They said it was only another hour to Plaza de Mulas base camp, but it felt like five. It was day fifteen on Aconcagua, the day after our summit attempt, and we were in the midst of our descent from camp 3 (19,650ft) to base camp (14,300ft). We knew we had a barbecue and some beers waiting for us in our dome tent, but we were all wrecked. Two of our team had been evacuated by helicopter already and a third should have been during the descent. He was showing signs of cerebral edema, so the doctor at camp 2 gave him a shot of dexamethasone and we continued to struggle our way down mountain.
It was honestly one of the hardest days on the expedition, not just because descending 5,500ft on ice and scree in 4 hours is objectively brutal, but also because we were all just beginning to process our experiences. Barely 24 hours earlier, I had made the call to turn around about 1,000 vertical feet from the summit of the mountain, and I wasn’t really sure yet whether or not I had made a good decision or just wimped out in the moment. I was carrying heavy (~45lbs), the descent had earned me about a dozen blisters on my feet, and each step was a battle.
My Swiss friend Christoph called out to me: “Jimmy, look up here.” He took a pic of me with base camp in the background (pic above). I was leaning all my weight on my poles and knew immediately I looked as bad as I felt, so I told him, “take another one.” I tried to stand up tall, and we took a replacement photo (pic below).
If you look close you can see the people zig zagging down mountain into Plaza de Mulas, the second largest base camp in the world behind Everest Base Camp. I am still wearing my googles, because my sunglasses broke the day before; the bottom of my nose was seriously blistered from sun reflecting on the snow for two weeks; and it had been 9 days since I had had a shower.
There are two routes up Aconcagua, the normal route and the 360 route. Both routes exit via the normal route, but we had done our approach via the 360 route. Consequently, we had yet to encounter anyone who had come down off the mountain. When people left base camp on our side of the mountain, they just disappeared. Maybe they summited…maybe they all died. We had no way of knowing. So we had not yet had any of the type of “some people going up while others were coming down” encounters we were about to have when we arrived in the tent city crossroads that is Plaza de Mulas.
We waited for our whole team to finish the descent and trudged our way into base camp together. None of us took razors up the mountain and even the thinnest of us shed quite a few pounds on the journey. Were it not for the massive packs of expensive mountaineering gear strapped to our backs, we could easily have been mistaken for a band of grizzled homeless people.
On the far side of base camp we found our large dome tent, an identical replica of the one we had called home in Plaza de Argentina on the other side of the mountain. We all threw our gear down in a heap and headed inside for food and drinks. We would still have 17 miles of hiking to get off the mountain waiting for us on the next day, but we were positively giddy to be back in the luxury of base camp.
Immediately across from our dome was another just like it with a Russian team inside that would be making their way up the mountain on the next morning. They all looked so fit and strong, and one of the ladies on their team was a gorgeous women wearing perfect make up. Our team took to calling her Mountain Barbie. It all seems so obviously horrible now from the vantage point of polite society, but in the cruel haze of mountain life it made perfect sense for us to joke together about all of the ways this poor lady would suffer on Aconcagua.
“I hope her eye shadow doesn’t get swept off the mountain in the wind;” “Imagine her tying to snuggle with her pee bottle to thaw it out at camp 3;” “How do you even strap crampons on to high heels?” We laughed and laughed while savoring our first substantive meal in 10 days.
The next morning as we were mustering in preparation for our lengthy journey down mountain, the Russian team was strapping on their heavy loads for the very first time right next to us. The wild juxtaposition of two teams headed in very different directions was obvious to everyone. Just then, one of the Russians turned to me and asked a very innocent question—“So how was it up there?”
Exactly How Much Truth Can You Handle?
The question was simple, but I didn’t know how to answer it. What exactly was this dude hoping to get out of this question? My emotions about my experience were raw and not yet so filtered as what you are reading now. I both hated and loved my experience. I had faced profound struggle on the mountain; I literally dreamed about the soft pillow on my bed at home. And yet despite all of the difficulty, I have missed the absolute simplicity of the the mountain struggle about once an hour since I have been home.
This whole exchange lasted about 25 seconds, and yet if felt like so much longer. I just kind of stared at the guy. I am a professional communicator and almost never at a loss for words, but I honestly just couldn’t find an answer. Eventually, I mumbled a couple of generic cliches and tried to move on with my day.
