybe, just maybe we should still give it a go. Even if we turned back after half a day, at least we'd have actually been on the face we had spent so much time and energy dreaming about. Riding the emotional roller coaster, with hope resurrected, we decided to invite the wrath of the authorities and risk overstaying our permit by a few days. Two days later, with the hard, diamond light of the moon throwing the enormous wall above us into sharp relief we zipped up our tents and headed off across the moraine.

We planned to access the central French route via the Slovene variation and then finish up the summit icefields via the Messner exit. The Slovenes have the reputation around the world of putting up nasty, desperate routes that you'd have to be escaping communism to even contemplate, but their start to the face seemed totally logical compared to the pile of rotten garbage that the French had originally ascended. Easy looking slopes lured us into expecting a gentle start but, as we soon learned, easy slopes mean penitentes! These meter high fins of ice were interlocked across the slopes like some tortuous creation of Vlad the Impaler, turning upward progress into a dance with razor blades. With the gaps between them filled the soft, new snow we tried to scramble across their tips, struggling to balance with five days food and fuel on our backs and often plunging in between them as we lost momentum or the tops snapped off the penitentes. That first night we found one of the few good uses for these nightmarish ice formations, hacking them off at their bottom and using them to build a tent platform cantilevered out over the drop. Above our tiny sanctuary of Macpac yellow loomed the first major difficulty of the face, the Great Towers, a nasty, loose looking band of buttresses, chimneys and hanging icicles. Trying not to think about it we settled in for the night.

One of the big problems of high altitude is staying hydrated, and we spent hours melting enough water for dinner, brews and tomorrows climbing. It gave us plenty of time to think about the history of the wall we were on. In an internationally groundbreaking climb a French expedition had made the first ascent in 1954. They spent three weeks fixing ropes to the top of the Great Towers and then climbed to the summit in a five day push that left them all in hospital for three months and various extremities lighter for their efforts. The first American and first alpine style ascent took place in 1980 with two climbers dying near the summit. The Australians, Jon and Bridgette Muir spent twelve days on the route before backing off. Reinhold Messner's expedition had fixed ropes up two thirds of the wall before completing a new exit to the French route and more recently two French guides from Chamonix had backed off from the above the Great Towers just a week before us. The stories of these expeditions didn't inspire much confidence in two, very small feeling Kiwis trying to get some sleep before coming to grips with the first big crux of the climb.

From the very first time we touched the rock of the Great Towers, their reputation was confirmed. Composed of stacked up flaky mudstone, it seemed unbelievable that the vertical cat litter could remain so steep. Leaving our crampons on, we opted to use our front points to kick into the rock rather than look for holds and every move sent a cascade of loose rubble tumbling down the face. With a fantastic lead Jo got us ensconced in a narrow, rotten chimney where every inch of upward progress required a full bodily battle with gravity. Each move left us gasping for oxygen as if we were running one hundred meters sprints. Any combination of moves resulted in stars exploding behind my eyes and Jo ended up panting so hard he nearly wet himself. Finally as we emerged from the top of the Great Towers we felt we had something to grin about, however, as we hit more penitentes and realised that, after two days we were only one third of the way up the route, our optimism was short lived.

As the route slowly unfolded, long fields of penitentes led up to a second huge rock band capped with a massive, face wide band of ice cliffs. Pulling over the top of these onto the huge ice shelf at two thirds height was a moment of mixed feelings. We had climbed several of the major cruxes and had made good progress but now we were getting seriously committed. The thought of retreating down what we had climbed, made the remaining eight hundred meter head wall seem like the only option. Neither of us had been on anything even remotely this big and I was terrified of running out of puff on the final hurdle. Traversing the ice shelf on day four, I had hit the wall, and, lying huddled in my sleeping bag in what we hoped would be our final camp just below the last big rock band, I was a lethargic wreck, wishing I was somewhere, anywhere, else. Seeing my sorry state, Dr Jo pulled out his secret weapon against altitude, and presented me with a plate of fruit loops cereal. Carefully hoarded over the previous month these sugar coated offerings were what keep Jo ticking and, as I ate the pink ones first, that all the reading I had done on high altitude nutrition was desperately misguided. I bowed to the altar of comfort food.

With blood sugar levels approaching an appropriate level and while being bombed by massive rocks hurtling down from the cliffs above, we climbed towards the 'Messner bottleneck'. Jo called down that the rock looked good and launched into the first moves. Immediately, an avalanche of debris cascaded downwards accompanied by loud cursing and the obligatory frantic panting, as the 'solid' rock began disintegrating beneath him. Several pitches later we pensively climbed left past the gently swinging corpse and began work on the last steep icefields leading to the summit. Eager to get off the wall, we felt strong and confident and seemed to be moving fast but as time seemed to dissolve into itself and the foreshortened summit ridge got no closer we began to unravel. Darkness fell with us still teetering on our front points and, as the temperature began to plummet, I started coughing until I vomited and at the same time Jo's crampon came off, leaving him desperately trying to attach something to the mountain that he could hang on. For the first time in the trip we snapped, momentarily bagging each other for imagined slights, before simultaneously recognising that we were losing the plot. Unbeknownst to us, Jo's toes were beginning to freeze.

Slowly regaining our grip on the situation the pitching continued until I watched Jo disappear from view above me. It took my befuddled brain several minutes to realise that there was only one way that this could happen on the tedious, uniformly steep slopes we were on, and, making a pitiful effort to speed up my front pointing, I finally rolled over onto the flat ground of the Cresta del Guanaco, the summit ridge. We were too tired for emotion and at 1.30am when we staggered onto the summit all we wanted to do was to go home. Even Plaza Francia seemed inviting. After thirty seconds we turned our backs on the south side and stumbled off northwards, down towards the zoo.