Last night I was woken up at 2am by a flashing outside my tent. I thought to myself, "Who is taking photos right now!?" So I took advantage of being awake and got up to use the bathroom when I realized the flashing was actually coming from an enormous electrical storm nearly 50 miles east from basecamp. With a relatively large moon out, you could see the huge towering clouds stretching tens of thousands of feet into the air and the lightning was so intense and so massive that it was lighting up basecamp. How incredible! Never have I seen such a display of lightning! On a less exciting note the team woke up to PERFECT weather. Boring right? No, but I capitalize perfect because it truly was. Breathe less wind, blue skies and warm temps. Perfect for sticking your nose into higher altitude. Which is exactly what we did! The team made the first carry to Camp I (16,200ft) like they were walking out to retrieve the morning paper. Casually. Very impressive! We arrived at Camp I, took a short break, cached our gear and made our descent back to basecamp. I ran down ahead of the group and prepared some pitchers of juice, fresh fruit and sliced cucumber with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt for lunch. The team is now taking a well deserved siesta before dinner as we look forward to our last day in basecamp tomorrow. RMI Guide Steve Gately

On The Map

It is supposed to be a day of rest here in base camp but let's be honest! How can you rest when the Green Bay Packers are playing and there isn't a television in sight! Go Green Bay!!! Our Aconcagua Team is rocking it! After our first night at base everyone woke up feeling great! We had a great breakfast of scrambled eggs and now we are down to business getting ready for our carry to Camp 1. The team says hello to family and friends. Pass the word around of our blog and keep wishing us luck. But with a team like this, who needs luck! Start sending in your comments, we'd love to hear from you! RMI Guide JJ Justman

On The Map

It always feels so good to get to Base Camp! This morning the team crossed the cold Vacas River and began the trek to our new home up the Relinchos Valley. We had clear skies and for once little to no wind to combat with which made everyone quite grateful! Upon arriving the cool staff had juice, cheese, cold meats and melon for us to recover with! For now the team will sent up tents, take a siesta and prepare themselves for our always delicious base camp dinner's. Tomorrow's agenda has us taking a rest day, life is rough! Stay tuned! RMI Guide Steve Gately & Team

Well well well! Here we are at Casa de Piedra at 11,000' plus feet. For those of you that no habla espanol, Casa de Piedra is Spanish for The house of...Piedra (God bless you Chris Farley). Team 4 had a beautiful walk into our second trekking camp. And of course as we looked up the Relinchos valley we had our first great view of Aconcagua. It is always breezy here at this camp so we are hunkered in for the time being. Tomorrow Base Camo!! RMI Guide JJ Justman & Team

Hey Everyone, This is Team 4. This is JJ, Steve, and Gonzalo and our great climbing team at Leñas, our first trekking camp. I'm sending a Google message. It's tough camp to get email out, but we had a great day walking in. Actually, it was cloudy skies thought it was gonna rain for a bit but it held off. Now we are in the beautiful sunshine here. We're making an assado dinner with the cowboys under an open camp fire. And we're actually watching as I speak Team 2 led by Walter Hailes walking in. It's his crew we wanna give a big congratulations to for a great job done up there making the summit! We will be providing dispatches now on a daily basis let you know how things are going. So far it's all smiles, giggles, and laughs. People were doing really, really well and we are keeping spirits high. We are going to have another great dinner and enjoy another beautiful walk here in the Vacas Valley tomorrow. Thanks for following along. Tell your friends, tell your family and everyone else to follow along. We will see you later on, bye bye. RMI Guide JJ Justman