Prittie

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Our expedition enjoyed largely perfect classic Aconcagua weather conditions, which is occasional moderate winds, but generally very good weather and blue skies throughout, which is a very enjoyable and welcome thing to have occurred — being this the first time in about five years we've had classic, perfect weather conditions down here. And we had James Grosebeck, who had actually left the expedition at Base Camp, due to some pre-existing and nagging health problems that he actually brought with him and not the least of which was a freshly sprained ankle before he got to Argentina, which left us with nine other expedition members: Phillip Schroeder, of Germany; Chuck Vaden, of Eagle River, Alaska; Robin Griffith, of Charlotte, North Carolina; Gert Munthe of Ridgewood, New Jersey, but he's actually Norwegian, living in New Jersey; Joe Salvatore, of Dripping Springs, Texas; Frank Hutchinson, of Dripping Springs, Texas; Mark Baummer, of Baltimore, Maryland; and, Jack O' Donnell, of Colorado...[transmission fails].

Hello, this is Willi again. We think I got cut off with satellite coverage there. I just enumerated the names of the members of my expedition, all of which, again, summitted the standard route. We all got down in fine order. Mark Baummer and myself, however, waited another night, or another day, up at the 19,200-foot camp or Camp III to relax and recover a little bit. And then we actually climbed the Polish direct route, with about 15-hours round trip: up the Polish direct route, up the summit ridge to the summit and then back the descent to the 19,200-foot camp. A really, really good effort on Mark's part and that climb was in superb conditions and we climbed in beautiful sunny weather. About the time we hit the summit, however, it did cloud in and we were in snow flurries and some grayout and whiteout conditions on the way down.

We did, yesterday, descend from 19.2 to Base Camp and spent the day, as I already enumerated, hydrating and eating some food. We're planning on having a celebration tonight complete with fresh pizza, cheesecake and some nice bottles of champagne that we have up here at Base Camp. And then it's out to the steak houses of Mendoza.

Right now, we just got word that the expedition of ours that's also on the mountain that is led by Pat Timson and assisted by Brett Wolf and Ellie Henke had actually also summitted about 2:15pm this afternoon and, again, I'd like to congratulate those members and the names of the people that summitted were: Ted Maas, Andy Gustainas, Gary Beilman, and Neil Deutscher. I also understand that David and Dan Pacitto, and Rudy DePaoli gave it a good shot, but had to turn back somewhat short the summit and others in that expedition [Unintelligible] had actually left quite a bit earlier. So a big congratulations to those folks.

They actually had much more of a difficult time with weather on their expedition than we did with ours. The weather had actually changed briefly to a northerly flow from an easterly flow and then back to a northwesterly flow, which brought in a good deal of afternoon storms...[Unintelligible]...accumulated snowfall [Unintelligible] at Camp I, 16,100ft on the mountain, for about the last three afternoons, and it looks like this afternoon is repeating that same pattern again. But they got a good start, maintained a really good pace and actually beat the weather and did succeed on the summit, so again a big congratulations for them.

We will actually get back to the Mountain Zone and let you know how the final stages of this expedition goes and a few things about Mendoza and some of the things that we'll be doing to check out and enjoy Mendoza before the final flights home of everybody. So, that's all for today for Willi Prittie and the Aconcagua Alpine Ascents International program.

—Alpine Ascents Guide Willi Prittie, MountainZone.com Correspondent

EXPEDITION DISPATCHES