Prittie

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So, we slept in very late this morning; I think we were in 12 or 14 hours...[Unintelligible]...and headed to Base Camp and it's looking like the clouds are socking in again this afternoon, so, it'll be possibly a repeat of yesterday. We'll be happy to get down where the air is thick and the sun is warm and the food is fresh. Mark would also like to say 'hi' to a few people here: to Caroline, Kiley, John, Christi, Mom and Dad. And that's a big 'hello' from Mark Baummer.

Again, we've had a wonderful time on the Polish direct and we're just kind of cleaning up and finishing putting my permanent cache in here, which I keep here at 19,200ft. There's a lot of misuse and abuse of the caching system. I wish people would use a little common sense in that because I end up carrying a lot of garbage off the mountain of food and gear, which has been improperly cached. People either leave early, leave a bag with a sign on it that says, 'free food,' which is nothing more than garbage, and they're littering the mountain because everybody brings plenty of food with them. Or they leave things for the following year, and there are foxes as high as 21,000 feet on this peak, which get into food caches and make a big mess of things. If people are going to leave caches, they need to learn to triple wrap it in a very heavy gage plastic and cover the entire thing completely in big rocks so it is not visible and, hopefully, a fox can't smell it and dig it out.

While I'm on the subject, there are certain ecological things regarding Aconcagua that I think I would really like to mention for people that might be interested. Coming in on the Vacas — camping on the way in, on day two — there's a place called Las Cuevas, which has become quite popular. It used to be a nice, big, lush-green meadow; it is now being turned into a dust pit because everybody insists upon camping on the grass, instead of going a couple hundred feet away onto the gravel flats of the river. We all carry foam pads; we all carry Thermarests, please camp on the gravel, save what vegetation there is for...[Unintelligible]...also, keeping a clean camp. People oftentimes go to bed, leaving various bags, and gear, and stoves and wind screens and then the wind comes up, and guess what? It all gets blown downwind, including garbage, which might be lying around there. Also, on the note of garbage, like everywhere, if you pack it in, pack it out, that includes toilet paper, if you are going to use toilet paper.

This might be a subject which a lot of people don't like to discuss, but if you are going to use toilet paper, you don't sick a rock on it...[Unintelligible]...you pack it up on the roll, pack it down in a Ziplock bag, and dispose of it or burn it at Base Camp. That also leads us to a little bit of a human waste problem. There's a lot of people that climb on some of these peaks. The proper way — up high — to dispose of that is well away from any flowing water and a very, very thin rock smear on pre-exposed rock slope or gravel. If we all take care of the mountain areas, and be sensitive with how we use these areas, and what we do while we are up there, and control our presence...then it's going to make it better for everybody involved.

This just about winds down this expedition. It has been extremely successful; all nine climbers and two guides who left Base Camp summitted and then the two of us summitted, yet again, on the Polish direct, summitting twice in basically three days. My hat off to Mark, great kudos to him, he is very, very strong at altitudes and was a very wonderful climbing companion yesterday...[Unintelligible]...from Base Camp...[Unintelligible]...that's all from Aconcagua.

—Alpine Ascents Guide Willi Prittie, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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