Late last night a Danish climber arrived in the hostel where I stay in Mendoza. He had been hit in the face by rocks. After some days of heavy snow some slopes had become unstable and in the normally very safe part in between Nido de Condores and Camp Berlin a rock avalanche hit the route. He was the only one in a larger group that was hit. He's bruised and have some cuts in the face, but in general he's OK. It sounds like he and the rest of the people in the group was extremely lucky.
Worse were some other news.
A commercial expedition (Adventurepeaks) had ended up in trouble due to bad decisions and one climber died (Australian). A Czech citizen perished in, or close to, Berlin.
Some climbers are still on the "missing list" and it's expected that the death toll will officially rise later on today, but so far nothing is for certain.
What is for certain is that the rescue choppers had a busy day yesterday. Over 40 (!!!) evacuation flights were done.
Some of the evacuated were from the group mentioned above, some from a Polish expedition, some from other groups.
It's kind of chaotic over here at the moment and sometimes the news are contradictory.
Here's one article , in Spanish:
http://www.mdzol.com/mdz/nota/273327-ac ... rada-2011/
Google translated:
http://translate.google.com/translate?j ... da-2011%2F
It's easy underestimate Aconcagua and for example call the peak the highest and most boring scree slog in the world, but every year it kills a few people.
