|
      |
Pajama Party
Wednesday, January 5, 2000
 Tejas | |
 Hear Vern's Call from Aconcagua |
| LISTEN: [RealPlayer] [Windows Media] |
| Requires FREE media player to listen. |
Buenos días, Mountain Zone. This is Vernon Tejas with Team Milenio and we pulled off the great escape out of Base Camp today, after a great breakfast of pancakes and bacon — oh, my God was that ever good [cheering in background]. You can just hear the round of applause. And then we headed on down to Relinchos Valley. Good gracious, the water was high, but Marlon found his way, forging stream after stream, jumping across from rock to rock; we followed in his wake [Unintelligible] got my feet wet a couple of times — yeah, that was drag. And we also found that we had team leadership capabilities within our group — I won't mention names on that, Jim.
Today wasn't bad. Actually, once we got through the canyon that was a cascade, we finally worked our way down to the Vacas River, which we had to wade once again and then set up camp in howling 39km/h winds. And guess what? The kite was over-amped and tended to crash quite a few times. After kite flying, all the boys opted not to set up their tents and they are going to sleep on the lee side of the big rock. They're out there, where I am right now, enjoying — what do you call it — a pajama party, guys? Yeah, they're all out here in their sleeping bags, laying on the ground and the wind has now shifted 180 degrees. And so far, only one of them has been sharp enough to get on the other side of the rock now, which is now the lee side, instead of the up-wind side. So, you can see that you lose some mental impairment with altitude and that will, hopefully, we'll see [Unintelligible] before the evening's over and they'll all jump on the correct side of the rock. Well, who knows — they're all giggling. You know why we're giggling? Because we are so happy to be down here where there's oxygen...[transmission fails].
—Vernon Tejas, MountainZone.com Correspondent
| EXPEDITION DISPATCHES | |
   |