Our first day at Plaza De Mulas we agreed would be pretty much a rest day, just checking out base camp and seeing how we felt. Throughout our time at Plaza De Mulas, Chris experienced some headaches, but most of them went away with the use of Ibuprofen. We stayed in our tent until around 10:00, then went to check out the hotel Refugio, the highest hotel in the world. To our disappointment, the hotel was completely shut down, bolted closed so we weren't even able to look at it. After our walk over to the hotel, we came back to base camp and ran into Olli and Andy, talked to them about our hike, and they told us they were going up to Camp Canada for an acclimation hike. We then walked around Plaza De Mulas, which turned out to be similar to a small town up at 14,100 feet. There were very overpriced restaurants, internet, phone, and an art gallery. The man in the art gallery was pretty much exactly the type of man you would expect to see living at a high mountain base camp. He flies his tent, old paintings, art supplies, electronics, etc. out in the beginning of each year and spends the whole season on the mountain. In the art gallery tent, we met a couple from Seattle, Kelsey and Andy. They were also unguided, and they had been on the mountain for quite some time. They had made it up to the second camp (Nido de Condores) and forced back down due to weather. They were able to give us some useful information about the weather, namely that a storm was expected to come through in the next couple days and they told us that there was a ranger situated up at Nido, which we didn't know about. It was really nice talking to people that had figured out what was going on and managed to do it on their own. It gave me and Chris a little more confidence in ourselves. After hanging out in the art gallery for awhile, we headed over to a restaurant and paid $25 for a sandwich that we split. This was quite an indulgence but it did improve both of our moods quite a bit. We then went back to our tents, took a little nap, then went to the medical tent. There we got some bad news, Chris' oxygen saturation was only at 68, which is very low. They pretty much told us that needed to get better before we went up more.
The second day in base camp, we hiked up to Camp Canada to cache some food and fuel that we wouldn't need. We didn't get going until about 11:00 but the hike only took us 2 hours, both of us getting to a higher point than we had ever gotten before, 16,075 feet! Up that high, it was incredibly cold and I was already wishing that I had a better pair of outer gloves. Due to the fact that I was freezing, we didn't stick around long, just stashed our stuff and headed back down to base camp. We got back to camp played some Yahtzee in the tent and hunkered down because it was getting colder in Plaza de Mulas as well.
Throughout the night, the wind kept us up, the tent was definitely tested! Both Chris and I were concerned with the well being of our tent throughout the next day and a half. We later went and checked what the wind got up to that night, and it was up to 60 mph. The wind continued to howl, and snow also hit base camp during the day. It was seriously cold this whole day and we each left the tent maybe 3 times to go to the bathroom. It was one of the most trying days of the hike! Spending somewhere around 40 hours in a tent with another person definitely tries ones patience. On this day I decided that on my next climb I would be taking a book! Around noon on the 20th, the snow finally let up and the wind slowed down.
When the wind finally let up, we bundled up and went up to the art gallery tent, paid an exorbitant amount for 15 minutes of internet, and looked up the weather forecast for the next week. We saw that it was going to be windy but clear for the next week, this was very good news. While we were wondering around, we ran into Kelsey and Andy who were going for the summit on the 22nd. They asked to borrow our goggles for their summit bid, we said of course since we wouldn't need them, and in return they gave us a bag of food! We also went to the medical tent and got checked out again:
Chris' oxygen saturation was up to 79, so that was a good sign due to the improvement but it still wasn't great. My oxygen saturation was at 87, which was great. Our heart rates were at 90 (Chris) and 67 (Me). Then our blood pressures were at 120/70 and 110/70.
These readings got us the okay from the doctor to start moving up the next day.
