Storms on Aconcagua, everything you need to know
The main causes of storms and those responsible for bad weather are fundamentally the humid winds expelled by the Pacific Anticyclone, which run to the South and rise to the West, colliding with the mountainous mass of the Cordillera, cooling and where its humidity becomes snow on the high peaks of the Andes. In Aconcagua there are not only storms of snow and wind, but due to its geographical location the most feared storms are electric ones. The crests of the mountain (the North-West sector and the top) are the places most visited by electrical sparks (lightning), making it difficult to stay and climb.
Strong winds blow from the West on Cerro Aconcagua, which, added to the large size of the hill, form the immense and famous mushroom. This is located in the upper part of Aconcagua and can be seen from Plaza de Mulas, creating a beautiful landscape and a terrible negative forecast of strong winds and rainfall in height. Approaching or entering at those moments would be deadly. When approaching it is advisable to leave the top of the mountain.
Even with good weather (in summer) temperatures of about -20° C are recorded at night. At the top the common temperature is -30° C. But when Aconcagua is visited by bad weather and by air masses of the South, in Plaza de Mulas an approximate temperature of -18° C is maintained, while in the high altitude camps it is common to have -25° C. Likewise, most of the nights and days can be in shorts, while that at the top you can get to be with a simple fleece, these points are the exact reference that sometimes the weather is not so harsh and rigorous. It is convenient that the climber is always prepared for these sudden climatic changes. During the Climb Aconcagua Cheap during the winter the Aconcagua is not visited. Its temperature never rises above 0 ° C, in addition to being hit by strong winds and constant snowstorms. Extremely low temperatures are recorded in shady places on the mountain. The Incas used the Aconcagua Valley to obtain supplies for the army that was in the garrison further south, in the territory of the promaucaes. Since How to Climb Aconcagua fought so frequently there, they couldn’t rely on crops that could be destroyed by the Araucanians The importance of the valley for supplying the Inca army is clearly reflected in its Mapuche name. The word Aconcagua comes from the Mapuche language, COGN = harvest and CAHUA = corn, the preposition “a” being a contraction of cadn, much, abundant. Valdivia gives the valley the name of Canconcagua “Great Producer of Corn” .The origin of the name Aconcagua then comes from the fertility in the production of corn. Older sources duplicated CONGCONG to better indicate the abundance of production.
