altos del lircay / provincia / san ramon

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Disclaimer
Although rather boring, Carly insists I cannot delete it. Who knows why. She will concede, however, that there could be a little bit more, or any, character development. Presumably people are more interesting than grandiose slabs of rock covered in snow and the redundancy of nature: trees, green stuff, flowers, trail, a couple of woodpeckers, a hundred thousand penguins, some glaciersm and a long long list of adjectives. Lacking characters, the danger is that it will be imbued with what Mr. Christopher Hayes so eloquently referred to as “River Runs Through It Bullshit”. I am sure this is not criticism of the movie but rather warranted dread of the “pop-pseudo-metaphysical-I read the Tao Te Ching in high school and have a picture of Ganapati on my t-shirt” banality I often come up with. I have tried to avoid both. No characters. No meaning. A little bit of unwarranted whining as I am blissfully underemployed still. Despite the French man and Flaco’s concerns about a propensity for verbosity, I have far more words here than necessary. I have some time on my hands these days. I do hope it pains them both. Lastly, I have tried to avoid any affectations of Edmund Hillary / Teddy Roosevelt / Old Man in the Sea epic archetypical struggles of Man (of the capital letter, pre-PC, gender-neutral language variety) versus Nature (again the capital N, anthropomorphized as a pregnant Panchanmama Earth mother variety). Truth be told. I like to go out in the woods and not suffer. Although suffering is all the rage in Buddhism and cable TV survival shows these days, I prefer warmth, water, hot food, and a little booze whenever available. The woods for what that witty conservative ass from the NY Times would call Bobos in Paradise (great book by the way). With this disclaimer, here are a lot of words that say “Nature is pretty.“ Feel free to stop reading now as the next couple of pages are just going to be an admittedly unnecessary elaboration on that theme. Trying to drape Nature in words makes me feel like one of the stick wielding monkeys in 2001. No impressive symphonic music though to add substance to the scene. Just a monkey beating on a rock. Thwak. Thwak. Thwak. Thwak. Ad infinitum.

N.R. Altos del Lircay: October
Four hours south from Santiago, the Pan American highway leads to Talca. Apparently they grow a lot of wine in the area and are fond of saying something about “Paris, London, Talca.“ The wine is excellent, but they may be suffering from a little self-delusion. I doubt their comparison was meant to refer to the ominous grey skies and light drizzle that awaits me. Tiny roads spider webbing off the great highway that bisects Chile vertically run smoothly to the ocean. Heading east is another matter. Gravel covered and rutted they switch back into the foothills and then begin twisting tortured vertical ascents into the Andes. Eventually, all but the most stubborn, give up. Out of Talca, the bus runs to Vilches, a town in name, but in reality a smattering of houses lining the road where it abruptly ends. The National Reserva Altos del Lircay sits are the end of this road. Though it is October and well into Spring, most of the trails through the park are still buried under meters of snow. The trail climbs up from the Rio Lircay winding though the cloud shrouded valley for 4 hours. Here, lower down, spring has arrived and silver barked beech trees wear delicate new green leaves. Lizards bask on rocks in the warm sun and the woods reverberate with the sharp echoed thud of woodpeckers hammering away at dead trunks. They silence at approaching feet then take wing, large crow-sized black shapes vanishing and then suddenly materializing in amongst the trees. Two females and one male. The male’s fire-engine-red head sharply contrasts with the grays and greens and browns of the forest. The trail continues to climb, crossing creeks and rivers swollen with spring melt. Some, given life by spring, sound giddy and whimsical. Others, engorged, almost drunken, bellowing amongst the rocks and trees. As sun sets, I find a campsite alongside a creek. The water is fast, cold, clear and delicious. Since it runs out of the mountains and there is no substantial population of livestock upstream, it can be drunk unfiltered. At least that is what I tell myself, and thus far, the theory is holding up. The clouds lift with night’s descent, and to the north and east of the creek, El Fraile, a perfect volcano shaped hill like a child might draw, appears. Although only a hill, it is blanketed in snow. Between here and there, buried beneath the snow, is the trail. The night is cold but bright. The snow gathers up the stars and the sliver of moon light to illuminate the darkness. The next morning, I cross the stream and follow the GPS north and east across the snowy field. The snow is melting, which means with every step I sink. Sometimes to the ankle, sometimes to the knee, and occasionally to the waist. I know two trails head toward El Fraile. One climbs its western flank and heads north; the other, turns east and climbs to the lip of the Claro Gorge. Sinking and cursing I slowly creep across the snow field. The threatened clouds have gone and the sky is hard-pressed-crayon-sky-blue against the brilliant white on the mountains. On the other side, beyond the shadow of the mountain, the snow vanishes and the trail reappears following a creek up through reddish rocks towards the lip of the canyon. Climbing, more snow, but the way is littered with cairns, stacked rocks, showing the way. The trail crests at the aptly named Mirador, viewpoint, then plunges for 5 hours down the Claro gorge to the river below. Standing on the lip, the blue ribbons of the Rio Claro running out of mountains to the north and the Rio Blanquillo further south cut through the greening skirts of the lower elevations. Above the tree line, all is white snow and dark grey stone. Opposite the mirador, to the east, are the largest and closest peaks. Volcano Descabezado Grande (the decapitated one) at 3830 m. is an enormous volcano with the top shorn off. The crater at top is 1.5 km across, so its peak must have been massive before the eruption. South of Descabezado at 3788 m. is Cerro Azul (the unimaginatively named blue hill). In the saddle between the two is the crater Quizapu, from where Descabezado erupted in the 30s. I begin the five hour descent but am soon turned by snow fields laying hidden and unmelted within the folds of the mountainside. They are not wide, perhaps 40 or 50 feet, but they are sheer (70 degrees) and very long (500 + ft.). The first I am able to go over, but the second, I take a few steps and watch horrified as foot, snow, mud beneath and everything slides, like a finger running through the icing on a cake. I take a few more tentative steps, toe kicking into hard icy slippery crust. Visions of tumbling and sliding a thousand feet down this snow slide into the jagged jumble of rocky teeth below fill my head. Cowardice or common sense, I don’t know which, eventually prevails as the camp site by the creek seems much more alluring. The next morning, I climb up from the creek (5000ft) to the ridge behind (7000ft), called Enladrillado, which means something like bricklayer. Apparently there is a plateau at the top that looks as if it has been tilled. Local lore has it that it is an intergalactic landing strip for extraterrestrials. Clearly, crazy knows no boundaries. When I reach the ridge, there are unfortunately no extraterrestrials and the landing strip is a perfect undulating field of snow. The view is absolutely spectacular. The wind howls on the bare rocky spine; snow fields stretch to the south and west, to the north, the steep 2000 ft descent to the creek below. East the snowy spine of the Andes with Descabezado and Cerro Azul looming in the foreground. I smile a a lot and then find the trail down through the snow fields.