We ended up waking up around 8:00am and breaking down camp by 8:30 to head out. It was slow going to get down to Plaza de Mulas because it was steep and my feet hurt quite a bit. Once at Plaza de Mulas we retrieved our gear that we had left there, spent about an hour re-packing our bags and pounding water. I brushed my teeth for the first time in 3 days, pretty gross but it was so cold at high camp and we were so short on water that it was just not that high of a priority. We then changed into our tennis shoes and hiked the 16 miles out to the trail head with only 2 short stops. I think we were both very ready to be out after 2 weeks on the mountain. We got out to the Horcones ranger station at around 7:00 pm and were luckily able to turn in our trash and check out. From there we had a 3 km hike on the road to get to the little village of Puente del Inca, where we could get a hostel and food!! There was a German couple at the trail head that was also heading back to town so the woman offered to help carry our bags since we had been walking all day and I said that would be great, she then turned to her husband and pointed him to my bag:) Poor Chris still had to carry his but the husband carried mine all the way into town while I walked with the wife and had a nice little chat: chivalry is not dead! We managed to get a room and dinner that night, the little hostel there had a great dinner, especially the mushroom and steak cheese appetizer. The shower wasn't bad either. The next day we headed down to Mendoza and we spent the next 5 days celebrating and touring around. The first night in Mendoza we met up with Andy, Olli, and Jessica for a proper celebration dinner. I got the Parilla that first night out, one of the popular dishes in Argentina. I am not really sure what I was eating but parts were good and parts were bad... Highlights of the next couple days included going to a hotspring/massage/mudbath place, going wine tasting, celebrating new years at the hostel, and walking around the city of Mendoza. Unfortunately for me (and for Chris having to hear me whining about it) my big toes hurt pretty bad for all of these events. All in all it was a very exciting, successful trip! We managed to make it to the summit sin mulas y sin impreza (without mules and without a guide service). I am not sure where I will be able to go next but I am definitely looking into McKinley in the next couple years, hopefully with some of the people that I met while climbing Aconcagua!!
Gran Acarreo, all the way down to Plaza de Mulas. It was a quick jaunt from windy ridge to 'el dedo'(a rock formation sticking up like a finger out of the scree field). At el dedo, we took another break, Chris sat but I stayed standing because I was already cold. Shortly after el dedo, we arrived at a snow field, which we decided to go around, avoiding actually using the crampons that we had been carrying for 2 weeks. So we went around, hiking on the scree field. On the way to this scree-scramble, we came across the first climber we saw that day. The man had just come back from the scree slope and said he wasn't going that way and we informed him that we were going for it. As we made our way slowly up the scree, we looked back and realized that he had decided to go for it as well and was having a much harder time of it than we were. We made our way across the Gran Acarreo into the dreaded Caneleta, entering it around 11:00 am. The line between the Acarreo and the Caneleta was not obvious at all, they just blended together. The climb up the 400m high Canaleta to the summit consumed the next 3 hours of our lives. Near the end I was trying to simply take 10 steps before stopping to catch my breath, and a few times I could only get 7 before having to stop. I started to feel nauseous near the top and held it in, knowing that I couldn't puke because I had only drank about a quarter of a cup of water that day and was probably dangerously dehydrated as it was. I am sure Chris wasn't feeling to much better, but there wasn't a whole lot of talking going on towards the top. I think we actually took a wrong turn near the summit and ended up doing some mild (but slightly dangerous due to the altitude) rock climbing in order to reach the summit. The feeling you get when you finally achieve such a massive summit that you have dreamed of for years is absolutely indescribable. Taking in the vast views and the enormity of the accomplishment, we both sat silently, cried, laughed, simply took it in realizing how lucky we were to get a weather window nice enough to allow us this luxury before getting down to the business of taking pictures. After all was said and done, the 2 of us spent about 20 minutes on the summit, then decided to head down to where we could breathe a little easier. On our way down, we ran into 9 others heading toward the summit. The first was almost there, about 50 meters from the top; it was as we 
were crossing paths that my body decided it could not hold in the vomit any more. So it let the poptart and quarter cup of water that I had consumed during the day out right in front of him. I found this kind of funny, not really sure what Chris or the man going for the summit though, I was just glad I was able to hold out until the way down. The rest of the way down went pretty smooth; I began to realize my boots were much to small and it was causing some pain in my toes so I went very slow (this may have been made even worse by what I later discovered was some mild frostbite on my big toes). We managed to get back to camp around 5:30 that night and were unable to get the stove to work. Our water bottles were still frozen, so neither of us were able to drink more than a cup of water that day. I did manage to eat one granola bar on the way down but Chris had only the half poptart that day. After the failed attempt at getting the stove running, we crawled into our sleeping bags. I stayed in mine for the duration of the night; Chris managed to get out when he heard Olli come in and figured out that he, Andy and Jessica (a girl from New York who left her guide company to try for the summit with them) had all summited and he congratulated him. From our tent we heard Andy and Jessica stumble in around 9:00 pm and congratulated them from inside and eventually faded off to sleep, completely satisfied and looking forward to heading off the mountain the next day.
