An expedition focused on the mountains of La Puna de Atacama, an Andean plateau located between Chile and Argentina that houses a large number of mountains of more than six thousand meters of altitude, salt flats, and typical fauna of the area such as vicuñas, guanacos, flamingos, Andean foxes, and condors. We will meet in the city of Copiapó (390 masl) the day before the defined date to see the last details of the expedition and make the last purchases of food and fuel before starting the trip to the Atacama Desert, driving directly to Laguna Santa Rosa – at 3,700 masl – so it is important to come already with an acclimatization process started. Laguna Santa Rosa is a high mountain salt lake in the Atacama Desert, in the north of Chile, where a refuge is located and some facilities that will allow us to enjoy the first two days of our trip with a panoramic view of Nevado Tres Cruces and a good acclimatization trail to Cerro Siete Hermanas. Our trip will continue in an easterly direction to close to the border with Argentina, enjoy the hot springs of Laguna Verde (4,310 masl) and continue our acclimatization process in the Nevado San Francisco (6,016 masl). Here we will have another camping option at the Murray Refuge (4,522), the starting place of the road to the base camp of Ojos del Salado. We considered three days to organize our summit attempt at the Ojos del Salado volcano. The final plan will be defined together by evaluating how the acclimatization process has gone, how each one feels, and the conditions of the route for both 4×4 vehicles and in the upper part of the mountain. An alternative is to start the summit attempt from Laguna Verde (4,310 masl) or Campamento Atacama (5,200 masl) driving to the Tejos refuge (5,800 masl), and from this point start walking. But depending on the conditions, or so we decide, it is possible to start the ascent from Atacama the day before. On our ninth day we will drive in the morning back to Copiapó or Bahía Inglesa / Caldera and thereby end our trip to the highest mountain in Chile and the highest active volcano in the world.