For the rest of the hike down and for each of the days since, I haven’t been able to shake this simple encounter with my Russian friend. Somehow this brief exchange has become emblematic of one of the great struggles in my life. I have been profoundly blessed with a myriad of awesome experiences; I know that part of my calling is to convey the beauty and depth and perspective gained from my experiences; and yet—I genuinely struggle with how much truth to put on offer. Just exactly how much truth can a person handle?
I know he’s intended as the villain in A Few Good Men, and yet each day I identify just a bit more with Jack Nicholson’s brilliant performance as Colonel Jessup—“You want the truth…you can’t handle the truth.”
If you can do anything else with a clean conscience…
He was one of, if not, my absolute favorite professor. At the time I enrolled in my first class with him; I had no idea he would one day become my boss, a mentor of sorts, and eventually a great friend. Over the years, we have taken in dozens of Thunder games together and he remains one of the first people I call when I am facing tough decisions. And yet, what he said deeply offended me.
I was a sophomore at ORU and I was finally taking my first real theology class—Introduction to Old Testament. He is a New Testament scholar, but it was his first year teaching and as I learned all too well in my 6 years as an adjunct professor, you teach what is available until you get to teach your specialty. I don’t remember precisely what prompted this particular rabbit trail, but I will never forget the comment. He had come to professor life after multiple stretches of pastoral ministry in a number of different contexts and capacities, and he looked all of us young aspiring ministers in the eyes and he said, “If you can do anything else with your life with a clean conscience…literally anything else…you should absolutely do it. If you cannot escape the call to ministry, you should definitely obey God and follow that call.”
It was a shockingly transparent moment fueled by a multitude of life lessons none of us in the room could possibly appreciate and yet…I was furious at his comments. How dare he speak about the call of God in such a way. I held him in too high regard and I would never be found dishonoring someone in authority over me; but I just couldn’t understand what would make him say such a thing.
All these years later, his words are barely even controversial to me. Truth is; I have shared them a few times myself with young people just beginning their journeys. I see clearly now that he had lived the thing the rest of us had only been dreaming about. Our ministry lives were all hypothetical, but his scars were real. These weren’t the words of a cynic or a man projecting his hurt on others. These were the words of a pastor who was seeking to do us a kindness. His words were not intended to turn us all away from lives in ministry…only to better prepare those of us who would continue down that road for what truly lay ahead.
Why are you breaking my heart?
There is a strange passage in Acts 21 where Paul is finishing up what has come to be called his 3rd missionary journey. He is passing through a place called Caesarea en route to Jerusalem. While there, a prophet named Agabus approaches Paul, grabs his belt, uses it to bind his hands and feet, and tells him that imprisonment awaits him when he arrives in Jerusalem. Understandably, Paul’s friends then urge him not to finish the journey to Jerusalem, but Paul’s response is both shocking and profound. He says, “What are you doing weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready to not only be imprisoned in Jerusalem but also to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.”
Where Paul’s people understandably see a warning, Paul sees something different—something between a confirmation and a call to readiness. We know from elsewhere in the text that Paul has a reasonable idea about what ultimately awaits him, and yet somewhere in the midst of this mysterious encounter that almost no one else can appreciate, Paul finds a kind of strength and resolve to face his trial head on. The prophesy was a grace to Paul. Not the kind that might help Paul avoid a particular trouble, but the kind that he would lean upon while in the midst of said trouble.
For some, this is one of the most beautiful texts in the New Testament. For many, it is completely lost on them. Those who live their lives as frustration/pain/difficulty avoiders cannot possibly understand the depth of such communication between two people actually in the arena. “You know you don’t actually have to do that” they say with a condescending chuckle from the sidelines, as if they are the ones who have it all figured out.
I don’t really blame them for not understanding. I learned long ago that you cannot expect someone to live with a perspective you gained from an experience they didn’t have. But I also don’t know how I am supposed to answer them when they ask me after my race/mountain/adventure “so how was it up there?”
The absolute unvarnished truth is it was terrible and awesome and exhausting and frustrating…and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
I hope this is helpful for you. I am going to be writing a bit more in the coming weeks both as a matter of my own personal discipleship and also in hopes to be a blessing to the many people in whose lives God has given us some influence. If you enjoy these posts, please share them and let us know.
Also, we are very actively building our Discipletrek teams for the upcoming 2023 season, including a trip back to Annapurna Base Camp in March, a trip to Iceland in July, and many many more. We would love it if you considered joining one of our adventure teams.
