Planes, Mules and Helicopters: How a Travel Disaster Turned Into a Life Lesson

I recently returned from what, on paper, was an expensive adventure debacle. Despite a “fail” in my original quest – reaching the summit of one of the world’s seven summits – I learned a much more important lesson on the value of friendship and compassion, as well as the importance of good old face-to-face conversation.  For the first time in years, my laptop, iPhone and all things wi-fi and social media were totally useless and irrelevant.

Here’s my travel story. This past December I was on a climbing expedition to Aconcagua, Argentina’s mammoth mountain, which was highlighted by an almost comical series of physical misadventures, travel snafus and unexpected twists. At the heart of my story is the small problem of getting altitude sickness (I’m totally fine now) and having to get off the mountain, pronto, from Camp 3…located at 18,200 feet elevation.  My quest to get off the mountain and back to civilization (Santiago airport) was similar in detours and frustration to the John Hughes classic “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” (FYI – in the interest of brevity I will omit details regarding the 24-hour flight delay from my home to start my voyage, caused by a plane malfunction, causing me to arrive in Mendoza, Argentina one day late and having to scramble by mini-bus and then foot, assisted by pack mules, to join my expedition mates.)

Getting back to Base Camp, or Plaza Argentina, went well enough considering my wobbly legs and altitude-induced exhaustion. That’s where the real problems started.  The camp doctor confirmed what my guides and I knew – I would quickly feel much better at a relative “low” elevation of 14,500 feet – but should get off the mountain as quickly as possible. That made sense, but it quickly became clear that would be as difficult to get off Aconcagua as it was to get to and up the mountain.

Here were my choices:

• Book a flight on the Aconcagua Park helicopters. The advantage here is speed (15 minutes flight time to logistics center and hotel at base of mountain) with negatives being high cost (don’t ask) and total unpredictability of timing due to the notorious mountain winds.
• Book a “carry” mule to take you back to park entrance. Advantage is you don’t have to hike, or carry your massive pack, but negatives are timing; 3-4 days delay to get a carry mule up to Base Camp and then 2 days or so to hike/ride back down. Also not cheap.
• Book a mule to carry our packs to park entrance. Advantage is we can guarantee departure in 1-2 days, but cost is mixed (need to pay for mule and time spent in Base Camp) and this would require my guide to return to Camp 3 to retrieve his gear, and then hike back down to accompany me to the park entrance. Did I mention this is a grueling 12-hour hike, even accounting for the lighter daypacks and downhill grade.
• Stay at Base Camp for perpetuity drinking $20 dollar beers and avoiding showers.

I chose the helicopter option.  But not so fast…things happen on their own time on the mountain. The timing of the helicopter flights is totally unpredictable; the notorious, screaming winds on Aconcagua often make it too dangerous to fly.  As it happens I was on stand-by, fully packed and ready to go, for about 30 hours.  That delay was costly, since Plaza Argentina is like most mountain base camps – a global village where costs for limited services are often astronomical (e.g. $40 cash for a meal, $10 for a Pepsi.) Finally, the weather broke and I was able to leave Base Camp with a park helicopter almost 32 hours after I arrived. I was too happy to realize I was petrified during the ride, but let me say I now know what it feels like to fly a helicopter in bumpy, fierce cross-winds mere feet from mountain peaks. (I can take that one off my bucket list.) Finally, back to civilization…sort of.

The helicopter and a quick car ride by a local support team got me as far as a small hamlet of hiker hotels and restaurants on the main highway, roughly halfway between Santiago and Mendoza. Though this area is a staging area for many expeditions, it’s a desolate and isolated place. Thankfully, I found a hotel that served as unofficial home to climbers – and a great place for a hot meal and shower. My challenge, despite the new comforts, was to try to get a bus ride to Santiago to catch my flight home – a seemingly simple proposition since I was on a the main highway crossing between Argentina and Chile. But things are not so simple in Argentina. Due to the Christmas holiday timing, nothing moved (and no phones were answered) for roughly 24 hours. Then the hotel staff discovered that very few of the bus lines stop at this particular spot on the highway.

Well, thanks to the help of the friendly staff at my hotel, I eventually booked a seat on a small, stuffy mini-bus and made my way to Santiago. I thought I was in business when I noted the very loud, very old video players booming old Guns & Roses videos in the bus. But then the smoking started. And little did I know the route would actually go right over the spine of the Andes. Let me say that I have never, that I recall, been more afraid for my life than during the roller-coaster drive through the steep, sinewy ravines they consider a highway. The area around Portillo (a ski resort for hard-core skiers wanting snow during the North American summer) was something like a scene out of Lord of the Rings, with gigantic, jagged peaks looming (precariously) over the highway road. Local drivers shifted lanes with abandon, apparently not concerned about either gravity or the hundreds of rickety trucks coming from the opposite direction. Other passengers informed me calmly that this stretch was notorious for rock falls and traffic fatalities.

After my white knuckle ride, I found myself in a Santiago bus depot about 20 miles from the airport…and with a very tight window to catch my flight back to the U.S. Thankfully, a Chilean version of a guardian angel – an honest taxi driver who claimed to be a former auto racer – helped me get my luggage and got me to the airport in 15 minutes. Many rules of the road were ignored and broken during this harrowing drive, but I made it safely. Once at the airport, things began to fall back into place: check-in, security, coffee, boarding and the relative security and comfort of a flight home.

