Kevin Johnson called in today from Chopper Camp, located at 18,000′ on the east flank of Aconcagua. The team carried loads up to their high camp today, a flat expanse on the north ridge of the mountain that is often known as Campo Cholera, a testament to the need to be diligent about sourcing snow to melt for your water!
Today was a relatively short day of work and the team moved well. They have been blessed with warm sunny weather and the forecast looks pretty darn good for the coming days, so fingers crossed that they’ll have a nice summit day. The plan is to take a rest and acclimatization day tomorrow at Chopper Camp. This will enable them to further build their base of acclimatization before popping up to Cholera, sleeping a few hours and then making the push to the top of South America!
Chopper Camp earned its name when a small helicopter, a Lama, crashed just above camp decades ago. Until about 10 years ago, you could still find remnants of the crashed ship. Now, you have amazing views looking out to the north and east of the mountain. It’s a really neat place to camp and when the weather is nice, as it currently is, the views are tremendous.
Here’s Kevin!
