06/01/2019
We knew this was tougher than all we had done before.
For the first time, when we left, we felt that failure was at least as likely as success.
The Atacama desert, the driest place on Earth, is certainly not very inviting, but it's full of surprises and whenever from the depths of the mountains a little stream of water unexpectedly emerges, life springs in all his forms.
Still, cycling on and off road through the sandy desert remains far from easy: on our fifth day, we had to walk 15 km through the Salar Maricunga, a vast plane at about 3900 m, because we couldn't ride our bikes on the very soft sandy ground, as we had planned.
After that, we cycled up, almost entirely on paved road, to the Murray hut, 4530 m, at the base of Ojos de Salado. What should have been a relatively easy day turned into the toughest and longest day of the whole trip.
But the biggest surprise had still to come.
From the Murray hut to the Atacama refuge, 5240 m, the base camp of Ojos, there's a nice 20 km long offroad track.
Or, at least, we thought it was nice.
It was actually another sand nightmare: we had no chance to ride our bikes on it.
In the first 5 days we had cycled 290 km and 5000 vertical meters, and hiked up from 4100 to 4700 as a first acclimatisation.
It may not seem that much, but the heat and especially the extremely dry air are "extras" provided by the Atacama desert which we had probably underestimated, and they made the journey harder than we could imagine.
It was January 1st and we needed a rest day. But, instead, we decided to drive to the Atacama refuge and then hike up to the Tejos hut, 5840 m, where we dropped some material for the summit attempt.
On the same evening, we had a well deserved bath in the hot natural pool in Laguna Verde and started our long awaited 36 hours long recovery, which we spent largely chatting with other climbers in the Atacama camp.
At that point we had only three days left and we still had to complete our acclimatisation. We had to take a tough decision: either walk those 20 km of sandy "road", and reduce dramatically the acclimatisation program, making the summit almost impossible, or give up the BottomUp style, drive those missing 20 km and 700 vertical meters, do a probably still too short but at least reasonable acclimatisation and have some concrete chances to get onto the summit of the world's highest volcano.
We were drawn by Ojos. We aborted the BottomUp project, decided to do one further acclimatisation hike up to 6100 m and attempt the summit ascent on our last available day: January, 5th.
On the day before the summit attempt, Alessio didn't feel good: he got a viral infection which brought him high temperature and general sickness.
Only Anne and Beppe left the Tejos hut, 5840 m, at 4:30 am, not before realizing that most of the equipment that they had left there a few days earlier had been stolen.
Luckily, Carlito, a local climber who was affected by acute mountain sickness on that morning and couldn't climb the mountain, was so kind to provide what the two needed.
The ascent was smooth and relatively fast up to approximately 6600 m. From there on, moving and breathing became increasingly hard, but the summit got closer and closer, until, after the short final rock climb, it ended up below our feet. We were on the top of Ojos del Salado, 6893 m, at 11 am.
It has been a wonderful and enriching experience, as all our BottomUp climbs, but we will have to come back and start over, with better knowledge of the area, more luck and, above all, more time.
Thank you all for your messages and support.
Here below just a few pictures, more will come soon.
