What do you get for Christmas on Aconcagua?  You get to leave behind all your comfort, pick up your really heavy packs again and move up to the winds and cold weather of the higher camps!  Bet you’re jealous?!  However, on a positive note, we weren’t leaving until late morning and so Stevie and I had our own mini Christmas celebration in our tent before we got up.  Stevie’s mum had given us two tiny stockings to take up with us and we had saved up a thermos of luke warm tea to toast in the day!  We had a giggle as we unwrapped the mini bottles of Baileys and Lindor chocolates – our favourites!  We then eagerly scratched off our lottery cards in hope of winning enough money to pay for a porter to carry us up!  The next few minutes were spent brainstorming how we would spend the £1 that we’d won!  Of course, that didn’t take long and so it was time to pull on the Santa hats and enjoy a porridge breakfast!  Mmm! 

Just before we left we made use of the camp’s Satellite phone to very briefly ring home.  It was good to speak to the family and to know everyone was ok back home, but we couldn’t allow any emotion to take over as we had a mountain to climb and we didn’t want to start thinking about Christmas at home too much incase we started to get a little homesick (or experience major turkey withdrawals)!  Fortunately, as it was hot and sunny and there were no signs of Christmas around us, this was quite easily achieved. 

Just before we departed we had our compulsory medical tests.  And although we had been told that these tests didn’t really mean anything as at these altitudes things can change in an instant – we were pleased to get glowing reports, with good blood saturation levels.  This suggested we were acclimatising well and we took it as a good omen for the days to come.  So it was goodbye mules, cooks and toilets and hello pee bottles, poo bags and cold weather!  Now the real adventure would begin! 

I had been feeling quite nervous about the second carry to Camp 1 as I had found it quite tiring the day before and I certainly wasn’t looking forward to the scree section again.  Plus there was always the thought of what was to come higher up.  I still felt that I didn’t really know what to expect and how hard I would find it.  However, on this day I was pleased to find that I found the carry much easier – probably because it was about 5kg lighter – and we were also an hour quicker going up.  We had great weather conditions and were all in good spirits.   

That night we experienced the winds we had heard so much about.  They whipped around our tent raging at us while we tried to get some sleep.  The canvas strained against the guidelines threatening to take off at any moment!  Apparently a couple of weeks before we arrived a group returned to camp to find their tents had been completely ruined by sudden winds that had caught them off guard.  We had been warned numerous times that higher up we would need to be careful whenever we took anything out of our bags, particularly the tent, so that they didn’t get blown away.  This was the first time we experienced these winds and it highlighted how lucky we had been with the weather so far and just how quickly things could change. 

This was also the first night where we felt we really didn’t want to leave our tents to pee and so it was time to move onto the pee bottles!  These were soon to become a vital part of my night as one of the effects of being at altitude is the need to pee far more often than usual.  One thing we soon learnt was that having a 1 litre pee bottle each was simply not going to be sufficient!!  I woke one night with Stevie telling me to get the other pee bottle quick as he was going to need more than a litre!  Whilst at the time we both found this hilarious, we realised that we would not both be-able to do this every night.  Fortunately, Stevie slept almost as well at altitude as he did back at home and managed most nights without his, allowing me to commandeer both! 

This may all seem like way too much information for some of you – but these are the kind of things no-one ever tells you about before you go.  And it’s funny how important such bodily functions become on a mountain where it’s vital to monitor such things in order to ascertain how your body is functioning.  And of course, boys being boys, there was some bragging going on about who was making most use of their bottles and bags!  Lovely!