The first big mountain we climbed was in January 1998 when we climbed Mount Aconcagua - famed for being the world's highest mountain outside of the Himalayas.

Leaving from the Argentinian town of Mendoza, we caught a bus to Puente Del Inca, from where we made arrangements to have some of our climbing gear taken into Base Camp by mule.  The next day we set out for Casa de Piedra (the camp midway to Base Camp), and the following day onto Base Camp.  Like most people we suffered a little from the altitude at this point as we had moved from 2700m to 4200m in only 2 days (and were pretty much at sea level prior to that).  We spent a day resting and hydrating and soon felt much better. 

This was our first time experiencing a Base Camp situation and we enjoyed observing and interacting with the other climbers from all around the world.  When people heard that we were from Australia, there standard response was "what are you doing here!??". I don't think we fit their Crocodile Dundee expectations!  We were amused to watch a large group arrive and unpack carton after carton of Evian water.  Clean, cold glacier water was only a few metres away!

The following day, we carried a load of our gear up to Camp 2 at 5400 metres (there is a Camp 1 but most people don't find the need to use this camp).  We found this to be a hard day with the climb up taking around 6 hours. 

After another day of rest for acclimatisation, we packed up the remainder of our gear and set off up the mountain.  Now much better acclimatised, this time the climb up took us only 4 hours - the body's ability to adapt is amazing! 

We had planned to have a rest day here and during this day, we walked up to Camp 3 (only a few hours away).  We found the campsite to be crowded and dirty from people relieving themselves too close to camp.  Cooking dinner later that night, two Swiss climbers whose tent was near ours returned having just summitted from Camp 2.  Inspired by their success and given the relatively short distance between camps 2 and 3, we decided to make our attempt from Camp 2.

The next morning we woke to perfect weather and set off for the summit at around 6am.  By 10am we had caught up to a large guided party that had left later from Camp 3 and we decided to stay behind them.  With moderate - high wind we were unsure whether we would be able to cross through the Travesia (a long, exposed traverse section).  However we watched the guided party go with little difficulty so tucked in behind.

Once through the Travesia, we came to the Canaleta - a moderately steep section with loose scree.  It seems that here you take 3 steps forward and 2 backwards the whole way up.  Until now we had been climbing very strongly but at this point, we began to slow and tire.  In fact the last hundred metres to the summit seemed to last an eternity and if it wasn't for us hearing the elated voices of those ahead that had clearly got there, we may have turned around.  But we pushed on upwards and thankfully got to the summit where we were able to relax for a while and get some fuel back into us (water, muesli bars, etc). 

Feeling much stronger we headed down and finally made it back to our camp at around 9pm - just before sunset.  The next day we walked down to Base Camp and out to Puente Del Inca.

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