The 2026/2027 climbing season at Parque Provincial Aconcagua has no confirmed opening date. The calendar start is 1 November, but snow loading and avalanche risk in the gullies have put that in suspense while Mendoza's park authority runs fresh surveys. Officials estimate risky conditions could last at least two more weeks, and El Niño is expected to make summit windows less predictable into January.
The 2026/2027 climbing season in Parque Provincial Aconcagua has no confirmed opening date. The usual calendar start is 1 November. Snow accumulated high on the mountain and the risk of avalanches have left that date in suspense, and the provincial government will carry out new surveys of the gullies before it decides.
Mariano Iván Funes Pinter is a Conicet researcher and the director of Áreas Naturales Protegidas at Mendoza's Ministry of Energy and Environment. He said the park is not yet in a state to receive visitors, with a heavy snow load and a high avalanche risk, and that conditions are being assessed day by day. The surveys in the gullies are meant to establish how the accesses and the trails are holding up.
Up to last week, entry went no further than the car park at the access area. Official teams are working with Vialidad, the roads agency, to clear the Horcones access road and its parking area. Los Andes reports that the risky conditions could hold for at least another two weeks.
The avalanches that concern the authorities do not necessarily reach the highway. They can release inside the park and come down across the paths that climbers and trekkers use. That is the distinction officials are drawing: the road can look fine while the approach routes are still loaded.
The camps have not been reached yet
Service providers are in the same position. The approach camps and the high camps need to be inspected before anyone knows what repair work the season will require. Juan Herrera, a long-standing provider in the park, said it has not yet been possible to get into those sectors to make that assessment. Infrastructure that sat through the snowfalls and any slides has to be checked before services can be deployed.
The other condition for opening is emergency cover. Habilitating ascents means having the accesses, the installations and the rescue services in place for an activity of this kind, which is why the calendar date on its own does not settle anything.
Herrera also said the Comisión Asesora, the park's advisory commission, last met on 23 September and did not define a start for activities at that meeting. A further session was called for Thursday 29 October, with better information about the state of the mountain expected by then.
El Niño and the summit windows
Funes Pinter expects El Niño to make the opportunities for summit attempts more random through the season, with effects forecast at least into January on the models discussed. Forecasting therefore carries more weight than usual. Teams will have to follow the available models closely to pick out the intervals when moving up is sensible, and each departure will be planned around those intervals.
He also thinks the weather picture could hold visitor numbers down, particularly in December, when the busiest stretch of the season begins. Advance sales have been good. Even so, climbers travelling from abroad have to commit to flights and dates well ahead, and uncertainty about conditions may put some of them off. The official expectation is that January looks more manageable, with a reasonable season overall and entries possibly below what was first projected.
First season after the services tender
There is a second change running alongside the weather. The 2026/2027 season is the first since the provincial government ran a tender process to reorganize how activities and services are provided on Aconcagua.
Funes Pinter said the award has made the organization clearer on paper. The parcels were delimited using satellite imagery and maps, and now those boundaries have to be transferred to the ground. He expects verification and adjustment during the first weeks of operation, and described that as the challenge of the season: taking what was done on paper out onto the mountain.
Herrera said a tender had also been called for helicopter and medical services. He had no information on the award at the time he answered.
The mule welfare programme continues
The animal welfare programme for the mules that carry loads into the park carries on. Preventive controls and inspection of each animal before entry reduced injuries last season. For the new period the plan is to adjust the programme and add tools that record entries, rest periods and veterinary treatment for each animal more quickly.
The advisory commission was due to take up that update at the 29 October meeting as well.
What this means if you are booked
The decision on opening follows the surveys, not the calendar. Snow accumulation and avalanche risk in the gullies have to come down first, and officials have put a two-week horizon on that as an estimate rather than a date.
Anyone holding an early-season booking is best served by asking their operator directly about camp readiness and the permit office, since the providers are the ones who will know first when the approach camps can be built. Companies working on the mountain are listed on our operators page. The permit system, the Horcones approach and the Normal Route are described in the Aconcagua guide.
A delayed opening also compresses the acclimatization time available to anyone who keeps the same return flight. That is the part worth planning around rather than improvising. Our FAQ covers the altitude questions that come up most often on this mountain.
For climbers working through the 7 summits, Aconcagua usually sits early in the sequence because it is reachable, affordable by comparison with the polar peaks and high enough to be a genuine test. A season that starts late and runs with scattered weather windows changes the arithmetic of fitting it between the others. January, on the official view, is where this season is expected to settle.
This story is part of This week on the 7 summits: 26 October – 1 November 2026, the week's news in brief.
Header photograph: Aconcagua south wall 2020.jpg by Dmitry A. Mottl, CC BY-SA 4.0 (licence), via Wikimedia Commons.