Next stop: Ojos del Salado!

After a period of rest following several acclimatization climbs, the Ojos del Salado and Aconcagua expedition team is recharged and ready for their first objective, Ojos del Salado! The team has enjoyed the beautiful scenery and dips in the lake and hot springs, have packed their bags once again, and are en route to their base camp. 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) expedition – today is January 4th.

This morning we’ve been packing up our camp here at beautiful, Laguna Verde. Our guests went for a dip in the lake and then a nice soak in the hot springs. Now we’re all ready to go, we’re going to head back up the hill behind us and drive a little ways to the southwest, then we’ll split off the carretera, and head up the valley off-road to Atacama Base Camp (5251m/17,227ft), which is base camp for Ojos del Salado. That’s at a little over 5,000 meters!

So, it’s a beautiful day here! Not a cloud in the sky this morning, a little bit of normal afternoon build-up right now, but since this is the driest non-polar desert on the planet, we don’t expect any precipitation. The weather forecast looks good for the next few days while we acclimatize a bit more, and then make our summit push on Ojos del Salado!

We’ll be in touch via inReach message over the next few days.

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