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Published: December 15th 2008
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Horror. Despair. Waves of nausea. Real fear. Different from the three day bender fear that can be fixed with a gallon of water, an icy diet coke, serious sweating or the white flag of surrender return to bed. I stared again at the message. One terrible sentence fragment with an excessive amount of punctuation meant to convey, or perhaps engender, enthusiasm: “Plomo Next Week!!!!” El Plomo is the 5424 meter dome shaped glaciated mountain looming over Santiago. Over the winter, conversation often wandered dangerously near the idea of climbing it. Now, my neighbor Nick had made the irrational jump from idle chatter to definite planning.
The problem from my perspective was twofold: first of all, the tops of mountains are inhospitable, cold, and windy places with not enough oxygen; moreover, they require an inordinate amount of grueling hour upon hour trudging straight up. Though unpleasant, I could live with that part. However, the second and larger problem was the idea of following Nick up to the summit. Nick is part mountain goat and part gazelle. In case you may have forgotten, I am not. I fall into the tortoise/speed and ass/stubbornness category. Further complicating my evasion was the fact that
Sierra Velluda
first sighting the following Monday was another holiday. (Something about an Immaculate Conception. This was more than a little confusing as it was December and December plus nine months equals September. Apparently, I’ve either been woefully misinformed about the meaning of Christmas and Christian dogma, or the Catholics have got more than one of the immaculately conceived running around through history. Who knew? Nevertheless, this theological quandary slid over my consciousness like cloud shadows. Noteworthy yes, but of infinitesimally little consequence considering current circumstances.) Clearly, the rational response was “Hell no! You and that mountain scare the shit out of me!” But I had dug my own grave on this one by indulging thoughts of Plomo with Nick during the long ago winter. Definitely, Nick and Plomo would kill me.
The only out was to throw myself on the other sword, Nick’s roommate Ben. Ben was updating the Lonely Planet Hiking in Patagonia guide book and was headed south the same weekend. Although Ben too suffers from the mountain goat, gazelle, human, genetic confusion, he, like my good friend Swirl, views 80% graded inclines as a slendid time for a chat. This disposition is advantageous as it slows them down incrementally,
and occasional grunting passes for active participation. In between monosyllabic responses and gasped questions, I can focus on the real work of shuffling my feet uphill and choking back the urge to vomit up lungs, kidneys. spleens, and what not. With Ben, if I could distract him with questions and keep him talking, survival seemed likely. Moreover, according to the guide book, Parque Nacional Laguna De Laja offered a volcano, a jaggy Andes mint looking mountain, glaciers, something called ‘volcanic scoria’, a mysterious activity called ‘glissading’, and the threat of ‘only’ 60km in three days. The last sounded wretched (and also turned out to be untrue), but it was a lot better than crevices, snow blindness, acute altitude sickness, waking at one in the morning to begin a ten hour summit ascent, Yetis, and the rest. Fear was getting the best of my imagination. Luckily, Ben is about as agreeable as they come and said I could come along.
Saved from El Plomo, it was only fitting that just after dawn the night bus from Santiago dumped us in the city of angels, Los Angeles. I did my part and sat around with the backpacks in the bus station
drinking coffee. Ben took off with his guide book and fluent Spanish to update things. An hour later, he returned and we got on the 8:30 bus to El Abanico, the town closest to the park. One and a half hours later, the bus deposited us at a ‘T’ in the road. The dirt one led to the park. Hitchhiking is usually ridiculously easy, but we saw no cars, so we walked. Not so bad except for a two kilometer detour up and back down a trail that wasn’t the right trail, a couple of sign posted trails that said they were the trail but weren’t, and the 11km between the ‘bus stop’ and the trail head. So much for the easy 4 km first day. We still hadn’t begun that.
When finally found, the trail immediately climbed straight up for an hour. Ben talked. I gasped. Then we came up over the valley wall. Ahead of us loomed the craggy face of Sierra Velluda, crowned with a ginormous glacier and adorned with twenty or so waterfalls. Green skirted about its base, it rose saw-toothed to a snow covered summit of 3585 meters. To our left rose the
2985 meter high snow patched cone of Volcan Antuco: a facsimile of the volcanoes of a flatlander’s imagination. The trail led across the ‘volcanic scoria’ that had filled the valley in the last eruption. Sun bleached bone-white sticks had been wedged amongst the rocks marking the way. We slowly crossed the mile wide jumble of black boulder sized volcanic rock - bigger cousins to the landscaping rock popular in suburbia with the notable difference that edges on these are razor sharp. On the other side, near a fast cold river and a stand of beech trees, there was a fine place to put a tent, cook some dinner, and wait for the hallucinatory night sky.
Morning arrived with the early sunlight dazzling on the glacier. As I sat drinking coffee and reading, I heard rumbling like distant thunder and looked up to see a house sized chunk of ice and snow slide off the front of the glacier. Global warming, or maybe just spring. Either way, awesome to watch. Shortly thereafter, Ben awoke, and sadly, the hiking part of the day replaced the sit around drinking coffee, reading, and staring at the glacier part. We followed the river up,
skirting the main lava flow and picking our way through the rocks, towards the saddle between Antuco and Sierra Villuda. Eventually, the ‘river’ vanished in a tongue of snow coming down from the pass, and then we were in the saddle looking north into the valley far below. The north side of the pass was filled with snow. Lots of it. Cliffs of it that we didn’t need to be walking on. Moving further up the face of the volcano, we were able to get around the snow cliffs. Also, we discovered what in the hell ‘glissading’ was; apparently, it is sliding down a very steep snow covered mountain. I highly recommend it. A hour and a half later, we made it off the mountain and had lunch by another river. Somewhere ahead there was a dirt road and the tourquoise Laguna de la Laja. Six km down the road, a stream crossed the road and following it uphill, a nice place to stop walking.
By some questionable math, we decided that we had hiked 39km in the last two days and a beer in Santiago the following evening was a stitch better than a trafficked dirt road: trucks, cars,
motorcycles, four wheelers, a group on horseback, rooster tails of dust and no walkers. In the morning, a truck came by and we climbed in the back. Things then began moving considerably faster. The road followed the western shore of the lake, but morbidly, was also strewn with Chileans flags, plastic flowers, and white grave stones. Three years ago, the army was doing some sort of horrifically ill thought out fall training with a group of new recruits; i.e. poor teenagers who couldn’t take advantage of the university escape clause. A storm blew in and the commander decided to march them out. Forty five grave stones are spread out along the road marking where they dropped. Heavy stuff.
Now began Ben’s final frenzied info gathering. A cold beer marked the final destination, so I was properly encouraging. First stop was the dilapidated ski life on the volcano. Ben talked to someone. I read. Then we hitched another ride to the park headquarter, signed out and walked most of the way back down the road before catching a final lift into El Abanico. In town, Ben talked to someone. I read. The one o’clock the bus took us back to
Los Angeles. From two thirty to three thirty, Ben ran around LA talking to people. I . . . read. At four o’clock, the bus left for Santiago. We arrived in Santiago at 10:30. By 11:30, we had showered and were sitting in El Diablito having the promised beer. Meanwhile, Nick was somewhere up on El Plomo.
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jason swearingen
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Great pictures. Glacier travel? Crevase danger? Not a bad way to spend the weekend.