Today is a 6 mile walk I stayed in Mendoza last night and had a 4 hour ride this morning to get here. Roi made it in and was good to see him. We missed the mule train so we will have to pack a load to the first camp 6 miles and 1500 ft of elevation change. Max said they would help split up the load my total weight is 75 lbs. New summit suit and boots added some weight to last year. Forecast looks bad extremely high winds and cold. I rode from the airport with a guy from Denmark back for his second attempt missing his thumb from his first try. We have several days of acclimatizing and we only need one to make it up and down. I have had a few training climbs with my new gear but haven't had it cold enough sweated my but off. I don't think that will be the case when we get to our high camps.
Met the team and to my surprise Heidi and Christian that climbed Elburs are on this expedition. We also have another old American named Joe from Texas, Igor and Marta from Poland, Alex and Tatchiana from Brazil, Carol from Germany, Austria, Chris from Australia, and mt tent mate Roi from Israel. There will be more English spoken this year. Max has been on a 9 country climbing spree sanctioned by the national geographic society after this he will be on a lecture tour. He is very thin and lost a lot of weight. Edu and George are back we have a big group and I am sure there's more help.
We made it uneventful with it being sunny and warm. We cross the Horcones river on a bridge made for the Brad Pitt movie 7 years in Tebet that part was filmed here.
I was a little worried that going from 2 to 10k would hurt. Coming straight to the mountain without the extra night at 8000 ft is a big jump. We had a climatic action climb from conflencia to the south face, a 3000 ft up and abut 10 mile round trip. I took the light day pack and for the next 2 days I will just use it. The rest of my gear meets me in 2 days at Plaza de Mulas. We had 50mph wind and cold in the 30s maybe. Had dull headache from the quick change. We are sleeping in a hut with 8 will be warm, but noisy, and sleep will be hard.
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