The weather conditions on Mount Aconcagua were the worst in 20 years. Winds topped 100 knots and temperatures fell below 40 degrees Celsius.

More than halfway up, at 5,000 metres, Amanda Batista lost her sight.

“I thought I’d gone blind,” she said. “It’s called mountain blindness. You wake up blind from the pressure at altitude. Usually, it’s your hands your legs, your feet and your face. My whole face was swollen. I looked like a monster.”

Two of her eight team members had already turned back, victims of altitude sickness and pulmonary oedema, a condition caused by excess fluid in the lungs.

Amanda was the only woman on the mountain; she refused to let the peripheral oedema get in her way. She sat up to let the swelling drain. It was another two hours before she could see.

The veterinary nurse signed up for the Argentina trek through online guide service, Mountain Madness.

She and her team members set off on November 28 and returned on December 14.

“You get to know people very well on these climbs because you’re close knit, you’re in small tents together and you talk about everything — I don’t know if it’s the lack of oxygen, or what,” she laughed.

At 6,961 metres, Aconcagua is the highest mountain outside Asia. It is also possibly the scariest to tackle. It earned the nickname Mountain of Death because it is believed to have the highest death rate of any mountain — claiming the lives of three climbers a year.

But Amanda, 41, likes to try things outside of her comfort zone. “Some of the locals said it was the worst weather in 20 years,” she said. “We had a few really bad storms, which dumped about three to four feet of snow.

“These storms really lower the pressure in the air, so you have even less oxygen than you normally would and we were over 5,000 metres at that point. It was snowing so hard we had to wake every hour to bang our tent so we wouldn’t suffocate.

“When we opened our tents, we were met with a wall of snow. We had to climb our way out.”

Their summit “window” was set for December 11 and the poor weather conditions made it impossible for a pit stop. The team had a choice: go back down the mountain or trek for 17 hours to the top, which was another 1,000 metres away.

“We went for it. We started at 4am. The snow was up to my waist,” Amanda said.

But then came the avalanches. “So, after climbing hours and hours, getting over 6,000 metres, we had to sadly turn around. It was pretty much a race to get back down the mountain.

“I know that if we hadn’t had the four feet of snow, the 100-knot winds, the minus 40 degrees, I would have made it.”

Despite that, she does not consider it a failure.

“It made it more special because we really had the worst conditions ever,” she said. “It’s more mental than physical. Everything is telling you to turn around and go back. I didn’t prepare physically for this trip because I was in a cast for 2½ months. I went with men that were three times the size of me. I didn’t give up.”

Growing up in Bermuda she “climbed a lot of trees”, but the keen runner got her first taste of mountaineering on a trip to Nepal in 2012.

Her next climb was Kilimanjaro in 2013. She is planning to tackle Russia’s Elbrus in September. “I fell in love with it,” she said. “I like the feeling that there are no limits to what I can do. I’m not tied down. I know that if my boss gave me time off tomorrow, I would hop on a plane and go climb something.

“I love travel, I love airports. I love meeting new people.”

She said her love of adventure came from trips to the Azores as a child. Her father Joe Batista was from Santa Maria and every summer, the family would visit for ten weeks. “We used to picnic in the mountains. The planes were below us. I liked the feeling of my ears popping as we were driving higher and higher.”

Cancer took her father at 54.

“My father died young and I’m sure there was a lot more he would have liked to do before he passed away,” Amanda said. “I want as many experiences as I possible while I’m on Earth because I don’t know when it’s going to end.”

Her mother, Donna, doesn’t sleep while she’s away. “She’s so worried. She e-mails the companies asking for updates,” she said.

Animal angels

People have insurance, why should animals go without? Amanda Batista and her colleagues have created the Bermuda Veterinary Services Angel Fund.

The fund comes through donations and will help pay the medical bills for animals suffering from problems such as leg fractures, tumours and eye disease.

The Middle Road, Paget, offices started the fund because they were concerned about the lack of coverage here. “I thought why not do this in Bermuda — a fund for animals?” Ms Batista said.

She started putting donation sheets out shortly before she left to climb Argentina’s Mount Aconcagua last year.

“We got some great donations from my climb. People were really amazing,” she added.

Donate on 232-VETS (8387).