I must admit that I'm a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of this blog post. Since I last posted, I've spent just over a month traveling around Patagonia, Argentina (and a moment of Chile) with my partner Daniel. We did a number of expeditions that I'm very excited to share about. I'm also anal about this blog so I can't stand to have it incomplete even if that means a bunch of work to make a post. So I'm glad to have 2 rest days here before I go back to work, because it will be enjoyable processing for me to churn out this post for my 3 loyal followers (shout out Mom, Aunt Jodi, and Aunt Debbie). El chalten Immedietly following course end in mid December, Daniel and I took a 29 hour bus (you read that right) down south via scenic route 40. We went south to visit El Chalten, a beautiful mountain town at the foothills of the Fitz Roy Massif and Cerro Torre group. Fitz Roy is the most famous and recognizable mountain in the area, most famous for its depiction in the Patagonia clothing brand logo. In Chalten, we did two epic expeditions and plenty of hanging out... backpacking: Huemul loop The Huemul loop is a 40 mile, 4 day trek that starts and ends in town. It offered exciting and strenuous terrain, meeting Daniel and I with an appropriate level of challenge. It was fun to backpack at our own level, and not at the level of an Outward Bound crew. It was also Daniel's first time backpacking for fun and not pay, which is interesting. The hike was fairly popular, aided by the fact that we started on day 1 of a nice weather window. By the 3rd and 4th days, we were seeing the same parties on trail and in camp each night. Pics and more words: This is Daniel on a tyrolean traverse on day 2 of the hike. These cable zip lines were installed for dangerous river crossings, and there were 2 of them on the route. This one was particularly cool because it was over a chasm and fast flowing glacier river. For the tyroleans, we had to carry our harnesses and a few caribiners. Technical backpacing! Epic! Meeeee with the Southern Patagonia Ice Fields behind me. MEGA!!! This glacier is the longest icefield in Patagonia, and second longest in the world. We were so blown away by this view, which we hiked along for two of the days on the route. It was the type of view, that when I saw it for the first time, my brain needed to recompute. I had never seen anything like it! After spending some time on a glacier during the OB course the previous month, this glacier experience ignited a blowtorch flame of curiosity within both me and Daniel. Look at those patterns! The glacier and the land around it tells a true story. What a natural majesty, an otherworldly entity, made in no part by the hands of man. Religious!! Pictured is Daniel's artsy backlit silhouette walking along the very end of a glacier. Different glacier than the one in the previous picture. The snowpack on top has long since melted off, so all crevasses are visible. No rope needed. Rubble that has collected over the decades made the surface rough and easy to walk on without crampons. The hour or so spent walking along this glacier was a hilight of the hike! Ok, after posting these photos and typing up those words I just got so excited again about this loop! I have done a lot of backpacking in the past 12 or so years, in a slew of different environments. This was the coolest backpacking that I have ever done! I would not recommend it to the off-the-couch backpacker, as the days were burly and day 3 had a very steep and loose (read: dangerous) descent that was scary at times. But I would recommend the loop to any experienced backpacker visiting Chalten. Mountaineering: Mojon Rojo After a few days of rest following the Huemul Loop, Daniel and I set off on an unpredictable adventure, to attempt to summit one of the peaks of the Fitz Roy Massif. 98% of the massif is beyond our technical skillset, involving some combination of glacier travel, snow climbing, ice climbing, mixed climbing, scary shit, etc etc. There were very limited options of routes that were within our wheelhouse, and we went up with the knowledge that the mission may not include a summit for any number of reasons. It was brave of us to even get to the high camp, the Swiss bivy. It was brave of us to be open to the idea that we may not complete a summit mission. To be honest, it was brave of us to even leave the comfort of our hostel and do something so challenging. There's a lot more to this story than what's in this blog, but here's a chunk of the story. The itinerary: Day 1- leave town around 11am, hike 6 miles to Campamento Poincenot, a forested and popular camp. Day 2- leave camp too late and hike 3 extremely difficult miles up the Swiss bivy (high camp). Day 3- leave camp at 6am for the summit of Mojon Rojo. Success! Back to Swiss bivy by noon. Down to Campamento Poincenot by 6pm. Day 4- hike back to town and go out for asado (traditional Argentine barbecue) dinner. More via pics and words... Daniel, my love, with the Fitz Roy Massif behind him. Iconic! Mojon Rojo is the small red peak on the left of the grey granite peaks. Fitz Roy is the big one, Poincenot is the skinny tall tower to the left, then Mojon Rojo is 4 more peaks to the left. The snow that you see at the base of all of the rocks is a glacier. That is what makes this mission so involved technically, because the approaches require glacier travel. Mojon Rojo offers