New Year’s Day in the Atacama

The Madison Mountaineering Ojos del Salado and Aconcagua expedition team packed up their camp and drove through the Atacama Desert to their next stop, Laguna Verde. It’s been a beautiful New Year’s Day and we couldn’t think of a better way to kick off the New Year! Expedition leader, Terray Sylvester checks in with this dispatch from Chile:

Hello! This is Terray calling in for the Madison Mountaineering Ojos del Salado (6893m/22,615ft) and Aconcagua (6961m/22,837ft) combination expedition – today is January 1st, 2024.

Today, we are moving from our camp beside the Pedernales Salt Flat down to Laguna Verde, which will be our new base camp for the next few nights while we acclimatize on Cerro San Francisco (6018m/19,744ft). Then from there, we’ll move to Ojos del Salado base camp (5251m/17,227ft).

It’s a beautiful day here, very pleasant drive through the Altiplano. We had a nice New Year’s celebration yesterday evening with steaks and guacamole and some champagne, which was the same color as the rosey alpenglow on the peaks across the salt flat.

We’re looking forward to getting to Laguna Verde where we can set up camp and relax in the hot springs there! All is well here and we’ll be in touch.

Celebrating the New Year and a successful acclimatization climb of Doña Ines!

Flamingoes near our camp at Pedernales Salt Flat. (Photo by Terray Sylvester)

En route to Laguna Verde with the Salar Maricunga in the distance.

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