Arrival in the Atacama Desert!

The Madison Mountaineering Ojos del Salado expedition is underway! The team arrived in Copiapó today and is prepared for the journey ahead after doing one final gear check, orientation and enjoying a nice meal to kickoff the expedition. Expedition leader, Terray Sylvester checks in from Copiapó with the inaugural dispatch of our Ojos del Salado expedition:

Hello! This is Terray calling in for the 2022 Ojos del Salado (6893m/22,615ft) expedition – it’s December 8th.

Today our entire team arrived in the city of Copiapó (390m/1,280ft) here in Chile’s Atacama Desert. We did our gear checks, an orientation and then we went out for a nice welcome meal of steak, and ceviche, and some really tasty Chilean wine. The weather is fantastic here – it’s warm and sunny with pleasant breeze, the flowers are blooming… It’s just a really wonderful place to be during the Northern Hemisphere winter!

So, tomorrow we will drive out of Copiapó and head for the tiny town of El Salvador. With that, we will begin our journey to the summit of the highest volcano on the planet, Ojos del Salado.

We’ll be in touch!

In addition to these expedition dispatches, you can also follow our teams as they make their attempts on the world’s most formidable mountains on:

– Amazon Alexa devices with the Madison Mountaineering Flash Briefing skill:

• Enable the skill and add to your flash briefing to hear our daily audio expedition updates on select expeditions.  Just say, “Alexa, play my flash briefing.“

– Instagram:

• @MadisonMtng
• @GarrettMadison1
• @terray_s