It didn’t feel in the slightest bit like Christmas Eve!  Bright sunshine and soaring temperatures – no sign of any tinsel or mulled wine, no sitting in front of the TV eating too many chocolates and watching Santa Claus the movie.  For those of us on Aconcagua it was the day where things started to get serious.  No more mules to carry our stuff – from now on it was up to us to lug all our personal kit plus endless amounts of group kit up the mountain stuffed into and tied onto every spare inch of our rucksacks!  And as if that wasn’t enough, we also had to wear our huge high altitude boots which is like walking with concrete blocks for feet, just for an added challenge!  This would have been a reasonable task back in our local hills, but at altitude on steep scree, it took its toll!

By now I was getting used to having a constant headache and resigned myself to the fact that I was possibly going to experience these throughout the trip and that I was just going to have to deal with it and get on with things.  At this point I was still heeding the advice of our guide not to take any medication to allow my body to adjust.  I wasn’t sure about this as other members of the group were taking them and if I had experienced such a headache at home I would have.  However, our guide was very experienced and so for the time being I took nothing.  This trip was very much about learning how to cope at altitude as prior to this trip our only altitude experience had been climbing Mont Blanc at 4810m.  Camp 1 was just under 5000m. 

We had plodded up for a few hours when we came face to face with our first really steep and nasty loose scree section just below Camp 1.  It was that dreaded horrendous scree whereby if you didn’t move very quickly you would slide back further than the last step you took.  And moving quickly was pretty tough at the end of a hard day, with a heavy pack on your back and at altitude.  This was a horrible climb and left most of us exhausted and out of breath.  This was where the mental battle took place.  How to tell yourself to keep going and that you can do it and not to allow the negative thoughts into your head.  Thinking negatively would be the end of our journey and there was no way we were turning back unless we had too!  Having said that, I was secretly praying that the rest of the mountain wouldn’t be like this!

When we eventually arrived at Camp 1, we deposited our first carry loads and then it was back down to stay the night at Base Camp before carrying our second load up the following day.  I found coming down quite difficult as I had a real thumping head which seemed to get worse as I went down and by the time we arrived back at the tent I had to lie down and do the unthinkable!  Yes, I took an Ibuprofen!  Sssh don’t tell the guides!  By dinnertime I felt fine (thanks to the drugs!) and tucked into the surprisingly good food prepared by Betsy the cook.  We were pleased that our appetite’s had not diminished and that so far our stomach’s were holding out! 

We were a bit concerned about the water situation.  There was a real shortage and all the water available was a lovely chocolate brown with gritty  chips in it!  The decision was, do you risk upset stomachs through drinking the water, or do you risk getting ill due to dehydration?  Not much of a choice really!  We did have a Steripen with us which kills germs by way of a UV light which had been great to this point but it doesn’t work in murky water!  Doh!  And despite its chocolate coloured appearance, the water actually tasted rather muddy, even after the addition of some flavoured powder.  But we had no choice but to drink it and just hope that it wouldn’t cause us to get too ill.  And so with a sprinkle of denial and a touch of positive thinking it went down a treat!