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Published: March 31st 2010
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Day 1
I am not sure how I have been so lucky weather-wise since I got to the southern extremity of Argentina. Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia are known for their sometimes extreme weather. Snow in the summer, rain that comes pelting out of nowhere, winds that can flatten you. But I have seen little of this. I am almost beginning to think the bad weather is a myth (except see Day 2).
On Monday, almost on a whim, I decided to take the bus from El Calafate up to El Chaltén, a small town on the other end of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares (the same one with the Perito Moreno Glacier) - a three hour trip through the dry, barren steppe of this part of Patagonia. You don’t know what nothingness, albeit a beautiful nothingness, is until you drive through this kind of landscape. I was hesitant to make such a short trip, just an overnighter, because the main reason to visit this part of the park is to hike in some of the most dramatic Andean mountain scenery there is; but those improbable mountain peaks, the famous Cerro Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, are more often than
not enshrouded in thick clouds.
Guess what? Monday, the day I decided to make the trip, turned out to be absolutely magical. A warm sun in a clear, blue sky and a gentle breeze. A gift, as several people kept exclaiming. There are only four or five days in a year that the weather is this nice here, and I was getting to experience it.
Fitz Roy and Torre were visible a hundred kilometers away, jutting abruptly above the flat expanse of the scrubland through which the highway meandered. (In this part of South America, the Andes are sort of a 0 to 60 type of mountain range - they rise up with almost no lead in. What foothills?) As the bus pulled into El Chaltén, the tremendous height of the cerros became even more apparent. They were bathed in the bright sun, framed against that blue sky (almost the same shade as the ice of the Perito Moreno Glacier). I couldn’t wait to start hiking.
But which path to take? There are two main trails that radiate from El Chaltén, one in the direction of Cerro Torre and the other towards Cerro Fitz Roy. For no
better reason than it was named after the captain of the HMS Beagle, I chose the one to Fitz Roy. At every sun-drenched bend, the mountain revealed itself in greater and greater splendor. I hope I can be forgiven for the number of photos I took of this jaw-droppingly handsome mountain. Every time I thought I’d seen the peak at its most photogenic, I would go a little further and find that it was more even more stunning than a moment before. I got a little trigger happy with the camera.
At times I had the trail almost too myself, but at various points, such as at the first mirador, I would stumble on gaggles of dreadlocked trekkers and mountain climbers sunning themselves on the rocks, like lizards in need of a good haircut and shave (and a bath). But I envied them. They had plunged deep into Los Glaciares, probably for days, even weeks, at a stretch. They might have gotten to see the huge ice field that lay just behind the mountains, the source of the now distant Perito Moreno. All I was going to get was two days. Not enough time, not at all.
But
the gorgeous sunny day was indeed a gift.
Day 2
So Patagonian weather returned on Tuesday. I woke to pouring rain and glowering, grey skies. But by the time I was finished with breakfast, the rain had abated enough to contemplate the second trail, the one to Lago Torre at the base of Cerro Torre. I only had one more day in El Chaltén; I wasn’t going to squander it due to some drips.
Actually, the weather added a certain drama to the hike. The sun struggled to break through the clouds, sometimes shining as I was being splashed by raindrops, producing far-arching rainbows. I was witnessing what seemed to be a heavenly struggle between the dark and white clouds swirling around each other, veiling most of the peaks (the spires of Cerro Torre remained coyly invisible the entire day). But it never rained very hard. And by the time I reached the still, glacier fed Lago Torre it had all but stopped. I was able to sit on a boulder on the lake shore, watching the mini-ice bergs born of Glaciar Grande bob in the milky water. I took a drink directly from the lake. Pure,
cold. It might now be my favorite spot in Los Glaciares.
I will need to return to these mountains in the near future. They beg for a proper expedition.
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Ami
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It seems as if it's impossible to take an ugly photo in Patagonia! :) So much natural beauty!