“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” Abraham Lincon

Thanks so much for all the kind word. It was hard coming home after not making it to the summit of Aconcagua but set backs like this are just nature's way of making sure of keeping us humble. Success is a double edge sword, just see Tiger Woods, when things are too easy and we stop challenging ourselves we tent to loose perspective of our priorities. the trick is to actually realize that there is an opportunity to learn and to grow and allow it to happen, if we just stop dwelling on the negative. I like coming home and spending time alone or with my kids and listen to the internal voice.I am always thankful for the opportunity to see clearly the path ahead of me, with all the challenges and the frustrations I am still passionate about what my life is all about and what it represents.

I am still committed to my son and to help as many people in the process as possible, is through adventure that i express myself because what's life but a great adventure. I was a bit embarrassed when I had to ride out of base camp, but then i realized that i should only be embarrassed the day i let my ego get on the way and I don't recognize when its time to turn around. Thankfully for me the only frustration was because it would have been possible, i felt fine but the guide was overwhelmed trying to keep everybody happy at camp 2, it was almost like i ended up camping with the Kardashian sisters.
Overall the experience was a fantastic opportunity to see how my body reacted to altitude, the rest can be accomplished with discipline and training. Desire however can't be teach.

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.” Stuart Chase

Aconcagua- this one is for the broken hearted

I am back finally in Mendoza. If you just want to know where my head is, failure to summit only means I will comeback to Aconcagua and attempt again. Sort of like packing all your stuff to move to a new house just to find out that the moving van keys are missing and probably are somewhere in the boxes, you still move, just been delay temporarily, and now you are in a bad mood.

Now after a 9 hour mule ride back to civilization over treacherous terrain, i had a lot to think about.

The last day at base camp was like nursing a broken heart, i spent most of my day tucked in my sleeping bag before people around camp staged an intervention. Alpine Accents team was just heading out to camp one and they asked me to have dinner with them, little by little my mood lifted, had so much fun hanging out with the people that live at Camp Argentina, for three months of the year, Veronica, Pelao', Mauricio and other Argentineans leave their families for the summer holidays to work at base camp, they are a lot like a family, nothing like great company and great food to mend a broken heart.

Yesterday, Juan Horacio, an Argentinian Arriero pick me up with a pair of mules to ride back to Penitentes, there are 3 ways to get out of base camp Aconcagua, a three day trek but you need camping gear to spend the night at designated camping areas, by helicopter, a last resort and only used in emergencies, or by mule.
Fear depends on your options, we watched the mules balance our gear when we hiked to base camp over narrow terrain and even saw a couple of mules take a tumble, now here I was for the next 9 hours riding back to Penitentes with Juan.

Everything was OK, except for the moment when I looked back one more time and saw it, Aconcagua behind me, a perfect day to summit, it looks so beautiful, i cried as hard as Jen Aniston must have cried when she saw her then husband Brad Pitt and his new girlfriend Angelina Jolie on the cover of W Magazine.




for the next 9 hours, juan and I got to know each other well, i also got to see my trek backwards, great memories keep coming, the last 10 days had been hard but also been incredibly fun.

Juan was one of the Arrieros that carried our gear when we hiked in, he incidentally found my video camera on the road and returned it. On the way other Arrieros called him suegro or Father- in- Law, Juan then told me he is the proud father of seven daughters and has one more the way, all by different women,he told me with a smile, a few things became apparent to me, Arrieros love women and fathering kids and Argentina must have a fairly loose child support system, he looked well feed and he chain smoked so he obviously could afford his vices.

It was a perfect way to end my trip, the adventure and the memories will stay with me. The practical jokes we played on each other, Patrick of South Africa got things rolling when he tastefully placed a sticker on lead guide Matias Prieto's backpack, we spend all day behind him laughing our head off

I became victim number two when after watching Carlos follow me around in campo lenas, Tony my tent mate faked a love note from Carlos, fooling me was easy, ego is a terrible thing, the worse part was when Jacqui convince me that thanking him was the right thing to do, imagine my surprise when Carlos had no idea what I was talking about, Tony became victim number 3 when we convinced him Carlos was mad, his ego hurt for making fun of him. Carlos played the part rather beautifully when Tony approached him to apologize and Carlos made him believed they needed to take it " outside".

As usual, the people i met become the most important part of my journey, is like finding out you are adopted and your real family has invited you to a family reunion, you all of a sudden surrounded by people you have never met in your life but share a lot of things in common.