Provincia and San Ramon: November
It was billed as an overnight hike into the mountains that loom above Santiago. I would be 8 or 9 hours in before the gallows humor and exhaustion began to give it shades of a death march. Things began innocently enough. Although angry, dirty and hemmed in by concrete dikes when it reaches downtown Santiago, the clean clear Mapocho river tumbles happily out of the mountains where the trail begins. It is 9:30 in the morning. We are at 2500 ft or so, and the way up climbs steeply up the valley wall. Spring though has come to the mountains and the low scrubby pointy flora that eek out existence in the dry dusty soil are blooming. Red tubed flowers on tall stalks and flimsy yellowed petals color the washed out landscape. Ridiculously large, seemingly exaggerated, agave-like plants intermittently appear along the trail. Those in bloom shooting huge 8 feet high asparagus-like stalks crowned with creamy flowers into the sky. Higher up, another micro niche dominated by spiny barrel chested 10 ft. high clusters of cacti. After a couple of hours and 3000 vertical feet, the trail plateaus at a spot called Alto del Naranjo dominated by a huge Quillay, not orange, tree whose broad limbs provide welcome shade. From there, the summit of Provincia rises far above and the climbing and scrambling up through jumbled rock commences. Climb, stop, gasp, climb, stop, gasp, climb, stop, gasp. Repeat. Hours pass. False peaks succeed each other mocking our pathetic trudging. We rise above the tree line. Mostly rock and in shadowed crevices, snow. It is undoubtedly beautiful, but most of the beauty happens beyond the periphery of my boots, which I am spending an inordinate amount of time contemplating. Partially due to the terrain and partially due to exhaustion. Occasionally, the trail approaches a ridge and the gaze can be temporarily shifted from my feet. Below, Santiago sprawls hazy and enormous under its smoggy blanket. Around 2:00, we reach the summit of Provincia at 9000 ft. Although still sunny, it is cold and the wind biting. We lunch huddled out of the wind and look, most of us with a fair amount of dread, toward the summit of San Ramon. From Provincia, it is up to the next peak, down along a saddle ridge, up to another peak, down another saddle ridge and then a climb to the summit of San Ramon, where there s a trekking hut . . . we’re told. Where it is isn’t exactly certain, but we have a few pages from the internet. For the next 7 hours we climb. The wind, tearing a page from the great book of clichés, howls. Its cold. Condors ride thermal currents below us. The view of the Andes to the east is often shrouded in clouds, but stunning when given glimpses. Plomo, a dome shaped 18000 ft monstrosity, dominates the ridge and gathers up the sunlight as day passes into evening. The trail appears and vanishes. Although marked intermittently, the trail is more of a direction: follow the ridge up and south. Animal trails crisscross the way, but if it goes up and your knees, lungs, and calves scream, it will work. Down is wishful thinking. Jon, a poor Chilean fellow with us who was fed partial truths, is hurting. Jon’s knees, the coming darkness, the now bitter cold, the 12 hours of unrelenting climbing, and the unknown location of the trekking hut make things more interesting than they ought to be. As night falls, the clouds part and the peaks turn pink, then orange, then red, and finally just a variation of lighter darkness in the black of night. The moon and stars appear and still we climb. Finally, Nick, the lunatic leading this charge into the mountains, who has scouted ahead, appears as the darkness becomes complete. He has found the trekking hut: a geodesic dome of sweet, sweet, wind resistant, heat holding, fiberglass just below the 10,600 ft summit of San Ramon. Climbing a short rise in the darkness, a few of us huddle amongst some boulders drinking rum and looking at the glittering lights of Santiago below. The next morning, we descend the other side of the mountain following a valley out to the road that leads back to Santiago

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Photos

san ramon
santiago at night from the top of san ramon

Comments

[jamie]

man that disclaimer made me wince. You can be so brutal, like a tank running over a poppy flower. And sometimes I am the poppy flower, and you could be too, if you let yourself. Tra la lala