Today we woke up at 12:30 am and put on all of our layers that we had set out the night before. Once we finished that, we put our huge mountaineering boots on and went into the cooking tent to try and eat some food before we left. We were originally supposed to leave at 1:30 am but getting ready took longer than expected so we left at 2 am. I was really stressed and nervous when getting ready, but once we left, I felt a lot better. We had our crampons and harnesses on and were hooked up with a rope to our guide Roberto from the start. I felt pretty good for the first few hours and I came up with ways of distracting myself and passing the time. After a while, it got extremely cold and the winds picked up. There were four of us trying to summit: Me, my dad, Tony, and Jeff. Tony was far in front with his guide, Chino, then me and my dad with Roberto, then right behind us was Jeff and Alejo. We hiked for a long time before I had to stop because I got so cold. I had all of my layers on, but my fingers got so cold because they were in huge mittens and were cramped up trying to hold my ice ax. After my fingers got cold, then my toes got cold, and shortly after that my core and whole body got cold. I kept going for a while and we crossed something that was sort of like an ice fall. There were crevasses and spikes of ice coming up from the ground everywhere. Once we got to the top of the ice fall, I was freezing. We stopped for a break, I sat down, and my legs started shaking because I was so cold. The weather was really bad - the winds were around 50 mph and the temperature was around 0 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point, my dad was also freezing and tired, so we decided that we should stop and turn around. I was so exhausted and cold, I really didn't want to go down, I just wanted to stop and go to sleep. Despite being really disappointed that we didn't make it to the summit, we were proud of ourselves because we reached 19,600 ft which is the highest both of us had ever been. Jeff and Alejo turned around as well. It took us a while to get down because it was so windy and steep. When we finally did get down, my dad and I collapsed and laid on the ground.
We finally motivated to get to our tent and get into our sleeping bags. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell right to sleep. When I woke up, we had to pack up our tent and clothes and then wait until Tony got back to leave. When Tony did get back, he packed up his things and told us about his climb. He made it to the top, but just barely and he said it was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Once everyone was ready, we headed down the mountain to base camp where we would be picked up by the van and taken back to La Paz. It took a long time to get down the mountain because we were all so exhausted.
When we finally got to base camp, they had a surprise celebration lunch waiting for us which was great. Then the van came, and I immediately went to sleep despite the drive being super bumpy. We drove for a long time back to La Paz and had dinner at a pizza place before going back to the hotel. We got a few hours of sleep and then left at 12am to go to the airport to fly home.
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