The end of my two-year commitment with the Peace Corps loomed on the horizon. I dreaded the day I would have to say good-bye to my Ecuadorian friends whom I had grown to love, especially my climbing partner, Miguel.

In the fall of 1975, on one of our weekend expeditions high in the Andes, while lying in our sleeping bags side by side under the stars, Miguel and I reminisced about our many climbs together. Knowing that my departure from South America was only a few months away, Miguel proposed that we organize an expedition to climb Mt. Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the western hemisphere at just under 23,000 feet (7,000 meters). He wanted to spend our last days together on the “roof of the world.”

Aconcagua, the Mt. Everest of the Andes, is located in Mendoza Province in Argentina, 15 kilometers from the Chilean border. This towering mountain has lured climbers from all over the world for over a century.

We planned our trip for December, midsummer south of the equator. That particular year had been designated by the United Nations as the International Year of the Woman, an auspicious time to make the climb. My climbing friends told me that only seven women had reached the summit of Mt. Aconcagua. The first woman, Adrienne Bance from France, reached the summit in 1940. They also told me that, as far as they knew, no American woman had made it all the way to the top, based on the list of entries in the ledger at the summit.

I was in better shape than I had ever been in my life, after having lived in a remote indigenous Quechua community at 12,000 feet in the Andes, where I spent much of my time recording, transcribing and translating local legends into Spanish from the native Quechua language of the Inca descendants. The legends were compiled into a book that the Ecuadorian government published just before my return to the US. The teachers in the Quechua-speaking communities used the book to help the children learn Spanish.

Life at high altitude in the Quechua community was rigorous and primitive. We had no running water, electricity, latrines, stores, or clinics. My daily routine included hauling drinking and bathing water from the irrigation ditch, and hiking around the countryside visiting the various families with whom I was working. Once a week I hiked down the mountain to the food market, stuffed my backpack with about sixty pounds of food, then turned around and hiked back up the mountain.

For added exercise, I jogged along the dirt paths that connected neighboring villages. The activities of daily living alone provided sufficient aerobic training for the massive volcanoes I climbed almost every weekend with my Ecuadorian friends in the climbing club, El Club de Andinismo Politécnico, part of the National Polytechnic Institute in Quito.

Miguel and I, inseparable climbing companions, talked endlessly about how we could find a way to make our dream of climbing Mt. Aconcagua a reality. How would we be able to afford the expensive trip, given my $120 per month salary in the Peace Corps and Miguel’s impoverished status as a university student?

We decided to present our plans to the Sports Association of Quito and request funding from the Ecuadorian government. To our great surprise, the sports officials responded enthusiastically. They offered to sponsor us on the condition that the expedition would include at least four climbers, instead of just Miguel and me, as we had originally planned.

Miguel and I had wanted to climb Aconcagua alone as a sort of “sentimental journey,” since these would be our last days spent together before I began my long, overland journey back home to the States. Grateful nevertheless to receive funding for our expedition, we complied with the Association’s wishes and invited two more experienced climbers, Marcelo Altamirano and Eloy Guamán, both from the climbing club called Inti-Nan.

The Association gave us 10,000 sucres ($400) to cover expenses for the four of us. By South American standards in 1975, this was a large sum of money, yet not enough to permit us to travel by air, nor to stay in decent hotels.

We left Quito December 12, 1975. Aconcagua lay 5,695 kilometers and nine days of traveling away from Quito. We spent close to one hundred hours on buses, stopping only in Lima and Arica in Peru, and in Santiago, Chile, where we got some desperately needed sleep.

A rickety old bus with luggage and animals strapped on top took us through Ecuador. The bus was so crowded with people standing in the aisle, that even turning around proved to be challenging. Marcelo had to sleep propped up in the aisle on the floor with all the other people without seats pressed against him. The smell of cigarette smoke, vomit, and stale urine from young children engulfed us.

The Chilean buses were much less cramped. When we finally arrived in Santiago, we decided to stay an extra day to rest and recuperate from our utterly exhausting travel. Miguel and I went to the beach at Viña del Mar, while the others explored the city.

The following day, at 6:30 am, we caught the bus headed for the town of Mendoza, Argentina, where all expeditions to Mt. Aconcagua must pass through in order to get permission to climb the mountain.

When we finally got a clear view of the towering monolith with its vertical south wall, I felt a shiver of awe and fear run through my body.

Can I really do this?

