Aconcagua; almost there!

Time has come to climb again, and it’s about to happen! Yesterday I had a long day of traveling and switching planes. But, in the end, this all resulted in being here, in Mendoza, Argentine. And as you probably know, Mendoza is the place to be if you want to climb Aconcagua.

General San Martín Park in Mendoza. Not to worst place to recover from a jetlag

How I will ascent

Aconcagua offers multiple routes where, of course, the normal route is most used. This is a non-technical route that offers little challenges other than the altitude. And that should definitely not be underestimated. Aconcagua is almost 7000 meters high which still makes this a serious climb.

As said before, I will attempt to climb Aconcagua via the Polish Direct Route. This route is much steeper and offers a lot more challenges than the normal route or the standard traverse.

Preparations

Until now, all my preparations were always going as planned. For Denali, I discussed them quite extensively on my blog. Since this was working really well for me, I planned to continue like this. Roughly 5 runs a week and one or two strength training to keep my core strong. However, this autumn I had some serious injuries on my feet and lower legs. So I had to take more recovery time than I planned for, and missed some of the exercises I wanted to do. So, am I as well trained as I was for Denali? I don’t think so. Am I fit enough to summit Aconcagua? Yes! I do feel ready and are committed to summit. Maybe I will suffer a little more, but that will persevere!

Sponsorships

More good news! As you may know, I am a Mountainreporter, and that got me a nice sponsorship for Denali. While Nigor is no longer with us, we were able to get a far better one. If you take a close look at the clothes I am wearing om my climbs, you’ll notice that it’s most of the time from the same brand; Haglofs. After my Denali video report, they must have noticed that as well and decided to support me on my Aconcagua expedition. How cool is it when your favorite outdoor brand is sponsoring you!!

But there is more. If you think of excellent down jackets, chances are you are thinking of Rab. Well, apparently they also thought of me, since I will be testing and reviewing one of their jackets as well!

Now it’s really time to climb

That’s all for now! I will be on Aconcagua for the upcoming days and will not have access to my laptop, or have an internet connection. I will be back with a trip report, both in text and video. Hold on!

April 3, 2018

Teaming up with Mountainreporters.com

It has been way to long since my last update! But this definitely does not mean nothing happened, on the contrary! The good news is that I teamed up with Mountainreporters.com.

Mountainreporters.com is a Dutch website on hiking, climbing and traveling in the mountains all over the world. They asked me to post blogs every week about my expedition plans, preparation, and other 7-Summits related subjects. For me, this is a fantastic way to get more hits on the blogs I write. The bad news? The website is only in Dutch, making it a little harder to read when you’re not dutch!

But no worries, I will translate the articles and place them on my site. I only need to find a little time to do so. But it’s a promise!

What about Denali?

So is there any update on Denali 2018? Sure! And all is good news. All preparations are done. I am mentally en physically ready to go. All whats left now is to stay healthy, do my usual trainings, but don’t get injured.

I will depart 10 May and my expedition will start 12 May. My return to the common world is scheduled for 1 June, and I plan to be back home on 3 June. But more details about the upcoming expedition will definitely appear here. Stay tuned!

February 13, 2018February 15, 2018

Denali 2018 is dead… Let’s do Denali!

Mixed feelings while writing this blog about Denali 2018. The last couple of weeks a lot of things happened, but unfortunately not all things where good. So let’s dive into the current status of my Denali (2.0) Expedition progress.

Status of the expedition

As you might have understood by the title of this blog, some things have changed. The 2018 expedition was planned and we were making good progress to get all preparation done in time. But then my climbing partner decided not to go to Denali. He just didn’t felt he was ready for it. So, I had an immediate problem and I felt I had to act fast…

Since I think it’s a bad decision to climb Denali solo, I had a decision to make. To find new climbing partners, I needed time… but May 2018 is getting closer every day. And it’s not easy finding capable climbers with the right ambition.. certainly not if you live in a country that has no mountains at all!

The other option I had was to drop my plans to climb Denali unguided and join another commercial expedition. This was a hard one since I put my head on to going unguided, which is very understandable given my experience last year.

So after having a good nights sleep, some deep thoughts and difficult discussions (mostly with myself :)), I decided to drop my ambition to go unguided; I joined a commercial expedition. So expedition Denali 2018 is dead… Let’s do Denali!

Training

Training is good! I’m on the 20k intermediate schedule from Garmin. The schedule requires me to run 5 times a week. And I love it! I do most of my training sessions early in the morning before I go to work. Meaning I often get up before 6 o’clock in the morning and enjoy the silence while doing my workout. But I do look forward to running in the sunrise in a couple of weeks!

To add some strength and core stability I am following the Be Your Best Program at BuitenGewoonFit. I loved it last year and I love it again this year! But, because it’s always nice to do a little extra, I’m taking another extra Bootcamp work-out every week.

This all adds up to 8 workouts a week. I find it hard to compare my current fitness level to last year. But I do feel I’m on the right track!

Gear

Not much news on the Gear-section. Most things I already bought last year. But I did some extra hardware like snow pickets, and some new carabiners and slings. And of course some snowshoes! Luckily, Klimwinkel helped me a lot on this and will continue to help me. Thanks a lot for that!

Any other things?

Yes! Definitely! I’m working hard on the future of my project. Recently the Utrechtse Sportkant (Sports paper of Utrecht) published a pretty big article about my The7in7 project and the Denali 2018 expedition. It’s a great read and certainly worth your time. You can use Google Translate if you don’t understand Dutch!

Another article of me, about my successful summit on Mount Elbrus, got published on Mountainreporters.

I had some small support from Vifit Sport. They were kind enough to support me with some high protein recovery bars and drinks. The drinks and bars didn’t last long, but every help is greatly appreciated and welcome!

And there is even more on the way! I’m expecting another, but smaller article, pretty soon. But more on this once the article has been published.

Is that all? No, not yet… I’m working hard on something else, which could be a really big step for the project. Stay tuned for an update on that!

Meanwhile, my focus on the Denali 2018 expedition is growing a bit every day.