Best of luck on your expedition!

This installment is designed to be forwarded on to anyone you’d like to have follow your trip.  We’ve included the links to get to your trip dispatches, and contact information for the Mountain Trip office if anyone should need to get in contact with you in case of emergency.

We will post expedition dispatches every day or two so that your friends and family can follow your progress.  Each climber will have opportunities to call in and leave a message, so have some fun with it.  It’s always nice to hear details of your daily experience in a place so far away from the reality of those at home, and we encourage you to be creative, descriptive and detailed.

 

Expedition Dispatches

Click on the link below and choose the expedition you’d like to follow.

Mountain Trip Expedition Dispatch Page

In the first post for your team, we will include a link to the Spot GPS page where the virtual breadcrumb trail of your travels on the mountain will live.  We encourage followers to bookmark that link and refer to it for the latest, almost up-to-the-minute, information about where you are on the mountain.

We endeavor to post daily updates, however please adhere to the adage of “No News Is Good News” because many considerations can prevent the guides from calling in on any given day.  Mountain weather, terrain and the varying workload of each day can, and often will, transpire to prevent our satellite phones from making the evening call.

Our guides also carry VHF and smaller, FRS radios, which they use to maintain daily contact with other climbing teams on the mountain, as well as our Argentine friends back in base camp.  If they are unable to make a phone call some night, don’t worry–they aren’t stranded or lost on the mountain!  If they NEED to get word out, they have multiple ways to communicate.

We encourage your friends and family to post comments on your trip blog, but please let them know that we are not able to pass their comments along to you on the mountain.  If they need to get word to you, they should contact our office by phone or email.

Mountain Trip Contact Information

If for any reason someone needs to contact a climber during the expedition, our contact information is as follows.   Typically, we can contact the team within 24 hours or less if it is an emergency.

Please keep in mind we are in the Mountain Time Zone. (GMT -7).  We monitor the phone 24/7 when teams are in the field, but please try to call during business hours if your message is not urgent.

Mountain Trip Office:

[email protected]

Phone: +1 970.369.1153

TRIP DETAILS AND ITINERARY

For those of you following along, you can find detailed information about the climb including a trip itinerary on our website at:

Mountain Trip Aconcagua Expeditions

Here’s a general overview.

Meeting Point:
Mendoza, Argentina

Our guides will pick up team members at the airport, but if something occurs and we do not connect, we ask that climbers take a cab to the meeting point at the Amerian Executive Hotel.  The team will typically be in Mendoza for the first one or two nights of the expedition, at the Amerian Executive Hotel.

Amerian Executive Hotel
Calle San Lorenzo 660
Mendoza, Argentina

The phone for the hotel is +54 – 261 – 5245000

From the US you must first dial 011
 
From Mendoza, the team will drive about 2.5 hours to a small ski resort called Penitentes, and spend one more night in a hotel before hitting the trail. We have very good communications with the team until they begin hiking, after which time the guides will call our office to initiate communication. They just can’t keep the satellite phone on all day long to receive calls.
 
The approach to the Plaza Argentina Base Camp on the east side of the mountain will take the team three days, and they will spend four nights at base camp before moving up the mountain.
 
We typically use three camps above base camp, and if weather permits the team to stay on schedule, they could summit on their 13th day after starting up the trail.
 
After summit day, the team will descend down the west side of the mountain to a large, bustling base camp called Plaza de Mulas. They will spend one night at this camp before hiking out to the Park entrance and our waiting vehicle. They might continue back to Mendoza or stay that night in Penitentes. The choice as to which plan they will follow will be made by the team on their hike out.
 
We have built a number of contingency days into the trip itinerary, so we cannot accurately predict when the team will actually come off the mountain and back to “civilization.”

Thanks once again for choosing Mountain Trip!!

 

 

Share Button