As we bounced along the winding dirt road that took us up a steep mountain pass, I silently questioned if I really wanted to go through with this climb. But the shear anticipation and excitement overshadowed the doubts.

We found a cheap hotel in Mendoza. We could only afford one room with a single bed. Although the men offered to let me have the single bed with a sagging mattress all to myself, I preferred sleeping on the wooden floor in my sleeping bag.

We spent three days in Mendoza, taking care of all the complex legalities involved in obtaining permission by the authorities to climb Mt. Aconcagua.

At police headquarters, we presented our packet of requisite documents. Besides our passports, the packet included letters of recommendation for each of us from the Sport’s Association of Ecuador, the lists of all the mountains each of us had ever climbed, and the years of experience we’d each had as climbers. Later, the police fingerprinted and photographed us.

Each climber had to pay a $10 refundable fee to cover the cost of removing his or her body off the mountain in case of death.

From there the authorities directed us to the police doctor to see if he thought we were physically capable of attempting the climb.

The doctor hooked me up with various devices. The blood pressure monitor showed a reading of 95/50. The doctor said my low blood pressure showed that I was in good shape, but that if the pressure went any lower, I needed to take a heart stimulant called Coramina—which I never took. We had to run a few meters at top speed and then have our vital signs rechecked. The police doctor patted me on the back in a fatherly way and told me “Congratulations for being in unusually good health for a woman.”

He pronounced all of us physically fit and then sent us to get a psychiatric evaluation. We could not find the psychiatrist. He had left for the day. After we gave the police doctor a small sum of money in exchange for his cooperation, he decided we showed no evidence of being mentally deranged or suicidal. He waived the psychiatric evaluation and signed the form, giving us the green light we needed to continue the approval process.

On the morning of the third day in Mendoza, the police ordered us to bring in all of our equipment to be checked by the chief of security. This next hurdle worried us because our shoddy, mostly homemade equipment looked like it belonged to amateurs. Fortunately, I had my Kelty back pack, down jacket and sleeping bag that I had brought with me from the States.

When I first joined the climbing club, my parents bought and mailed me, at my request, some expensive climbing gear. In the Quito post office, I tried to retrieve my package. I spent half a day overcoming administrative obstacles and filling out forms, only to discover that the package had been stolen.

A few professional-looking items lay among our pile of motley gear, like a barely-used Swiss climbing rope and two shiny metal ice axes with wooden shafts. On a few occasions, Miguel and I had offered to serve as mountain guides for climbers from Europe and the US who needed help navigating the glaciated volcanoes of Ecuador. For payment, we asked for gear in lieu of money.

Our pile of equipment lacked some essential items, such as double boots to reduce the chance of frostbite, down pants and parkas, and bivouac gear for emergencies. We held our breath as the police officer looked over our unimpressive gear. He decided to overlook the glaring omissions because of our group’s extensive mountaineering experience.

With a collective sigh of relief, we got the official stamp of approval on our final paperwork. We listened as the police official telegraphed an order to Puente de Inca, the army base that controls access to the mountains. The order gave us permission to climb Mt. Aconcagua. We let out yelps of relief and gave each other exuberant hugs.

We spent the rest of the day buying food supplies and over-the-counter medicines for our first aid kit, and looking for a valve for our portable oxygen tank that we had borrowed from a hospital. We never found a valve that would fit our little tank, thus it was of no use. I felt anxious knowing that in case of an emergency there would be no supplemental oxygen. My partners seemed relatively unconcerned by the idea.

That evening we celebrated with a huge Argentine steak dinner that cost less than one dollar.

On the morning of December 24, we caught the bus to Puente de Inca, an unusual army base at 8,800 ft. elevation. It looked more like a ski resort with its massive stone buildings. The army base headquartered a training program for its mountaineer corps.

The name Puente de Inca, which means Bridge of the Inca, refers to a natural bridge formed entirely out of yellow, brown, and white-colored mineral deposits left by the river that flows below the bridge. Not far from the natural bridge, hot springs bubble up from the ground. Bathhouses with huge stone tubs for bathing had been built into the rock. When an avalanche destroyed an adjacent hotel in the 1950s, the baths were abandoned and have since become covered with mineral deposits, creating an otherworldly appearance.

The officers at the army base gave us a hearty welcome and vigorously shook our hands. Once again, our equipment had to be checked, and once again we held our breath. The examining officer looked through our gear with a disapproving grimace. After discussing his concerns with us, he finally decided that, since the police had approved of our skimpy gear, he would as well.