A lot of my new friends have summit or are scheduled to summit soon, Megan and Rich, a very handsome couple from Calgary where looking strong when I last saw them on their way to high camp two days ago, Marianne, a 66 year old woman from Canmore was looking fantastic too, nothing like getting your butt kicked by a grandma to get your ego to the regular size.

Aidan and Tim, two best friends from Washington, where also scheduled to summit soon and of course the rest of my AC team, i wish them a safe summit.

Of course i am coming back to Aconcagua, I can't hardly wait to start planning my return, next time though i would love to return with a friend not as part of a team. Matias and leo did a wonderful job of guiding us but it was hard for me to try and keep somebody else's pace specially when I didn't have a porter.

Until now to be my friend all i needed was for you to either have the ability to make me laugh or let me cry, now however there is a new requirement and I am taking applications.

Its an amazing world of madness that I have entered, mountaineering will not definitely be your first love but it will be your first grown up love, it will be your Harley Davidson riding boyfriend. I am not sure that I am coming back a better person or changed at all, I will be home happier and more determined that I am after all in the right path, I have seen the summit, and however hard it has been to even get as close i got, it's definitely worth it. I have some more pictures on my facebook if you want to see them all

back to base camp

just got back to base camp after making it to camp 2 yesterday. i have a lot of emotions that are building up. I suffered from severed dehydration and the guides decided that it was best for me to turn around. I felt fine, just weak and tired but since the team was heading to camp two again, Matias told me it was best for me to come back. I respect his decition, from the beggining i told him that i was going to follow his orders.

there were a couple of things that i did wrong, first carring all my gear instead of hiring a porter proved to be a mistake, second, i needed to learn to speak up, emotions are running high in the group, not enough toilet paper, broken tents and such so i ended up climbing to camp 2 with only half a liter.

I am incredibly sad,it´s hard to say but i still think i could have made it to the top. i guess now its time to go back home, regroup and see what i need to change then give it an other go.

base camp. plaza argentina

just a quick update. i am in base camp aconcagua, plaza argentina. we climb to camp 1 yesterday to bring gear before coming back to base camp as part of acclimatizing, climb high, sleep low. i had a terrible day, i barely made it, i was the only one od the team that didn´t hire a porter and i was carring 18k of gear. i have train to carry heavier gear but we climb to 5 000 meters, my legs where screaming for air.

today we rest before we continue to camp 1, then do the same, bring gear to camp 2, then 3 before the cummit.

I am stugling a lot, on a scale of 1 to 10, yesterday was a 10, i had a very hard day and i am not sure i am physically able to do it. Patrick and Jacqui a couple of south africa have payed for a porter for me, it´s incredible, i have never met them before, yet, out of kidness they have payed 150 us dollars just because they felt bad for me.

tomorrow is an other day, i am positive that since i climb without gear i will do better. send all you positive vibes,there are many factors that will determine if i am succesful or not and some of them i have no contol.

A lot of people felt bad for me, i was the last one to make it back to camp last night, aslmost an hour and a half after the last team, but like i told them, a bad day in a montain is sure better than a great day at the office.

Adios! on my way to Aconcagua

I am almost ready to board the plane. Just wanted to leave a couple of links to follow my progress. I have decided to climb Aconcagua without any media following my progress ( Except for Trent of the Calgary Herald, he is persistent and I promise to call from the summit) This is a new sport for me and I want to focus on learning and absorbing what's happening around me without having to worry about deadlines, i am sure I will be rushing to blog as soon as I can but there is nothing pretty about having to recover from a hard race or climb and having to find an internet cafe in the middle of nowhere because I have a newspaper deadline.
talking about media CTV did a great interview, it will be online shortly Alberta Primetime Trailblazers

I have been going crazy to make sure bills are paid, freezers have enough food, christmas concerts, band concerts, swim meets and school rides are arranged. The only thing I couldn't do was to buy christmas presents for my kids teachers, run out of cash, it was either that or my Petzl Sum'Tec Mountaineering ax that I need for my trip, all i want to say to my kids teachers is that they all my gratitude and I wish them the best Christmas season.

Things where hectic,(ok Nadia), they where downright out of control for a couple of days, my basement flooded again and it send me on a crazy bizarre journey where I called my realtor Tanya Eklund to sell my house and move to Vancouver, it turns out my house is hard to sell, busy street, can't be subdivided, unless I want to drop the price significantly, which in it means I cant move to Vancouver either, if they ever make a movie about me, they will cast Mr Bean to play me.

