Loving the High Life on a South American Peak

By Leonard Shapiro

Dr. Martin Harrell knows plenty about pain. That’s his medical specialty—pain management— but as he sat in his tent on the side of a mountain last month, shivering in subzero temperatures made even colder by 25-mile-an-hour winds, surely he had to ask himself “what am I doing here?”

Not really.

Quite the contrary, Harrell was having the time of his life trying to ascend an Argentina mountain—Aconcagua in the Andes—and its 22,800-foot peak, the highest summit in South America and the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas.

Harrell, who lives in The Plains with his wife, Sheila, and children Molly and Will, recently returned from a two- week climbing adventure with one of his physician friends. They were residents together at the University of North Carolina medical school when they both developed an interest in climbing, initially satisfying that pursuit in the far tamer mountains of North Carolina.

In 2010, they traveled to Mt. Rainier in Washington State. It was not quite as high as their recent Argentina climb, but challenging nonetheless on a mountain that was heavily glaciated. They were roped up, had to wear crampons on their boots for traction on the ice and occasionally had to traverse dangerous crevasses.

“I’d never done it before,” Harrell said, “and that first trip was definitely an eye- opener. We did it with a mountaineering company and we were on the mountain for six days. I also had to learn how to camp out. For me, it’s just a hobby. And I definitely don’t have the expertise or even the desire to ever do it alone.”

A year later, the two friends were back at Rainier taking a different route to the top, and they’ve since done several more climbs—volcanoes in Mexico and Ecuador before deciding to challenge Aconcagua. On their most recent trip, there were four climbers and two guides, and because of an El Nino effect, a lot more snow than normal.

On the first day, they hiked six miles from the park entrance at 8,000 feet up to 11,000 to an intermediate camp, spending two nights there to get acclimated to the altitude. Then it was a 15-mile hike

up to the base camp at 14,000 feet. It’s a permanent facility, with 40 sturdy tents, with wi-fi, internet and a place to purchase pizza and hamburgers.

It was a tad pricey—$7 for a Coke and $15 to take a shower—but Harrell wasn’t complaining. A Charlotte native, he was able to get score updates on the Carolina Panthers in their opening NFL playoff game. And then it was off to the next camp, at 16,000 feet for a night, and then their highest camp, at 18,000 feet, where they spent three nights in anticipation of reaching the summit.

“It was freezing cold up there,” Harrell said, despite using a down sleeping bag and wearing a fleece-lined wool shirt, wool long underwear and a fleece and down sweater. Even worse, Harrell suffered altitude sickness—a bad headache, nausea, shortness of breath and an overall lack of energy.

“You’d walk 15 feet on level ground,” he said, “and it felt like mile 25 of a marathon.” Two of his teammates and a guide set out for the summit early in the morning. Harrell knew he couldn’t make it all the way but, with another guide, managed to climb to 19,400 feet before he was forced to turn back because of the altitude’s debilitating effects. Still, that was almost 400 feet higher

than he’d ever climbed before.
“A personal best,” he said. “I wasn’t disappointed. Getting to the summit is one small aspect of it, and it didn’t bother me at all. It took the other guys 11 hours to get there. It would have been 16 hours for me, and that was really the threshold of what’s safe. I would have had to come down in the dark.”

Harrell had trained by running 35 miles a week and making 15 trips up and down Old Rag in the Shenandoah National Park. He said he was in fabulous shape, but altitude sickness can strike anyone, any time. 

Still, he’d love to do it again. Everest, at 29,000 feet, is not on his bucket list, but there are peaks in the Alps, Ecuador and Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa he’d like to try.

“To do Everest, the base camp is at 17,000 feet and the whole thing is a two- month trip,” he said. “I really don’t want to be away from Sheila and the kids for that long. This one was about two weeks. That was enough.”

Agony and ecstasy included.