Review of Gabriel Cabrera's guide service

From TradgirlWiki

We contracted a paid expedition to climb Aconcagua with Gabriel Cabrera early January 2004. We want to point out the following facts

1. The two mountains guides promised by Cabrera were not part of the leading team. They were substituted with trekking guides (according to the rules of the Aconcagua Park, mountain guides can take customers to the mountain by themselves, trekking guides can not, they can only guide from the entrance to the Park (Horcones) to Base Camp or accompany mountain guides in the mountain but can not take clients by themselves). Worse, both trekking guides were doing their first ascent of the mountain! Three clients aborted on summit day, none was guided back by any guide since they were worried achieving their first summit. One of the three was a man in his sixties that was last and had no guide closing the formation -as it is a must-. So, when he decided to come back, nobody knew about it.

2. The two young boys who guided us from Horcones (the park entrance) to the base camp were Cabrera's nephews. But they are not trekking guides as the park requires. Besides that, they entered the park as "researchers" in order not to pay the entrance fee. Clearly, this was not true since they were -illegally- guiding, not doing research.

3. Cabrera did not produce a single invoice in spite of the fact that they were required from him. This implies a clear violation of Argentine tax law.

4. Some of the lunch bags, contained goods overdue one year. Clearly, remains of previous year expeditions.

5. In spite of the fact that Cabrera's web site says (sic): "We transport ALL the loads at beginning of season, thus you do not need to mount the camp or to wait for us to mount it into the storm or fatigue. This next season our altitude camps will be mounted and watched by a caretaker, and boiling water will be ready when we arrive. For this reason we will get where to left any thing you want to transport in the first acclimatization climb. We are the only company that works this way".

We found no tents mounted in any of the high camps. It is not that we had to wait for them to be mounted, we had to do it ourselves. We did not find water (either hot or cold) or food. In the four days in the mountain itself, we were given only one meal cooked by the organizers and only one load of snow to be melted. On summit day, we left for the summit without receiving a tea or a cracker. We were all experienced campers and would not mind giving a hand to work or cook. But the problems is that the hands were always ours, and just ours. Of course there were no caretakers, so we could not make use of the first climbing to the first high camp to carry part of the load, there would be nobody taking care of it so we carried nothing.

6. The gear was not checked in Mendoza as it should have been. As a consequence, one of the members of the expedition climbed without double plastic boats, violating the Park regulations that clearly make these boats mandatory for the risk of freezing that their absence implies.

7. With the exception of Gabriel Cabrera, none of the members of his team speaks a single word of English. And Cabrera's is so basic, that two men from London (the expedition previous to ours) were shocked when awaken on summit day, since they had understood that that one was going to be a resting day!

8. Two of us did the Polish Glacier route. They got three seasons tents, no brand on them

9. Cabrera's site says (sic) "...all inclusive and no limit for drinks in the meals-including fine wines, mineral water or beers". In fact, we had to pay beers and wines in the farewell dinner at the hotel in Penitentes.

10. Cabrera's site says: (sic) "...no weight limitation in your personal gear to be transported by mules, we will provide your personal big bag with padlock for your gear for mule transportation". This was not the case, we had to use our own bags for the mules, some of us were lucky and got them back in good shape, others were not and had their brand new Low Alpine bags destroyed. Some others did not have bags at all for that purpose and simply had to carry in their shoulders part of the load, all the way from Horcones to Plaza de Mulas (25 miles approx)

11. We were told by Mr. Cabrera to tell the rangers at all stations that we were travelling alone, as a friends expedition. If this is related with tax avoiding or not, we do not know for sure. But the fact is that we were instructed to lie to the authorities of the park.

Signed,

Silvio Molina (Italy/Brasil)

Bernardo Frau (Argentina)

Robert Gardner (USA)

Celso Sugiyama (Brasil)