Dafoe asked for a $50 deposit from anyone interested, along with a list of successful ascents and references. The guide would be Miguel Alfonso, a 38-year-old Argentine who had been to the summit five times, once up the Polish Route. “Difficulties are said to be moderate - a couple of places where we’ll want handlines - not any more difficult than the normal route on Mt. His group, Dafoe announced, would attempt to be the fifth expedition to top Aconcagua via the Polish Route. Their leader was a Portland lawyer named Carmie Dafoe.ĭafoe, 52, pushed for the Aconcagua trip, noting that a Mazamas member had climbed it in the 1940s. Most of them were part of the Mazamas climbing club, founded in Oregon in 1894.