okay, el chalten has to be climber’s paradise. it’s basically one main street, maybe a mile long, with a little sprawl in either direction of that main road. on both sides of the town are walls prime for climbing. from town, the three main trails leading into the park depart, all maybe 10 minutes from each other. there’s maybe four mountaineering stores, 15 hostels, one gas station, one terminal de autobus, and three crappy grocery stores. a few houses and that’s it. once there, the main street almost always has more pedestrian tourist traffic compared to automobiles. looking down the road, all you see are couples and groups of 20 and 30-somethings with backpacks, heading towards their hostels.
like with the rest of argentina, the maps you get show times, not distances, between points on a trail. we’ve been in the 60% range on the time scale, so our 7hr hike, starting at 4pm, turned out to be not too bad. surprisingly, not the greatest or even well-defined trails, despite being in a popular national park. as we gained elevation, things became a little more lush --- not the semi-arid near desert conditions of the lower elevation terrain. one of the fields we passed through pleased us with pungent perfumes of clovers. fields and fields of clovers. simply beautiful.
from the highpoint of the trail, we dropped basically back to our starting elevation to a campground near lago toro. dozens of tents were scattered in this tiny forest on the edge of the valley. protecting the camground was a wall of logs, stacked 4ft high. there was even a porta-potty. well, make that a porta-potty shell, without the seat or inner workings. instead, two marks for your feet and a hole to aim for in the ground would be the waste disposal method of choice.
that night we heard winds with sounds i’ve never heard before. while we were mostly protected in the tent within the camping area, up above raged a war of air currents. picture hundreds of 747s taking off at the same time, and in all directions, and you’re close. the heating and cooling of the land and expansive icecaps nearby really does a number on air stability.
in the morning, we set off to find the nearby icecap – an area labeled “with guides only” on the map. with some searching, we finally found the correct place to cross the raging torrent of water coming from the glaciers above. unfortunately, the crossing was a single cable with a pulley system that one could clip a harness into and slide across hand over hand; we did not have a harness or anything of suitable strength that we could rig up to make this work. we contemplated doing it the brute force way, but concluded that a fall was imminent death (33* water, box canyon, 30ft fall). turned back and searched around the lake for ways to do it, but gave up. dang.
we backtracked from camp a few miles before reaching a turnoff location where the map said “guides recommended.” up we went to a pass where we could drop down into a different valley with tremendous views of fitz roy, lago torre, and rio torre. up and up. topped out and sat for awhile, marveling at the beauty in front of us.
the crux now: getting across the rio torre, which was 2-3x larger and faster than the previous river we were stumped by earlier. since the map read “recommended” instead of “required,” we thought we’d be fine. down, down, down. nearing the rio. carrie spots two cables. perfect. one to walk on and one to hold onto above, right?
well, that’s what we thought at least. not wanting to camp with the hoards of people on the other side of the rio, we opted to find our own spot (not allowed in the national park) and found a great area within a really green blanketed forest (we camped on gravel). tasty dinner. complete solitude. a nice end to the day.
the next morning, the obvious occurs. the two cables are really just two of the same lines like we saw the day before. trapped! we give some half hearted attempts at putting one leg over the rope, hooking your foot, and doing the hand-over-hand thing to slide across. way painful on the calves. the rope’s just too thin, and this was before even adding in the weight of the backpacks. we waited for 3 hours there, hoping some guided party would come through. nope.
plan C: head down this side of the river valley – the trail-less side. normally, no sweat with a good map. unfortunately, the maps you can get here are not that good. the contour intervals are 50m (1:100,000) and might as well read “not for navigational purposes.” heck, it shows a smooth ridge leading up fitz roy, which is certainly not the case.
anyway, worst case, we have to go back up and over the ridge we came down. best case, we find something plausible and get a bit scratched up. thankfully, we found a boot tread within minutes and had really nice views. only in two spots did we lose the trail for awhile – one was a nasty, scratchy stretch, the other was more-or-less a pick-your-own scramble route. after the scratchy stretch, we came across an expansive, flat field of blowing grass and clover. it was so beautiful, i absolutely needed to stop and absorb it for awhile. so we did.
a few hours later, nearing the location where we started the hike, we spotted a most perfect showering location. several small trickles cascaded down into a shallow pool. we had to stop and enjoy this finding as well.
walk, walk, walk. find the main trail. hike out to town. my feet are toast (mountaineering boots were overkill and just too warm) so all i want to do is stay in town for the night. unfortunately, the hostel we had booked for the next night had no openings this night, nor did anything else in town. after some sitting, eating chocolate, and letting the feet breathe, i rallied and we headed off for another overnighter, this time starting at the opposite end of town.
this time, a more popular hike. starting at 8:00p and knowing you still have a few hours of daylight is pretty fun and much nicer for the bugs and temperature. a nice, steady climb brought us to lago capri. tossed up the tent among literally 50 or so other tents in a small, confined area, and made and ate dinner (and drank beer! --- thanks honey) and watched the sunset (kind of) over fitz roy. the sun here doesn’t seem to offer up very good sunsets for some reason. somehow, despite the hundreds of people in camp, we, at the most obvious spot to hang out by the lake, had things all to ourselves. nice.
the next morning we headed to get up close and personal with fitz roy. tremendously beautiful valley walking followed by a steepish climb (with warning signs and all) to the lago beneath fitz roy. the valley felt like montana; the fitz roy vicinity felt like nothing i’ve seen before. very inspiring for me – making me want to become a better climber. it was fun to see carrie so strong on the ascent giving her recent hip/pain struggles for the past half year+. we passed maybe 100+ people on the way up and were passed by none – the way it should be.
you top out on a moraine above the lake. once there, we were greeted with the strongest winds i’ve ever felt. nearly knocked down multiple times. had to basically jump outward and forward to gain enough momentum to go downhill to the next step. yes, downhill. a small rock wall offered reprieve for some time while we ate and layered up. then, moseyed around the lake, crossed an outlet stream, and saw another lake.
the starkness of fitz roy is amazing. the colors of the lake are as pure as they come. it was simply a breathtaking place.
needing to get back to town for a 6:30p bus back to el calafete, we sadly had to boogey. ran down the trail. packed up. made it back way too early – which is nice sometimes, but would have been nicer to see one more thing up there. had some pizza and two 1L bottles of cerveza (which oddly doesn’t give you a buzz or make you feel the need to pee). boarded the bus, and left a beautifully sunny and spectacular part of the world.
average costs:
cancelled hostel: 0 pesos
camping: 0 pesos
national park entrance fee: 100 pesos/each ($22)
2 personal pizzas, 2 x 1L cervezas: 100 pesos ($22)
all photographs: https://picasaweb.google.com/mlh4480/HoneymoonDias2932
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