Things are fine, my kids are happy to see me go, i am a bit suspicious about this, and my niece is mobile once again after having surgery to repair her birthday party injury, so I can now go and do what have been dreaming about for the last three months, to climb Aconcagua, i feel confident and ready thanks to many people, specially my mentor, and friend Patrick Delaney who has spent countless hours making sure that I am confident about everything related to climbing.

To follow my progress Adventure Consultants will be posting updates on their website about our climb on their dispatches page,not schedule to start climbing until Dec 2 once we have acclimatize properly for a few days before the climb on the town of Penitentes, there are two local guides and five of us climbing, two Australians and two south Africans. If you want to check it out go just go to this page

I am leaving you with a quote from a 7 summit and cancer survivor. The 7 summits seem to be the road that leads to enlightenment for those of us that find that life sometimes throws challenges that seem to be a bit of a maze.

The human body can survive for about thirty days without food. The human condition can sustain itself for about three days without water, but no human alive can survive for more than thirty seconds without HOPE, because without hope we truly have nothing.”
Sean Swarner, Cancer Climber

Lucky Number 7

Two weeks before I head to Aconcagua,my gear is almost ready, I have been in MEC buying my gear and I spent more time trying day packs than I ever did trying wedding dresses when i was planning my wedding. :-)

I have a publisher interested a book that I have been writing, I thought of the tittle, Lucky Number 7, when Karl was diagnosed with BBS the Doctor explained the odds of my ex and I both been carriers and both passing the gene to Karl, infinite, he just said, really bad luck. Yes, bad luck for Karl but for me I am extremely lucky to be his mother.

Although the last few weeks with my niece breaking her ankle, I feel that the title of my book should be Murphy's Law. It has been challenging to keep my training schedule and keep my house functioning. Luckily I have as usual try to use the challenges as motivation to keep me focus. Wednesday I broke down crying, my niece was in pain, teachers were calling me to come to school right away because one of my kids had assignments missing, I had a short window to accomplish it all so it looked like I was going to have to push training until everybody went to bed, I was already tired from my first workout early morning and it was looking like I wasn't going to bed early, I was so mad that evening that I added 10 extra kilos to make it 40k in total to my pack and used a 15% incline on my treadmill to hike for a couple of hours. it feel sooooo good afterwards, life keeps telling me, this is a far you are possibly going and I just keep saying, i don't think so, you think that was hard, how about I make it even harder!. I have a blog follower Ana that sent me a link of her website it's a great place to gather information if you want to buy a treadmill, I use mine a lot, specially when life gets really busy, since my niece was in so much pain I couldn't leave her alone in the house for too long, I run for a couple of hours in the treadmill stopping when she needed me to adjust the pillows or more painkillers and run the last two outdoors. Also with flu season is a great way to make sure I don't skip workouts or shorten them.

I did a couple of talks on behalf of Foundation Fighting Blindness and Operation Eyesight, I loved the energy, I get nervous because i always think i have no business been there, specially when I have broke down crying numerous times in the last few weeks. but when I am there it just feels natural, not motivational speaker natural but as a regular person who is facing daily challenges but chooses to see the positive kind of a way, My message is always that as a mother of a son who is loosing his sight,I am learning that it is us the ones that are not, that see limits.

I am inspired by Karl every single day. He teaches me to not dwell on the pass and to not worry about the future, it's the now that matters. Karl doesn't worry about perfection either, waiting for the perfect time, or perfect weather is just an excuse to delay making a decision. he also teaches me that if you aren't willing to make a fool out of yourself you are cheating yourself of learning something new.

I have been approached by a daytime US talk show to possibly appear,not sure since I will already be in Aconcagua when the show is been taped, such are the exciting times, but I can't think of why i should stand there, it's Karl who, with his grace is guiding us all, like the captain of a rowing team, I am rowing the boat but it's him with his directions that is making sure we get to finish line. But like any amazing person, he doesn't think what he is doing is such a big deal. the cnib is training him on their ambassador club to be a community leader, Karl doesn't understand why. He asked me why do everybody think is amazing that he doesn't think is a big deal what he is going through,it just simply isn't, I am sure there are far worse things in life, he simply said. His teachers also told me how much of a positive influence he is in the classroom, his willingness to participate in class rubs off, at 15 years of age most kids disengage in class since it's not cool to be into school, Karl for some reason was born with his own manual, what's the point of going to school if ti's not to learn, even if working your hardest ends on just a C or worse.

