Photos of Puente de Inca from Wikipedia - below, a shot of what it looks like in July
Hello, everyone!
I am overjoyed to let you know that all of our party of seven summitted yesterday at about 2:00 PM. We started from 19,000 feet (our high camp), and summitted at 22,834 feet about 8 hours later. It took us 4.5 hours to get back down to the tents and collapse from exhaustion and cold. WE ARE ELATED WITH OUR SUCCESS, but sad for the deaths that occurred on the mountain this week. It brings a true reflection of what our mortality really is.
I will write more later when we actually get off the mountain. We descended over 5,000 feet today to get to base camp at 14,000 feet where it is warmer and the air is thicker. Tomorrow we have a hike of 18 miles down to Puente de Inca where we will have a big celebration. During this week a German climber slipped and fell to his death a few days ahead of us. The two days before our summit attempt, an Argentine guide and his three Italian clients went to the summit and were hit with a white out and became lost. The guide and two of the Italian climbers perished in the storm. We were 3,000 feet lower waiting out the storm in our tents. If you haven´t been here, it is hard to imagine the harshness of the terrain, the extreme height, and the mercilessness of the weather. As we were descending yesterday, we had left the summit about 40 minutes earlier and some climbers came down fast saying that a New Zealand climber had just collapsed and died on the summit, apparently from cerebra edema. We were in shock because we had just seen him below the summit. He was vomiting and his Chilean guides were helping him.
Anyway, I will write more details in a few days when we have returned to Mendoza and a real hotel!!!!!!!!!!
Warm Regards to all my family and friends,
Stan Bastian
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