Days 37-42: In Patagonia

In Patagonia

Days 37 – 42

February 3 – 8

Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina

The bus deployed its parking brake, startling us awake.  We just arrived at El Chalten from El Calafate, a 2.5 hour bus ride that started early enough to warrant sleeping for its duration.  We filed from the bus to the Ranger Station where they briefed us about the national park: “Once you get outside of El Chalten, there are no hotels or restaurants or anything.  You are on your own out there.”  Perfect.  As the official “Trekking Capital of Argentina,” (there’s a sign, making it official) I would expect nothing less than news like this.  I walked the kilometer across town to Lo De Trivi Hostel where I had six nights booked, and I planned to get my money’s worth from my stay.  I dropped most of my things in my room, packed a day pack, and scoured over the map to decide where to hike on day one.  It was here I met Jochem, Meike, and Daniel, and we set out to a shorter hike just south of town.  Stepping outside of the town limits, the Fitz Roy massif came into view; the foreground seemed to improve each time we turned around throughout the hike.  Up at the viewpoint, we experienced our first taste of Patagonian wind: I was able to lean back and have it support me.

The winds on this hill were strong enough to lean into.

The next morning, I awoke early to make the trek to Laguna Torre, the premier viewpoint of Cerro Torre, one of the two famous mountains in Los Glaciares.  Stepping out from the hostel, there was gentle breeze in the streets; the uppers, however, were roaring.  The weather forecast called for a steady increase over the next four hours to 17 knots (20 mph) in town, a wind speed that later proved treacherous at Laguna Torre.  At the first viewpoint, I couldn’t see Cerro Torre: a mist of clouds blocked the ridgeline behind it.  But Cerro Solo and its glacier were in full view, with a rainbow cast over its peak.   

A rainbow was cast over Cerro Solo and its glacier.

The glacial run-off here is so clean you can drink it without a filter.

In the wooded areas along the route, there were more fallen trees than standing ones, with no signs of cleanup efforts other than the occasional chainsaw cut through tress bisecting the pathway.  Many of the trees on the ground still bore signs of life, yet were torn to their deaths by the strong Patagonian winds.  At Laguna Torre, the tall mountains broke up the clouds into waves as the winds shoved them eastward.  One after another, they blocked the sunlight, oscillating the terrain between brightness and shade.  The whole landscape changed with this tempo, painting mountains and valleys uniquely with each passing minute.  Parts of the glacier had broken off into the lagoon, now present as floating icebergs.  

My first view of Laguna Torre and its icebergs.

The ice here is 500 years old.

And then the winds started.  

First, they threw freezing cold water on me from the surface of the lagoon.  The waves splashed against the icebergs, flying violently in the air.  At first, we laughed at this spectacle, enchanted by how playful something like this appeared to be.  Imagine being splashed by Mother Nature in a giant lagoon made of glacial run off which bounced off an iceberg.  What a unique experience.  But the splashing didn’t stop; it got worse.  I hid behind a large log to dodge it, but to little avail.  Then it started raining as well, and I couldn’t tell where the cold water was coming from.  The winds were blowing the moisture from the clouds hovering in front of Cerro Torre; we were getting hit from both sides.  We climbed back up, seeking refuge from the wind behind a barricade of boulders.  At least momentarily, until we realized there was no true refuge from the elements here.  There were bad places and worse places.  We stayed for a total of two hours, trying to enjoy the view as much as possible, despite the constant flying of sand and rain our way.  Eventually, nature exhausted us, and we had to turn around and head back.

We made our triumphant retreat from the lagoon.

It rained the next morning.  At 2:00 PM, with my gear packed for an overnight stay, I set out towards Fitz Roy.  The thick cloud coverage made for cool temperatures and excellent hiking weather, yet threatened to block any view of Fitz Roy I might have otherwise had.  I ignored this technicality and bet on tomorrow morning’s sunlight cutting through the clouds.  The trail opened to an overlook of a river.  The serpentine traversed the lowlands, passing mountains of green and slate and red, moving back towards the mountains covered in white.  The land was overcast gray, with an occasional break in the slow-moving clouds that cast a beam of light, sweeping across the landscape.  The rest of the scene was stagnant.

A river flowing with all the glacial run-off.

Just past kilometer 3, at a viewpoint of Fitz Roy, the massif was hidden behind a wall of clouds that mimicked the ridgeline’s general outline, the largest cone of clouds exploding as it crashed into the west side of Fitz Roy.  Although the mountains were obscured, the spectacle of clouds created the view as they were turned and pulled and thrashed just above the frozen desert of blue and white glaciers.

Fitz Roy is hidden behind these clouds.  The peak of Fitz is notorious for gathering
clouds and streaming them eastward.

After setting up camp for the night at kilometer 8, I detoured to a viewpoint of the Piedras Blancas Glacier.  The blue ice of the glacier was flanked to the north by the dark red and charcoal mountains covered in permanent snow pack.  The long summer days exposed the top of the glacier to sunlight, melting the waters into small streams on the glacier that cut crevices and waterfalls.  The waters gathered on the slate boulder faces below the glacier, streaming down in half a dozen smaller waterfalls into the glacial lake below.  And there was one major waterfall that spewed water, feeding the raging Blancas River.  

This was the closest I got to the Piedras Blancas Glacier.  Fitz Roy can be seen
on the left. 

I went to sleep early and woke up well before sunrise.  It was a dark night, the way that nights are supposed to be dark.  Once I cleared the tree line, I looked up to that cloudy sky.  The clouds were glowing from the half-lit moon, and anywhere the clouds didn’t occupy, the stars shone brightly through.  I could see the differences between the red ones and the blue ones.  And the slow-moving ones were satellites, and the fast-moving ones were meteors.  I saw the trail in front of me marked with headlamps from other hikers.  I finished kilometer 9 and turned to the south to see some hues of reds and blues and grays starting to light the horizon.  This was the last bit: one hour, one kilometer, four-hundred meters to climb.  

Fitz Roy was completely obscured by clouds, with some of the smaller peaks occasionally peeking through.  The sunrise to the southeast morphed from pink to red to orange to gold.  I turned to the west to see the two smaller peaks of the massif glowing red.  And then it was gone.  It was a cloudy morning, and patience was the name of the game today.  The sun burned off some clouds, and the first bits of the mountain and the lagoons below exploded with the light.  

Part of the massif at sunrise.

The sun started coming up, burning off some clouds, casting light on the mountains
and lagoon below. 

I sat on the shore of Laguna de los Tres, my feet kicked up on a rock, leaning back on my backpack, staring up at the Fitz Roy massif, waiting for the sun to clear the clouds.  “I’ll sit here all day, Fitz!”  Through the clouds, Fitz Roy stared back at me silently.  Moments later, I looked up to see the sun urging the clouds to clear.  The four of us who braved the cold cheered in excitement at the promise of seeing the mountain.  After three hours, Fitz Roy was finally unwrapped.

After three hours of waiting, Fitz Roy was unwrapped by the sun.