Posts Tagged hike
The Dubs
Posted by Delaney in Chile, Puerto Natales on December 3rd, 2009
I went on a walk for a few days recently; I chose to hike a route called The W in Torres del Paine near Puerto Natales in Southern Chile, and I made it a tad over 64 miles before I broke down, bought some Fanta and a Sahne-Nuss, and waited for the high-speed catamaran to take me back to civilization.
Click it to make it bigger:
Five days, four nights:
Dia Uno] Thought that I’d already gotten lost 20 minutes in, backtracked to realize that no, I was going the right way, And decided to trust myself better the rest of the way. Made it up a pretty steep grade to Campamento Torres, where I pitched my tent and walked up to Campamento Japones and back before making Rice and Lentils (henceforth known as R&L) and dashing off to sleep.
Dia Dos] Woke up at 4:30 (a.m.!) to hike up the quick, albeit vertical trail to the Torres Mirador at sunrise when the towers allegedly glow red with the dawn; was greeted by a laughable scenario:
Hiked down, unpitched tent (struck camp?) at noon or so, and walked back to the junction in clear, partly cloudy weather past a beautiful fjordy lake, a couple gauchos, the refugio at Cuernos, which seemed to house most of the East coast of the United States, as well as a fair-sized chunk of Western Europe, and a million dainty red mountain flowers to Campamento Italiano, where again, I pitched:
Dia Tres] Walked up the middle branch of The Dub to Campamento Britanico and another cloudy viewpoint, at which I was again unable to see past the foggy cloudiness — I chose not to take a picture this time. And arrived back to Italiano in a blizzard, for real, so I waited for an hour or so for it to turn into, again, a warm sunny day. I struck again that afternoon and hoofed it back down the W to Paine Grande, which seemed to be the main center of pseudo-civilization in the park. I’d been planning on hiking another four hours that day, but the running water (showers!) in the campground’s on-site banos lured me in. I’m glad I stayed there, as the afternoon and evening turned out to be sunny and warm; I took it pretty easy, ate some R&L, and took some time to marvel at the amazing array of Gore-Tex that surrounded me. Gore-Tex from all over the world, in every color of the rainbow.
Dia Cuatro] Awoke from a comfortable night of two-sleeping-bag-luxury, made some Nescafe and oatmeal with cocoa and lots of azucar, and started the long slog up to Campamento Paso. This was my favorite part of the trek. Most of the trail followed a couple of bright turquoise (from glacier milk!) mountain lakes, and alternated between deep forest and breathtaking views over the surrounding mountains. Until, that is, I arrived at Glacier Grey. I think that what I wanted when I visited Perito Moreno was a big fat blue glacier in the middle of nothing. And I got it on my second-to-last-day of hiking between Refugio Grey and Campamento Paso. Most people stopped The W at Refugio Grey, so the trail was far less crowded after that point, and it followed the edge of the giant hunk of ice for six strenuous, sweaty kilometros until the campground. Glacier Grey is smaller than Perito Moreno, and less blue, and big hunks of ice fall off much less often, but it was a much more rewarding experience: just myself, a large, slowly moving mass of ice, and a whole lot of nothing.
Glaciar Grey:
Dia Cinqo] Woke up, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and found a bug in there. Hiked back to Paine Grande, tired and stinky and sore and with broken boots, but made it with a couple hours to spare before my boat, so I relaxed, washed my face in the complimentary running water, and purchased the earlier-mentioned expensive snacks to munch on while playing solitaire.
The embarque back:
And so,
I’m glad that I’d been training for the marathon. I found that while hiking with a 40-or-so pound mochila, my legs didn’t get tired, but my back and feet definitely did. And I seemed to be hiking a bit faster and more efficiently than most of the other gringos I met on the trail.
And gringos there were. I can confidently say that English was spoken on the trail much more than Spanish, and that blancos outnumbered morrones by at least two to one. It was like hiking in the Alps, I’d imagine, but with more Germans. And it was much, much more beautiful. You should try it.
Also,
Things I broke while hiking the W in Torres del Paine:
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My gaiters
My boots
My spork
The fleshy bit of my fingertip
Finally, observations:
The wind was blowing so hard at the huge Refugio Lago Pahue that it was whipping the tops off of the whitecaps and blowing a mist all over the lake.
You can drink the water right out of the streams up near the glaciers. It was fantastic, and cold, and tasted like absolutely delicious nothing.
I love my long underwear/black loungy pants combo. They’re warm in cold weather and comfortable all the time. Dirt and mud and stink just seem to dissolve away, and they seem pretty indestructable. Thanks, Uncle K!
Black spongy mushrooms that just looked lethal were everywhere. I didn’t eat.
There was a giant, wolf-sized fox with a bushy tail at Campamento Italiano. I was like, “What the Ephron?”
More squat toilets, even grosser this time.
Serendipity
Posted by Delaney in Argentina, El Chalten on November 25th, 2009
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.
