How mentally strong do I have to be to climb Aconcagua?

The next morning I woke up determined to begin the ordeal of the final climb. I was totally sorry for having undertaken this adventure. For me, Aconcagua was already good. I just wanted to get to the top and interview Garrido, fulfill my journalistic goal. I couldn’t fail. I reached the “Independencia” refuge, once called “Eva Perón”, which was cataloged as the highest refuge on Earth. It is just a kind of kennel for large dogs, without a roof and full of Fernando’s things, at about 6,500 meters. The temperature has softened a lot and I only register 15 degrees below zero. I resumed the ascent making a long flank towards the west and leaving the route of the “canaletas” on my left. Going up, climbing a succession of easy rocks, seeing the ridge above me Aconcagua Ascents, I realized the ordeal I was experiencing and that more or less all those who manage to reach the same summit suffer. Sometimes he sensed that he would not be able to climb another meter. The mind remained empty, without being able to make any decision. In these moments, and it is something that I have already verified on more occasions, it is the subconscious that rules; You are in the world of dreams. I tried to demand an extreme mental concentration and so I climbed fifteen or twenty meters.Sometimes, I thought with the tranquility of someone who is placidly dreaming or I don’t know if even screaming, that I was lost, seeing hallucinations and absolutely without strength. I am nothing but exhausted matter. In Aconcagua you are in the last meters, on the border of the beyond, and this, I am sure, has been felt by most of the adventurers, curious and climbers who have tried to reach the summit, whether they remember it or not.What would the experiences of Garrido, who had been at the top for almost two months, be like? Aconcagua ArgentinaI could remember, between mists of memory and past hallucination, my days lost and unconscious on the slopes of this mountain, in 1970, and my terrors were reborn only when I returned to see the ravines and glaciers through which I traveled.I finally reached the ridge and was able to see the southern peak of Aconcagua very close and, just below, the enormous frozen precipice of the southern slope, from which an ice avalanche was falling at that time. It took me almost two hours to walk the ridge and climb the last few meters to the northern peak, the highest. I was already more recovered. I photographed myself without any illusions next to the cross and saw the summit different from how I remembered it from my two past visits. I wasted no time and began to descend east through the snow. There, about a hundred meters below, there was a small blue tent, inside which Fernando Garrido, a resident of Aconcagua, living near the top, testing his spirit, hoped to break the strange “record” of surviving.Life inside the tent, all day in the sleeping bag because of frostbite on the feetEvery morning and every afternoon I have to write down my medical data in some graphs despite the tremendous laziness that it causes meI survived the pet that Maribel gave me and that I always have hanging on the ceiling of the storeexcept when the wind blows itIn a very small blue tent, mounted on the edge of the Poles Glacier, about a hundred meters below the top of Aconcagua, is Fernando Garrido. He pokes his head out of the round hole in the doorway with a smile.When he leaves, we hug and take some photos. He is a boy of about twenty-six years old, tall and very sporty looking. I find him very well despite the enormous punishment of spending almost two months in this cosmic prison, absorbing so much radiation, which seems to be one of the causes that makes Aconcagua a dangerous mountain. AconcaguaFernando is very happy to see me and that I am staying with him tonight. During these days, many mountaineers from different countries have passed through the summit, and many also from Spain – it has been the year of Aconcagua -, seeming as if they had all previously agreed. However, there have been very few who have gone down to where Garrido is. He normally reaches the top in very precarious physical conditions and is not available for visits.Here, so high up, and under this special atmosphere, Fernando and I started a cross-conversation, while he, with a piece of ice, while a pot, dirty from weeks of soups, to make a coffee with milk.Fernando is tall, he has clear eyes, and you can tell that he is a person of strength and courage. He is wearing a balaclava and is usually in the sleeping bag. Inside the store he makes a strong smell that, instantly, is already normal. On the ceiling, a small ID photo of his girlfriend.I’m looking forward to them, he says. Maribel will stay, however, in “Plaza de Mulas”, although her Chilean friends will climb to the top to help her.Since December 8, Fernando has been in the 7,000 meters, although until the 12th he did not will start