An officer told us to go to the infirmary for yet another physical examination to check our vital signs after we had jogged once around the grounds. The army doctor told us that the information he gathered on the climbers would be sent to the university in Buenos Aires where scientists were working on a formal study of the effects of high altitude on humans.

All of us had elevated red blood cell counts as a result of living at high altitude in Ecuador where the oxygen pressure was significantly reduced. We had witnessed many climbers who had not acclimatized to the altitude in the Andes end up with acute “mountain sickness.” The symptoms include headaches, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, irritability, apathy and, in extreme cases, loss of rational faculties.

Many of the expeditions to Aconcagua allow themselves up to a month on the mountain in order to acclimate. We only allowed ourselves two weeks, with the expectation that, since we lived at high altitude, we were already acclimatized.

Christmas Eve arrived just as we finished jumping through all the many hoops. We intended to begin our climb the next day, on Christmas.

That evening we spent soaking our bodies in the hot springs, and later into the night we drank delicious Argentine wine with the officers and soldiers. We all became gushingly sentimental and drank endless toasts to our families, friends and each other.

On Christmas Day, the commanding officer informed us that our departure would be delayed until the following day due to the runoff from melting snows on the surrounding peaks. The muddy route became impassable for the mules. The officer assigned a soldier to brief us about the mountain.

The soldier had obviously played this role many times and had all of his facts in order. He said that a Swiss Alpine guide reached the summit in 1897. The first woman to reach the summit was French, a member of the Link expedition in 1940. The three-member party was killed as they were coming off the summit. It was rumored that Link had killed them, and then killed himself in a moment of temporary psychosis from the altitude and extreme conditions.

We were told that more than 250 people had died on the mountain from various causes. A nearby cemetery contained the remains of some of those climbers who had died on the mountain. At the time of our expedition, eight dead bodies lay on the slopes of Aconcagua, including an American woman, Jeanette Johnson. The soldier said that her frozen corpse showed every indication of having been murdered. The story of her death remained in my thoughts. I wondered why no one removed those eight corpses.

For the prior two years, Jeanette Johnson’s name had become a household word among climbers throughout South America, stirring the imagination and evoking feelings of mystery and fear.

Investigative journalists speculated about the possible motive for Jeanette’s murder and also the murder of her boyfriend, John Cooper, a NASA official. The third member of the group, Zeller, was a policeman from Texas. When Zeller came down off the mountain, officers at the army base asked about his partners. He stated that John Cooper had frozen to death and that Jeanette Johnson had disappeared.

The Argentine police contacted American officials and asked if they would like to have an investigation done. The officials declined the offer, so the case remained closed.

Rumors ran wild and included the possibility that the CIA planned the murders. John Cooper’s body was found shortly afterwards and taken down off the mountain. His skull was fractured and there was a wound where a presumed ice axe had penetrated his abdomen. When questioned about the findings, Zeller said they were caused by a fall. Yet, where Cooper’s body was found, the grade was so minimal as to make a fall unlikely. Jeanette’s body was nowhere to be found. The snows had covered all traces. The scene of this tragedy occurred at approximately 20,000 feet on the Polack Glacier.

The soldier’s accounts of other strange deaths captured our imaginations. He told us about a Swiss couple who fought each other with their ice axes and later died. And a priest from Mexico who, upon reaching the summit, held out his crucifix, made a little speech about being close to God and then flung himself off the edge.

Aconcagua appeared to have strange effects on some people’s minds, due not only to the lack of oxygen and extreme fatigue, but perhaps also due to other factors as yet unknown to us. Hallucinations were not uncommon among high altitude climbers.

The soldier advised us to refrain from making jokes on our climb since some people could be especially susceptible to irritability at high altitudes. An innocent joke, he said, could develop into a serious fight—even among the best of friends.

On December 26, we were ready for our departure. In order to cut down on the cost of gear-carrying mules, we decided to pack in everything ourselves on our backs, except for one eighty-pound box of food. Two soldiers accompanied the mule we hired to transport our box of food. We agreed to meet the soldiers at the base camp on the third day, after the route had time to dry up.

We said good-bye to the comforts of the army base and to our many well-wishers who firmly shook our hands, gave us manly hugs, and stood watching and waving until we disappeared from view. Our grand send-off gave the impression that we were undertaking an important mission. On the other hand, maybe they thought we might not come back alive.