I didn’t realize that places like this still existed. El Chalten was a town built in 1985 to beat Chile to a land grab. I knew this before I came, but expected a 30-year-old town to be fairly well established, not a frontier outpost. There are maybe 100 buildings in total, including local residences, two smallish supermercados, a few souvenir shops, some restaurants, and about 50 hostels/hotels. Wooden sidewalks and seriously grizzled dogs line the streets. The draw of El Chalten is not the town, however. It’s the absolutely gorgeous, blindingly amazing wilderness surrounding it.

I honestly feel that all my misery in the rain up North (in Bariloche and sopping-wet Chile) was made up for by the two incredible days that I stumbled across here. I arrived at 10:30 on Sunday night after a pretty long, pretty bumpy bus ride (see Ruta Nacional 40) during which I saw a whole lot of nothing, mostly empty sage-filled high desert. That is until the last 20 minutes or so when we were able to catch a twilight glimpse of both Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre from the road. I ate an excited meal that night with soft-spoken Italian Pietro from the bus and joined him the next cloudless, 60 degree (F) morning for the hike up to Fitz Roy. Pietro would only join me for half the hike, and I would continue on to the highest point accessible without climbing gear.

Thus, dear readers, I discovered Patagonia.

I don’t know quite what to say about this ridiculous mountain, how to do it justice. In Bariloche I often found myself appreciating the surrounding beauty, but sometimes felt that it was very like what we have back home, albeit on a grander scale. Fitz Roy (and later Cerro Torre) were, well, not of this earth. They’re so high, alpine but more jagged, like cathedral spires 50, no 100 cathedrals tall. On top of a mountain, surrounded by enormous creaking glaciers, with perfect crayon-blue lakes below, full of tiny floating (actually huge) icebergs, surrounded by postcard vistas, perfectly complemented by a cloudless, sun-filled sky. I took photos and knew before the shutter closed that no photo I nor anyone ever took would do it justice. I’m almost glad that I didn’t have a big fancy camera, as I would have been frustrated to find that really, it’s just not the same.

Just not the same:

I walked across a frozen lake (Lago de Los Tres) to get closer to the base of Fitz Roy. I noticed that the priests and nuns climbing the steeples had crossed it earlier, and found myself the only one of the four dozen tourists on the hike that made it to that point. It was a good moment, alone with the cold and the high and the sun and the unfathomably big rock looming in front, looking close enough to touch.

And so, I ate a bun and worked my way down, only getting lost once for about 20 minutes.

The next day, sore and tired, I once again accompanied Pietro on a hike that he would complete only half of, the hike to Laguna Torres, at the base of Cerro Torre. I opted to camp in a nearby bosque that I saw on Pietro’s map, so the going was a bit slower with a slightly fuller bag. But the walk was short, and again, worth every second of Chilean Rain Depression. I had a majestic campsite, an amazing view of these behemoth mountains and glaciers and icebergs. I took about a thousand photos of Cerro Torre because everytime I looked up, it got more and more beautiful, as the setting sun began to light it from the side and then the bottom as the evening progressed. At twilight I was walking back to my charming camp site in the woods, singing a little song to myself and jumping from boulder to boulder along the edge of the cloudy white-blue river (because, folks, it was a glacier like five minutes ago), when I missed a rock and fell in. It was pretty cold, but not cold enough to harsh my mellow, as I’d begun to realize how lucky I was to be there on the edge of an amazing, surreal, otherworldly place. I camped, and slept (and froze), and hiked down the next morning to find El Chalten in the throes of a howler of a windstorm.

Cerro Torre:

My camp at Padre D’Agostini:

My hostel in El Chalten:

I had two days of beautiful, completely clear and warm weather, unplanned by me, in a place that people will hang out in for weeks waiting for just a glimpse of a cloudless peak. Climbers will literally wait months for days like I had; the guides that take people up the trail every day of the season all had their cameras out, taking photos of the peaks to show their comrades what a cloudless mountain day looks like. Seren-Ephron-dipity.

I’m headed to Calafate tomorrow to get my mind warped by Perito Moreno. And for that, I give thanks.