Expedition Inspiration II
Women climbers summit Aconcagua
By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer
Climbing in the spirit of Expedition Inspiration founder
Laura Evans, three local women made it to the summit of Mt. Aconcagua on
Jan. 17.
Laura Wilson Todd, Kim
Nalen, Sarah
Davies and Muffy Ritz take a break during climb on Mt. Aconcagua in the
Andes Mountains.Courtesy photo Kim Nalen
At 22,841 feet, the mountain in western Argentina is the
highest in the Western Hemisphere.
The party was comprised of locals Muffy Ritz, Kim Nalen
and Laura Wilson Todd, San Franciscan Sarah Davies, and two guides.
Their journey involved a strenuous 11-day climb up the
mountain and a three-day descent.
Before the climbers left, Father Brian Baker of St. Thomas
Episcopal Church in Ketchum blessed Nalen and gave her a silver cross to
wear on the climb. She said they all rubbed it for luck every night. She
still wears it daily.
One of the most poignant moments, especially for Nalen,
who cared for Laura Evans during her final months last fall, was taking
Evans’ Expedition Inspiration flag on a return trip to the summit.
Expedition Inspiration helps combat breast cancer with
grants, symposiums and publicity. A 1995 climb of Aconcagua by Evans and
other breast cancer survivors was one of the defining moments in the
inception of the organization.
The four members of the recent team all wore Expedition
Inspiration hats, made locally by Jytte. Nalen wore Evans’ own
Expedition Inspiration hat.
Greg Wilson, their American guide, made his ninth ascent
of the mountain. The group also included an Argentinian guide, Carlos
"Bandana."
There were between 50 and 100 other people summiting
Aconcagua on the same day, but this all-girl group stood out. "We
were social," Ritz said. "We wandered around the base camps
looking for action. We attracted a lot of attention,".
In fact, the Staple family from Boston, climbing at the
same time, recognized the women from a story about the imminent climb in
the Mountain Express last December.
The climb was grueling. And while made without serious
incidents, it did present some hazards. Among them, Ritz and Nalen said,
were, in no particular order: lack of mustard for their daily
salami-and-bread fixes, lack of oxygen during the final 400 feet to the
summit, purifying the glacier water daily, heavy winds at night. The worst
adversity, they agreed, was the necessity to relieve oneself at night in a
bottle, rather than risk the winds and cold.
The mountain was a mess. Called a dump heap by some,
Aconcagua has snow on one side and all shale rock on the other. Because of
the lack of vegetation on the mountain, and the high altitudes, the
breakdown of human waste is slow.
"One of my biggest hardships was the peeing
dilemma," Ritz said.
Indeed, "pee-police" patrolled the base camps,
and were particularly hard on the women, assuming they’d left behind
toilet paper.
"It was the little things," Ritz said.
"Being sticky in the sleeping bags, never being clean, running out of
purifying tablets for the water, dirty hair."
She also was impatient on rest days, which came in between
each "carry" day, on which each climber made two trips with
gear. Rest days were made to acclimate to the altitude. The women played a
lot of cards, read, exercised and sun-bathed in jog-bras and shorts. Those
days were not easy since all of the climbers were antsy.
But the sunsets were spectacular and the camaraderie
superlative.
"We didn’t stop laughing until we ran out of
oxygen, it was just too hard," Ritz said.
It’s not just the breathing that is heavy when you’re
oxygen deprived, she said.
"You have a whole-body heaviness. Every step takes
concentration."
They employed pressure breathing¾ long exhale breaths--to
get enough air back in. Apparently Nalen’s breathing was discernible
from afar, as her exhales sounded like whistles.
They acknowledge being "silly, until camp two, no
extra trips to the loo," Ritz said. One reason for the caution-an
American woman had fallen to her death the week before, when she slid off
the mountain in the middle of the night.
When Nalen unfurled the Expedition Inspiration flag on the
summit, Evans energy was "definitely there," she said. She also
wore Evans’ wind pants and shell in her honor.
"The neat part was just being there" she said.
On the descent from the summit, during a whiteout
blizzard, the group had to cross the Polish Glacier roped together,
wearing crampons and using ice axes. They picked their way through
pinnacles of ice that seem to grow out of the earth upwards. It was a
12-hour day--nine hours up and three long hours down.
In fact, coming down the mountain was the most difficult
part of all, they said. They carried heavy packs, and were hiking on a
constant trail of loose, slippery rock. It was especially hard on the
knees of both Nalen and Ritz, both of whom had had ACL surgery last year.
Two days later when they emerged from the shadow of
Aconcagua, they decided to forego a planned beach retreat. Their skin was
peeling from exposure to the intense sun, and "the desire to come
home was greater than the desire to hang on a beach," Nalen said.
"The first shower was glorious," Nalen said.
"Summiting is not how you measure the success, [it’s] the group,
the laughter."
Ritz agreed: "Summiting is the icing on the
cake."
The intrepid group will be showing slides of the climb
through the ERC’s Armchair Adventure series at on April 19 at 7:30 at
the Clarion Inn. The Armchair Adventure shows cost $5 for ERC members and
$10 for nonmembers.
