Our expedition started off on the 8th of January when we first met the other team members and our guide, Ulises. We were all very eager to start the expedition so you can imagine what a feeling we had when we set foot in the Parque Provencial Aconcagua! Since it was the first time we would go to a mountain over 6000 m, we had decided to take the Normal Route. From Horcones to Confluencia, afterwards to Plaza Francia and back, and finally to Plaza de Mulas, the surroundings were truly amazing. Huge mountains around us, an arid dessert and some scarce vegetation. Since we come from Belgium, all this seemed to us as if we were on a different world. After the sixth day, we finally arrived at Plaza de Mulas where the expedition would really begin. After a couple of days we were well acclimatised so we could all move to the higher camps. Despite the cold and the foul weather we had, our guide Uli and the assistant guides Pela, Tincho and César made sure we could enjoy the experience as much as possible by melting ice for soup and tea, cooking spaghetti and even making hamburgers!

But just before we arrived at camp 3, our father was complaining about a tingling feeling in his chest. Since he had had a heart attack some ten years earlier, the doctors in Base Camp together with Ulises decided he had to come back down. My brother and I wanted to join him but our father urged us to push on since we were only one day away from the summit. It wasn't until Ulises promised us that he would make sure our father would be well cared for, that we decided to go on. Our assistant guide Pela went down with our father to camp 2 for a quick medical check-up and then further down to Base Camp. When we heard our father the same evening over the radio, we knewthat he was well cared for. When everybody else was sleeping in cold tents,he was allowed to sleep in the kitchen tent near the stove and drink hot coffee!

The next we had to spend the whole day in the tent at camp 3 due to the bad weather conditions, and believe me, this not how I had planned to celebrate my birthday! But on the 22nd of January, six of us started off for the summit. At Independencia, two team members unfortunately had to go down again and the four of us - accompanied by Uli and Pela - made our way towards the summit. I realized that our guides too were very eager to reach the summit so when I felt I couldn't go any further, I kept on going, encouraged by Uli, Pela and César, who had rejoined our team. I felt now was the time to give something back to them after all they had done for us. But on the 22nd of January, we all stood on the summit of Aconcagua and we hugged and cried. This moment was the culmination of months of training, weeks of working together and hours of plodding and sweating!

Recently I have also posted a video of our expedition on Youtube, if you want you can see the four parts by using the following links:

Aconcagua Part 1
Aconcagua Part 2
Aconcagua Part 3
Aconcagua Part 4