Every single day there is not a moment i don't count my blessings, my kids are teaching me to have fun, to play fair, to always give your best and to never be afraid to get your hands dirty.

Bathroom stall poetry

"Whatever love we think deserve is the love we receive" Unknown, written in a bathroom stall at the Chinook Mall.

Is about a month before I head for Argentina, I have been really busy preparing, both physically and mentally. I know my trainer Ray Zahab is the best in the world but let me tell you, his workouts are tough, he makes no apologies for it, i told him I was exhausted after he asked me how I was feeling and he said. " good, you should".

The kick off for Aconcagua will be at my kids school, the teachers been asking me to talk to the kids since registration to sports specially cross country have been dwindling. the week before I go to Argentina, I will run for 7 hours on a treadmill and the kids and staff at St.James school will try to beat me on a separate treadmill, they will also ask friends and family for pledges and the money raised will go to All For Humanity and Operation Eyesight Universal. Originally we needed 7 treadmills (one for each continent) to engage as many kids as possible but I was unable to find all of them.

Things are falling into places, I stopped feeling angry and forced myself to understand better. It's always been easy to feel the " if's" as in " if I had the money" " if I was not alone" but that isn't the case. I have been asking for something that I haven't proven that I am ready for and I should work hard on making sure I am, and that's what I have been doing recently, training hard. I call it surrendering, its really different from giving up. Once I understood this, the anger went away, if I work hard everything is still possible, just not on the timeline I had anticipated. My focus was on being the fastest female to ascend all 7 highest peak not for me but to maximize exposure to blindness but even if it takes me 5 or even 7 years, dreams don't have expiry dates. and if I only reach a handful of people that's worth it.

Unfortunately training it's not as easy as with running, I can't just simply take to the mountains as I can step out of my house and run, even my long runs I was able to put my kids to bed and run all night on my treadmill so I wouldn't leave them alone for 12 hours. The endurance part I can do, I practically live at the gym but the skills are a different story, the second best is to read as much as I can on the subject and head to the mountains whenever I get a chance.

My favorite magazine right now is Gripped it has an amazing article about staying motivated, it says that we need two types of goals, end goals and process goals. End goals are external things such as accomplishing a race, a climb or quitting smoking, process goals are the things you learn in the process of your external achievements, they are internal such as the ability to increase your lactic threshold or experiencing less anxiety from not smoking. The order of the goals is very important too, making process goals more important will keep you motivated even when things get though because you see them as a valuable part of the end goal. I have been doing just that without knowing it, I have been looking forward to the training because i think it will make me a better runner too, hills have never been my strength and seeing how much better I am at them makes me want to train harder and harder. To increase my motivation I also picked an other end goal, running Atacama Race in March and aim for top 3 female.

My favorite climber right now is Sean Isaac from Canmore, I am learning that mountaineering is a sport that attracts incredibly athletes but humble in nature, the best way for me to be accepted is to keep quiet and let my work speak for me. it's very important to be able to do the climbs only if I earn the respect of everybody that I share the mountains with. Sometimes the most talented people are the ones we never hear from, they get no satisfaction from glory, just from the act itself.

I am also finishing my university course ( international Business) and looking for a job as well. I need to start working in January and I have narrowed the search to 3 jobs. It has to be casual so I won't stress if I need to take my kids to the Doctor or go to a parent teacher interview, it also have to be shift work since I need to take my kids to their swimming right after school. It was a bit tough to get my head around the choices, housekeeping for the Fairmont Palliser Hotel, Barista for Starbucks or bakery at Safeway. It was not a problem until i realized i need to name references, I kept thinking please don't call my ex boss!!??. sending the resume will be hard too, my last job was as a marketing director, I mean isn't it suppose to be backwards? house keeping then director? but I need the money and I should never be embarrassed to work, no matter what the job is. My kids are growing up,they will be able to do things on their own and then I will be able to work full time at an office, by then I should have also my Bachelor of Management from Athabasca University.

Of course as my goals increased, so did the level of difficulty to accomplish them, yet I have never been happier, they keep getting harder and harder but since they are still things that are important to me I am happy. I guess that's when you know if the path you are on is the right one, I look around and I like what I see, I see somebody working hard to reach a goal, and in the process I am teaching my kids the value of believing in yourself.

"The mountains have rules. they are harsh rules, but they are there, and if you keep to them you are safe. A mountain is not like men. A mountain is sincere. The weapons to conquer it exist inside you, inside your soul.Walter Bonatti."