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Published: March 12th 2007
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After our mammoth journey all we wanted to do was find a place to crash out and relax. This proved to be rather difficult with El Chalten's growing popularity with climbers and trekkers; the first few hostels we tried were all completely full! We eventually found a little place after wandering around for a while, right opposite where we'd gotten off the bus in the first place!
We had come to El Chalten to go trekking and climbing and spent the following day wandering around checking out the options available. We soon discovered that the local tourist information could give you all the maps and information you needed to go trekking in the surrounding area, which was great as it meant no need for guides etc. Whilst walking around we did find a few other things that seemed pretty cool and that we weren't expecting to see; rock climbing and ice climbing. We decided to do a day of each as both were reasonably priced and to have such easy access to great rock climbing and any ice climbing at all is quite rare in the same place.
There were a couple of short hikes that could be
done around El Chalten, which we thought would make a nice warm up for the rest of our activities. First we went up to Mirador de los Condores; a nice viewpoint looking out across the village with a great panorama of all the mountains surrounding it. We didn't see any Condors that afternoon though! We also did a second short hike out of town in the opposite direction and saw the moutains turn a pinky-orange as the sun went down.
We thought we deserved a treat after all our trekking, so popped into a cute alpine looking cafe that tempted us with its advert for waffles! We also thought we should try the argentine addiction - mate - a herbal type tea which you see argentines drinking everywhere and at anytime of day. All in all we had a very nice first day.
For our first full day in El Chalten we decided to do one of the well-known treks up to Laguna Torre with two new friends from the hostel, Andre and Joanna. It was a perfect day for walking; the sky was blue, the sun shone and there was a little breeze to keep us cool as View from Mirador de los Condores
Fitzroy mountain range in the distance and the village of El Chalten below surrounded by walls of impressive rock... just waiting to be climbed! we slogged up the first uphill section. The trail was generally pretty easy going which was lucky for our friends who were trekking with all their camping gear in order to continue with another trek the next day. We had decided to just do day treks as all of the amazing scenary is easily accessible from the town without having to camp, although I bet the sunrises and sunsets up there are amazing!
We came to our first look-out point to the Cerro Torre Mountain range and glaciar after about an hour. This was our first real-life glacier sighting and we were suitably impressed: the snow-covered mountain range was beautiful and you could see how the snow falling down the steep rock faces was compacting at the bottom to form the Glaciar Grande (3 glaciars in one) which pushes into the Laguna Tore at the bottom. Two hours further trekking through forest and scrubland in a glaciar valley brought us to the edge of the Laguna Torre, face to face with the Glaciar Grande. The laguna had huge icebergs floating on its surface. We hiked an extra 40 mins around the edge of the lake to get a closer
view of the front of the glaciar, in its icey immenseness!
The next day was the first of our climbing activities. We decided to book a whole day´s climbing instead of just a half day; hoping we wouldn't get too knackered and not be able to finish the day! It was defintely well worth it as it was just the two of us with a really great guide called Luis. We started with a couple of easy climbs and did a few more difficult ones after lunch. The really cool thing we did at the end of the day was to do an extra long route. Normally you just climb up and then your partner on the ground lowers you down when you finish. The longer routes we did at the end of the day were split into 3 sections. The first person climbs up to a secure point on the rock and is then joined by the second and third people, then all the ropes are pulled up and you do the same for second and third sections, attached to a secure bolt in the rock face whilst you wait to climb. It was a great experience and
gave you a real taste of what its like to climb much higher mountains and we had condors circling above us on our last climb!
Our third day we switched from rock to ice for another full days climbing. Unfortunately we hadn't realised when we'd done our fist days trekking that the location for the ice climbing was also Glaciar Grande. This meant that we did the same trek that we had done two days previously down to Laguna Tore, our first visit to the laguna hadn't been a complete waste of time as the weather had been significantly nicer and the views were much clearer. After arriving at the laguna we took a different route, crossing a river on a zipline to gain access to the trail that lead the opposite way round the lake to the glacier.
It was not immediately obvious you were standing on a huge chunk of ice until Luis told us as there was a layer of loose stones covering the area where we stopped to put on our crampons. When you looked properly you could see where the sun had warmed the stones and they had sunken into the ice.
The glaciar landscape was from another world, reminding me of the Narnia and Lord of the Rings films. Some areas had steep hills whose peaks we climbed up and down, whilst trying not to fall off into the deep cravases either side. Other areas were flatter with little rivers of melting water running through them until they found one of the various deep holes to dive into, escaping to the bottom of the glaciar to help push it along. Some sections of the glaciar were a very bright blue colour: Luis explained these sections were more compacted and were blue because they were reflecting the colour of the sky. It was an amazing experience walking across the glaciar and after about an hour we reached somewhere near the centre to try out some ice climbing.
Our first taste of ice climbing was on a small wall of ice about 15m high, starting out as a slope leading into a vertical section. Luis climbed up first to put a bolt in the top of the wall for the rope; he was saying you had to make sure you found a good bit of ice to screw it into as
Maté and Waffles - yummy!
We are now Maté addicts and have all the gear! it was going to be holding our weight!! All screwed in and ready to go, Luis gave us a brief explanation of the technique for using the axes and crampons together to climb. It was relatively straight forward although the first few strikes with the axes seemed like you were trying to dig a tunnel in the ice rather than climb it. It was also a little unnerving trusting the ice to hold all your weight, especially on the crampons where you were using just the small two front spikes. We both made it up and abseiled back down again sucessfully then Luis gathered up the rope and bolts so we could move on. The weather was starting to close in with big clouds coming over the mountains and rain starting to fall. We only had time for one more climb, this time on a slightly larger and almost 100% vertical wall of ice. After another successful climb we headed back across the glaciar away from the advancing rain. We could see a lot of large groups of people who looked like they had only just arrived on the ice turning back so we were quite lucky to have done
as much as we had!
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Nat Barry
non-member comment
Climbing
Sounds a lot more interesting climbing out there than Calshot climbing wall!!! Great views and a lot more challenging