Death on Aconcagua
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What happened during the 1973 Aconcagua climbing expedition?
Due to the nature of today's episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of graphic body horror and death. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. It's 1973, a hotel in Mendoza, Argentina. energy is high. Eight Americans are staying there, but just for the night. In the morning, they'll start a trek all the way to the summit of Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere. That's the plan, anyway. A local reporter, Rafael Moran, is there documenting the group alongside a photographer. When the New York Times interviewed Moran 50 years later, he told them he didn't cover every bunch of foreigners that showed up to conquer the mountain.
But at the time, this one feels special. There's a NASA engineer, a police officer, a doctor, a lawyer, and even a woman, which is remarkable for the time period. plus the parties attempting the difficult Polish route, which requires them to scale 2,000 nearly vertical feet up a massive glacier to reach the summit. Only four other groups have managed it since 1934. As Moran interviews everyone, something feels off. These people should feel like a team. They're about to embark on a difficult, dangerous journey, but there's no sense of solidarity. In fact, many of them hardly know each other. They're from different cities and some are just meeting for the first time. Moran pulls the photographer aside and instructs him to get individual shots of everyone.
It'll be convenient to have current photos on file. If anyone doesn't make it off the mountain. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Today, we're covering two mysterious deaths near the summit of Aconcagua. Officially, they were accidents. But ever since the bodies were recovered, theories have flown about murder on the mountaintop. Be sure to check us out on Instagram, at The Conspiracy Pod, and we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Stay with us.
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Aconcagua has a reputation as an easy mountain, because compared to some other mountains that reach record-breaking heights, the trek doesn't require a lot of technical expertise. But that's not to say that climbing Aconcagua is actually easy. The landscape might be stunning, but it's also brutal. Windswept, blinding, and dotted with penitentes. They're like stalagmites rising from the floor of a cave, but made out of ice. Climbers have to navigate through fields of these otherworldly formations, some as tall as six feet. And getting up the mountain is not always a linear trip.
Who were the climbers and what were their backgrounds?
In 1973, the American climbers needed more supplies than they could carry at once, so their ascent was actually a maddening logistical nightmare of shuttling equipment up the mountain, then turning around to go down for the next load, for days on end. And then there's the elevation. Aconcagua is the highest mountain outside of Asia. Base camp is at roughly 13,500 feet. That's just a thousand feet shy of the highest point in the continental United States. And this is the starting point for the Polish route. From there, it's another 8,000 feet up to the summit at around 22,800 feet, over four miles above sea level. The physical effort of getting to that elevation is no joke, but that's not why it's hard.
Add to this the fact that the human body doesn't function well at high altitudes because the air doesn't have as much oxygen. And the higher you go, the less oxygen there is. Take it from me, I went to Everest Base Camp, climbed Kalapatar. At 16,000 feet, every breath feels like a hammer in your head. It is hard. That low oxygen forces climbers to breathe deeper and faster.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What happened during the 1973 Aconcagua climbing expedition?
0:00–4:13
2
Who were the climbers and what were their backgrounds?
4:13–8:14
3
What challenges did the climbers face on Aconcagua?
8:14–12:06
4
How did altitude sickness affect the climbers?
12:06–18:41
5
What decisions did the remaining climbers make as they approached the summit?
18:41–23:45
6
What were the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Janet Johnson?
23:45–39:06
7
How did the media cover the aftermath of the expedition?
39:06–47:03
8
What inconsistencies emerged in the survivors' accounts?
47:03–48:28
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Conspiracy Theories
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