As noted, the best part of this story is not that I eventually got home safely – though not in the time or fashion that I expected – but that every step of the way was due to the effort, ingenuity and support of people along the way.  My tools of the trade were conversation – often in broken Spanish or variations on tourist mime – and reliance on the incredible friendship and assistance of strangers along the way. I did use technology a couple of times – notably a fax/phone at the hotel – but that’s about it in terms of my usual communication tools. And I think it was good for me. The lesson: communication is about people, not the technology or tool.

Here’s a list of those I need to thank for helping me get home:

• Tom and Jonathan – my excellent guides – and the rest of the staff at Mountain Guides International
• The rest of the “Happy Endings” expedition team
• Veronica and others (including Base Camp cooks) at Grajales Expeditions
• Steve, Julie and staff of the Ayelen Hotel de Montana in Penitentes
• My Russian helicopter pilot (too scared to remember his name)
• My Santiago taxi driver (never got his name)

Komen Crisis Caused by Bad-to-Worse Decisions

Well, another one bites the dust. Add one more name to the long list of organizations undone by poor decisions and even worse crisis management. In the space of one week the Susan G. Komen Foundation – famous for being the brand behind the ubiquitous pink campaign against Breast Cancer – has done serious, perhaps irreparable damage, to its reputation and brand. Check out this article in Fast Company for a good summary of the imbroglio.

The Komen leadership team did so many things wrong it’s difficult to know where to start. Let me try…

• Think before you act – First and foremost, if you are going to make a policy decision that will have a big impact on your operations, make sure there is a solid rationale behind the change. The argument used by Komen for the suspension of payments to Planned Parenthood – that changes were dictated by a new policy prohibiting organizations under investigation from funding – appeared disingenuous. Buried in the policy legalese – our desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation – is the reality that the “investigation” in question was seen by most as a partisan witch-hunt by one anti-abortion member of Congress. Observers were further led to believe the dramatic impact of this policy on Planned Parenthood was a mere coincidence.
• Don’t try to bury the story – The story of the policy change broke with an article by Associated Press, and quickly picked up steam on Twitter and Facebook before becoming a top story for traditional media outlets. The Komen team didn’t announce the policy broadly – presumably trying a stealth approach – preferring to inform it’s various affiliates directly. (By all accounts Planned Parenthood was not informed in advance of the change.) When the story broke Komen leaders were slow to react, and their initial responses were brief, formal and defensive. Some PR observers suggest the battle was lost in those initial 24-hours, when Planned Parenthood mobilized its fans and led a smart, vocal PR counter-offensive.
• Don’t ignore social media – The failure of the Komen team to acknowledge, and adequately respond to, the uproar on social networks is seen by many as the biggest failure in their crisis management strategy. The outrage was swift, viral and overwhelmingly negative. Many of my female “friends” on Facebook, some big supporters of Komen over the years, expressed their disappointment and disavowal. The Komen team did use Twitter for updates (largely repeating their canned messages) but anchored their response through more traditional “push” channels like written statements and YouTube videos. To make matters worse, they were accused of scrubbing the most negative responses from their branded Facebook pages and websites.
• Remember who you are – Somewhere along the way it appears the Komen team forgot they were a charity whose stated purpose was promoting the health of women – including poor women – and that they are a non-profit dependent on their supporters and fans for revenue. Their funding decision – at best an awkward decision based on dubious legal reasons – and their subsequent response seemed totally at odds with the feel-good, compassionate image of their brand. Whatever the merit of their decision, the impact of cutting off thousands of women from low-cost access to breast screening was anathema to their stated mission.
• Listen to others, not your own story – One lesson that Karen Brinker and team may still not have learned is that stubbornly repeating an argument that few believe is not courageous, it’s counter-productive. In fact, the Komen team continued their defensive, almost defiant stance even as several officials resigned in protest – surely not a good sign. Even after reversing it’s decision, Komen tweets and comments stubbornly continued to defend their original decision and argue politics was never a factor. The battle had been lost, but the lesson was not learned.
• Back what you say – The Komen team never provided solid evidence to counter the strong circumstantial evidence, supported by claims from former staffers, that the reason for their policy change was political. It didn’t help that previous statements and recent tweets by new policy VP Karen Handel made it clear she was an ardent critic of Planned Parenthood.
• Don’t treat people as idiots – Perhaps the most egregious error by the Komen team in this crisis is their attempt to position the response to the policy change as positive, even as any casual observer could see the overwhelmingly negative social media reaction and related media coverage. This blatant attempt at spin was as misguided and incredulous as it was ineffective.
• Build and protect your goodwill – Another potential factor in the quick fall from grace for the Komen organization was that its goodwill may have eroded over the past few years due to some very uncharitable behavior – including its hard-ball legal stance against any hint of copyright infringement. The brittle, arrogant demeanor of Komen founder – and main spokesperson – Karen Brinker probably didn’t help their cause.

Of course, Komen did have the wisdom to change their decision – albeit belatedly and without totally letting go of their delusional narrative. In fact, they continue to be defensive about the “incorrect presumption” behind their ill-advised policy, and pointedly did not promise to renew the cancelled grants to Planned Parenthood.