Bariloche 3
I left Chile. When I walked to the (previously mentioned) trailhead in the rain, the little Chileno actually told me that Chilean national parks are closed to camping until the first of December, because the extended rain sometimes causes trails to get washed out, stranding backpackers. So I knocked on the car window of the only other goofball silly enough to go hiking in the lluvia and asked him for a ride back to Lenca. He turned out to be a nice enough guy, a British expat living in Puerto Montt with his Chilean bride and daughter. He seemed a bit dodgy about discussing his life there in Chile, but when we started talking about hikes in the area, he really opened up and described a dozen or more beautiful nearby hikes (or “walks” as he called them) on volcanoes or to mountain lakes or incredible vistas, but after each one, said something like, “but you won’t be able to do it now, it’ll be covered with snow,” or “too bad right now the rain clouds will make it impossible to view.” So I decided to take a bus as quickly as I could back to Argentina and, hopefully, the sun.
I got to Bariloche (the third time) the next day and checked into the Hostel Inn, a nice place right down the street from Pudu Hostel and Marcopolo. It has a great view and an English-speaking reception, which is nice for those of us who are lazy. And then I went to talk to my hairy malcontent pal at Club Andino. I was all high hopes and expectations as I walked in the office, as the sun was shining a bit (it was only ‘mostly cloudy’!), and I knew that there were many hikes that I’d missed during my two other stints in town. Remember how I wrote that the fellow looked me up and down and told me to go to Refugio Frey the last time I was there? Well, it turns out that he told me that not because I look amateurish or anything (because I don’t, my bright red gaiters make me look like a pro), but because it was the only refugio hikable that early in the year. He told me that they won’t let people go up to the other places without a guide, which cost around AR$2800. So. Guess where I went? Refugio Frey again! I managed to find another campground down on the edge of Lago Gutierrez, which seemed to be connected somehow to the Refugio Frey hike, and so I filled out a little paperwork, asked the grumpy beard about a bus, and went to buy some cookies and pasta.
The plan to get to the trailhead was relatively straightforward. I bought a Via Bariloche ticket for a distance of about 25K to a point on a map near the South end of Lago Gutierrez (which only cost two pesos), put most of my heavy stuff into a locker at the hostel, went back to the bus station, got on the bus, pointed at my 30 peso trail map to the place I needed to go, and responded with a “Si, señor” to el conductor’s rapid and lengthy response. No problem, right? I chatted with an elderly man on the short ride for a while, discussing his life and El Bolson* until we came to the end of Lago Gutierrez. And passed it. My only recourse at this point was to make my way up to the front of the bus and say, “Señor, camping es cerca, no?” to which he replied with a lengthy string of words in a language that I really don’t understand at all sometimes. But a short time later he seemed pleased to tell me that “Si, camping. Aqui.” and I got out.
And was immediately lost. I realized after about an hour of wandering around on cow trails and getting stuck in thorny thickets that he’d left me at the North end of another, nearby lake, not the South end of Lago Gutierrez.
So I walked on the highway for a few kilometros (and crossed the continental divide!) to find the entrance to Los Baqueneros, a huge, posh and completely, desperately empty campground staffed by Ignacio and his very pregnant wife, a couple of mean-looking gauchos, and a whole mess of beef cattle. It was comfortable, and expensive (AR$25! For camping!), and I left the next morning to make my way up to Refugio Frey.
My camp at Los Baqueneros:
Los Baqueneros is situated at the South end of Lago Gutierrez, and next to it, in the Southwest corner of the lake, are a string of private estancias. The lake is evidently public, but the land is private, so these landowners build their barbed wire fences right up to the waterline, which meant that to get to my trailhead, I needed to walk in the lake. This was fine until I came to a stream that worked its way through an estancia and came out under the fence to flow into the lake. The motion of the water carved out a chunk of the lake bed, making the water there about thigh level at its deepest. I crossed it, cursed the selfishness of these rich landowners, and hiked the rest of the way up the mountain with soggy boots.
It was of course fun up at Refugio Frey. I said hi to Alan and played Uno with a crazy Brazilian/Chilean/Italian named G’e who came up to the refugio “to drink wine,” which he did in spades. I decided to camp out for an adventure (and to save some pesos), and was warm enough, but the wind whipping over the mountain range kept me awake for a while, and I woke up covered with a thin layer of snow inside my tent.
My camp at Refugio Frey (II):
Entonces, I came back to the hostel, booked a trip to El Chalten for two days later, and did some laundry.
I decided to try another refugio hike the next day against the counsel of Beardy at Club Andino, and it was very pretty, and pretty steep, but a totally different experience than an overnight hike. I felt about 40 pounds lighter (which I was, without a big pack), and had a lot of fun tramping around in the snow at the top. It wasn’t dangerous at all, and took me as long to go to the top and back as the map said it took to go one way, so I’m glad I didn’t heed the grumpy man’s advice. And a very kind man who was collecting tree trimming debris from the side of the road gave me a ride back to a bus stop outside Bariloche, and when he realized that I couldn’t understand him that well, he compensated by speaking VERY LOUDLY. So that was fun.
Refugio Lopez:
*He moved to El Bolson 35 years ago and stayed for 6 years before heading back to Buenos Aires, which makes me think that he, like many others who moved to El Bolson in the 70’s, was fleeing persecution from the military dictatorship. And he said that he had a son still living there, so he may have moved all those years ago, and given up his lifestyle in Buenos Aires for the sake of his son’s safety. At least that’s what I’m going to think.
- Delaney on Encyclopedia Peruana
- Steph on Encyclopedia Peruana
- Steph on An Apology
- D on An Apology
- Sister on Bikini, Stuffed Fox, Etc.
