Vern

Hear Vern's Call from Aconcagua

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We finally got through the Vacas Valley. We're getting ready to go begin going up the Relinchos Valley, a very narrow, steep canyon that's a side branch of the Vacas Valley. It is steep enough that we are concerned that we need to get going early enough this morning, so that we do not get hit with rockfall. As the sun melts the snow, we're anticipating cascades of rocks raining down this afternoon. We want to be through the worst of that before it happens, of course.

Yesterday we had another crossing of the Vacas River which fortunately is intermittent at this point, it's frozen over in spots, but even so, I managed to get my foot wet so we still need to travel with caution. The upper part of the Vacas has now become overflow, where the river dams up and then spreads out, and so we have wide valleys just full of ice. We're actually skiing along on a mirror-smooth glass of overflow ice that went for miles and miles yesterday. It was a very good time and intensely one of these magic moments in the mountains, if you will, something I'll remember for the rest of my life.

We've also seen quite a lot of wildlife. We're crossing tracks — it seemed like almost every 50 feet we'd cross another set of tracks. These tracks are probably months old, some of them. So that we're seeing a majority of the winter tracks. But still, every 50 feet, to cross tracks is pretty impressive. A lot of wildlife in this valley. A lot of it is rabbits, and then of course, then again, coyotes, ...[Unintelligible]...pretty impressive.

And yesterday, as we came into camp, we got a first view of the mountain. Aconcagua, from the east, is spectacular — a pretty amazing set of glaciers and rocky buttresses soaring into the sky. We're really excited. We've been working hard for a week and this is the first time we've actually seen it. So, from now on, we should be traveling in the shadow of Aconcagua and getting plenty of more views as long as the weather holds.

Thank you very much. And for those who are a little more technically oriented, want to know what we're doing, we're at 10,520ft. Our location is 32 south, 38.299. And it's 69 degrees west, 15.588. We're at 24 degrees right now and currently having a wind speed of 7.1 miles, out of the north.

My pulse rate and sat, this morning, my sat was 90; pulse is down to 45. Bob was 91 on his oxygen saturation, and his pulse is 55. So you can see that we're hanging in there pretty normal, but the day we start climbing...we'll be going up 3,000ft in the next two days. So bear with us and stay tuned. Alright, bye from Argentina.

—Vernon Tejas, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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