a summit with the most simple glacier travel to its base. hanging out in townMy whole life is not epic expeditions, contrary to how the blog and instagram may portray. Most of my life is eating yummy foods and playing games with Daniel. Pictured is us at our favorite tea house, where we'd get hot drinks, apple crumble (not pictured/eaten already), and play games like this travel set of Catan. For me, one of the most exhausting parts of traveling with backcountry missions included is the amount of packing and transitioning that we do. Pictured is the bed spread of our packing push for Mojon Rojo. At least we had a nice hostel to base out of. Some day I'll operate out of a house, but for now its a backpack and a duffle bag. El Calafate The next stage of our travel involves a number of busses, a bout of food poisoning for Daniel, and some touristy stuff. It's not worth rehashing the booking or logistical challenges of visiting El Calafate or Torres del Paine. My brain did those mental gymnastics once to make it all happen, and I don't have the effort to explain it. If you're planning to travel to south Patagonia and want information hit me up. Basically, it's confusing. But there's some epic rocks and glaciers to see, so we made it happen... One of the 2 main reasons we went to El Calafate was to visit Torres del Paine National Park just over the border in Chile. Daniel was a trooper and came all the way to the park with me even with food poisoning, but couldn't survive the hike so he waited down at the visitor center. I did the 13 mile round trip hike by myself to get to the base of the towers, pictured here. The hike was beautiful, long, but I was rewarded with this view that I had been seeing on the internet every day leading up to the visit. It was an odd feeling- going through so much logistical effort to be here in person, to snap this photo. Other than the photo, this experience was not grounded in reality at all. It made me appreciate traveling with Daniel very much, because we had been able to share all of these other amazing experiences. This one was fine, glad I did it. If the previous photo is instagram, this photo is reality. The way down from the epic view had some small moments of scrambling, and I had to wait in line for some of them due to the amount of tourists. This hike is probably the most popular hike in this park, which is the most popular park in Patagonia. And it was New Year's Day. High season. If you do touristy things, this is the reality of Patagonia. Snapping that photo is a tourist trap, and I fell right into it. Interesting reflections on my solo hike back to Daniel at the visitor center. The day after Torres del Paine we bussed back to El Calafate and took a taxi to the Perito Moreno Glacier, pictured above. This was the other main reason we came to Calafate. This epic glacier flows down into Lago Argentina where it ends. The glacier poops off massive chunks of ice in what's called calving. When it calves, the ice fall is so loud and makes huge splashes. This part of the glacier is called the ablasion zone. I am a big fan of ablasion. Very cool to witness this alive thing creaking, breaking, moving. piedra parada We left south Patagonia and took the epic 29 hour bus back north to Bariloche, home base. From there we rented a car and drove 5.5 hours south again to a dope desertish climbing spot called Piedra Parada. We sport climbed for 2 days, in a radical canyon, and on the 3rd day we climbed the piedra parada (standing rock) itself. After so much backpacking and busses, it was nice to keep it simple and camp and climb again. I had missed climbing, being apart from it since my time in Yosemite ending in the beginning of November. It was nice to get my groove back a little bit. I surprised myself with my capabilities. Frey Final stop. If you're tired of reading this blog just think how tired I am of sleeping in a sleeping bag. Anyway. Once back in Bariloche, Daniel and I joined forces with best buddy, Max for 4 days of climbing at Frey. We climbed at Frey last year, and it was just as epic as we remembered. This trip was very windy, which limited us to relatively local climbing missions, no major summits attained. We did 1 day of single pitch climbing near camp, then 3 days of multi-pitch adventures. Max onsighting a 6c/ 5.11d crux of one of our multi-pitch climbs. For those that don't know anything about climbing just know that that is stupid hard and Max is unruly strong. It was really fun to try a bunch of harder pitches of climbing on top rope after max fired them on lead. Max is someone that I love to hang out with and also impresses me a lot. I hadn't seen him since climbing together in Yosemite back in October, so it is great to be reunited! Back to work! Ok so it's been a big month! I am tired, but not wrecked. I'm enjoying 2 days of rest before I begin working another semester phase for Outward Bound, this time with Max. Daniel flew home this morning. I am thankful to be healthy and feeling fit at this point in the season. Despite being tired of being uncomfortable, I am continually inspired by engaging with challenge in the outdoors. I'm refreshed after some amazing personal recreation and ready to facilitate an epic experience for a crew of semester students very soon. If you made it this far in the blog, that's quite the feat and thanks for reading.
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