Solar charger for Suunto X10

If you are planning to be on the wild with your Suunto X10 for several days or weeks, have you thought about recharging its battery? Suunto X10 is a great tool for your outdoor trips, which besides barometric, compass and altitude features comes along with a powerful GPS. As Suunto X10 battery needs a daily recharging after an intensive GPS usage (about six and a half hours with a satellite lock of 1 second) you need to have a practical and light tool to recharge the battery.

There isn’t a better solution out there than a Solio solar charger. Either the Solio Hybrid or Solio models will do it. They are light, compact, easy to transport and extremely fast solar chargers. I have tested them up to 7000 mts and they work perfect. In fact, the higher you are the faster they charge as sun light becomes more intense.

Don’t hesitate, a Solio charger would become the perfect companion for your Suunto X9, X9i or X10 wristwatches.

Back to the sources

On Friday 19th December, at 14.20 hs I was back to the sources.

Twelve years have passed since I first step in Aconcagua summit. I was there again with a clear blue sky above us. ‘Us’ is me and a group of five wonderful friends with whom I spent twelve days in this mountain.

Aconcagua has been my source of inspiration to start high altitude climbing. As a kid travelling with my family to Chile, I often saw this mountain from the car windows. As a teenager I wondered what it felt to be up there. Shortly after, I climbed it.

Aconcagua is a truly gigantic mountain when compared to those other ones around it. Aconcagua is a truly enigmatic mountain when known that the Incas used it to sacrifice and offer their kids to the Gods. At last, Aconcagua is a truly beautiful mountain that offers breathtaking views.

Thanks to www.aconcagua2008.nl team members for the unforgettable days we spent together. Congratulations for the strength you kept all the way to the summit.

Finally, this summit is dedicated to my friend German Gonzales Mena, cameraman of ‘No Bike’s Land’. As a professional mountain photographer and cameraman, he loved working in Aconcagua. German passed away three days ago, after fighting bravely for a year against leukemia. He was only 43 years old. May his soul rest in peace over a mountain that was a source of inspiration for both of us.

The magic land around Pissis volcano

Pissis volcano is placed in the ‘Andes Septentrionales’, to the south of the Atacama dessert. The area that surrounds this volcano is over the second highest plateau of the World, where we can find plenty of wildlife adapted to the harshness of such environment.

Countless Vicuñas live on these high flatlands, where the more colorful flamingos are seen on the distant lagoons. As there’s a high content of minerals on the lagoons waters, the more beautiful combination of colors can be found around the area of Laguna Negra and Laguna Azul.

This is certainly an area worth visiting if you happened to be on the north of Argentina. Several volcanoes have been rarely climbed, offering countless possibilities for those adventures seekers who enjoy nature where the closest human being around is at several hundred miles away.

The new Solio solar chargers helped me to keep my X9i battery charged during the many days I spent on the mountains.

Have fun!

Manu

Mt Penitentes, Argentina

Hello!

I am back from the mountains and happy to be ready to share our fantastic discoveries with you guys.

Together with a group of five people, we climbed Mt. Penintentes (4300mt) placed in Mendoza, Argentina. What makes this mountain so special is the fact that was climbed by the Incas 500 years ago. The Inca's built a stone cairn 10 meters below it's highest summit, which has a direct line of sight with the placed where the Inca's sacrificed a boy of nine years of age. This mummy was found in Aconcagua, at the bottom of the Southwest ridge. Mt. Penitentes offers a perfect view of that spot; therefore the Incas’s chose this mountain to become a ‘secondary altar’.

It is fascinating to feel that we were standing at 4300 mts, at the very same place where such indigenous people once venerated their Gods.

I used X9i to record logs during our three days climb and can now see in Google Earth the exact location of the Inca’s cairn on Mt. Penitentes!

For those ones interested in information about the boy that was sacrificed in Aconcagua, I recommend to search for ‘Aconcagua mummy’ in Google and you will get information from different important sources. The Archaeologist who has published good documents (in Spanish) and who was present at the moment of the excavation is called Juan Schobinger.

Have fun!

Manu

Hello everybody!!

Since I have a special attraction to indigenous cultures, during the next two months once again I will be following the Inca’s legacy in the Argentinean Andes. After holding meetings with renowned archaeologist in the western Argentinean city of Mendoza, I will go up to Mt. Penitentes (4350 m). Although this is not a high mountain, it is placed right opposite to Mt. Aconcagua (6969 m) and offers a unique view of the some magnificent Andes peaks.

Later on, I will travel north of Argentina and spend some time discovering new areas where three years ago we shoot ‘No Bike’s Land’. Pissis volcano (6893 m) and Incahuasi volcano (6671 m) hide so many wonders that three weeks filming on this area was not enough to discover them all. I am intrigued by the same natural wonders which caught the Inca’s attention more than five hundred years ago.

I will be using my Suunto X9i to track and save logs which will be later downloaded in Google earth. Solio solar panel will help me to keep the X9i charged all the time while 'm on the mountains.

Stay tuned for more pictures coming next May!

Saludos!

Manuel