| Start of our expedition up to Volcan San Jose.
Together with Hans, a 45yr old german from Bavaria, the plan is to conquer this volcano close to Santiago. It is 5873m high, and we have planned 5 days in total, according to descriptions of the ascent in the internet, and to what other mountaineers here have been telling me. As this will be my first experience with high altitudes, I am a bit nervous about all this, how my body will react, what it'll be like to spend several days up on a mountain, etc. All in all a totally new experience for me!
We start out at Baņos Morales at 2000m above sea level, after driving from Santiago at 500m in the morning. The goal of the day is the Refugio Plantat, a small mountain hut at 3130m. 1000m of altitude in a day sounds like nothing, but with at least 15kg on your back, things look a bit different...;-) And even seemingly simple things as crossing rivers of glacial water can be much more complicated than you think, if there is no bridge and you want to avoid wet boots for the rest of the tour. One of those little details we learned every day.
After about 5 hours of hiking in great weather and surroundings and getting used to the backpack, we arrive at the refugio. There are some other people there, most of which are chileans that hiked up there to celebrate New Year. And Nelson Sanhueza, a 70 year old local guy who I already met last week when we were in this valley. This guy definitely deserves to be called a 'legend'. He's a south american pioneer here in the Andes, did almost all the mountains here that mean something in the mountaineering scene, and knows (or knew) various mountaineering legends such as Edmund Hillary or Hermann Buhl (some german who did some crazy stuff in the 30s). And the most amazing thing of all is that even though he's never been out of South America, he seems to know everything about the Alps, Europe, well, basically the whole world ('I read a lot of books and talk to people who come here'). He told me things about Zermatt and the surrounding mountains that I know only since I was at SOW last summer. Really impressive. He doesn't climb high mountains anymore, but in the summer he's up at the refugio for many days, giving hints and valuable tips to climbers wanting to go up to San Jose or Marmolejo (6100m, the worlds southernmost 6000+ peak). By lending us a walkie-talkie, he was also to be our contact to the outside world up on the mountain. And he doesn't sleep in the refugio, instead stays in his small tent all the time, sleeping on some shitty mat. I always thought that I don't like to sleep in tents anymore because I'm getting older, but I guess that doesn't count as an excuse anymore ;-)
We also met a couple from Switzerland who wanted to do the same tour as we did, but they had to give up at 4400m due to problems with the altitude. They were up on the mountain for 6 days in total, trying several times to go further, but didn't succeed. Seemed a bit strange to me, but very soon I would get to know what they were talking about.
There was a small New Years eve celebration, some guys even carried beer and huge pieces of meat up there! Cool stuff!
After getting used to the heavy load on my back, I felt perfectly fine when walking, and slept quite ok up on 3100m. I think this was actually the first time in my life I slept above 2500m. |
