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The Hanging Glaciers of Mt. Tronador

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

After crossing the Chile-Argentine border for the eighth time, we returned once more to Bariloche and began preparing for our fourth and final multi-day Patagonian trek: the Paso de las Nubes (roughly: ‘Cloud Pass’), which we turned from a two-day trek into a four-day trek by adding some side trips. Fortunately, there were barely any clouds in sight, the trail was quite easy (though boggy in parts) and the scenery was, as we’ve come to expect, quite spectacular. The highlights are below:

Mt TronadorMt. Tronador: The entire trek is essentially an ode to Mt. Tronador (Mt. Thunderer, named for the sounds its glaciers make, both in Spanish and previously in local languages), which is easily the highest in the region at 3554m and completely dominates the area. The triple-peaked mountain is shared between Argentina and Chile (though it seems most of the good stuff is on the Argentine side), is covered in snow year-round, and all of the glaciers we saw hung from its slopes. Our best views of the mountain itself were on the first and last days, though the most impressive glaciers were on the second and third days.

NegroVentisquero Negro: We spent the first day admiring the peak of Tronador and jostling with the hordes of domestic tourists at the Ventisquero Negro (‘Black Glacier’), which owes 99% of its popularity to the fact that you can drive to it. (Naturally, we walked.) It was actually quite interesting to see how many people come to see this glacier when, as it turns out, there are two more nearby that are infinitely more spectacular yet barely visited because you have to hike to them. As for the black (actually brown) glacier itself, I dislike dirty glaciers as much as the next guy, but this one was so dirty that it was almost pretty in a way considering the incredible contrast between the stark brownness of it and the pristine whiteness of the Glacier Manso directly above it.

Glaciar Castaño OveroGlaciar Castaño Overo: The highlight of Day 2, and the entire trek, was the hanging Glaciar Castaño Overo, which we had completely to ourselves and was one of the most beautiful sights in this beautiful country. Emerging from a forest about 1¼ hours from the main trail, we suddenly arrived at the base of a sheer cliff with almost a dozen waterfalls streaming down it. At the top of the cliff stood the pristine glacier contrasted against the deep blue sky to complete the gorgeous scene (and give me a new desktop background). We found a nice rock to sit on, got out our breakfast of crackers and dulce de leche, and sat there by ourselves for some time, quite mesmerised.

GlacierGlaciar Frías: On Day 3, we waded through bogs, climbed to the Paso de las Nubes itself (one of the easiest passes we’ll ever reach), and then went steeply downhill through forest on the other side, eventually emerging on a rocky outcrop near the valley floor to find another spectacular view ahead of us: the Glaciar Frías. While not quite as beautiful as Castaño Overo owing to some dirtiness on one side of the glacier, it was a grander and more imposing scene, with more of the glacier revealed, mountains rising from either side of it, and waterfalls tumbling further down. We once again had perfect weather and, spending the night at a well-situated campsite within view of the glacier, we were able to admire it for most of the day and then see first light hit it the next morning.

Lago Nahuel HuapiCruce de Lagos: We managed, virtually by complete accident, to stumble across one of the main tourist attractions of the Lakes District: a bus and boat tour that ferries tourists (mostly Brazilians) from Puerto Montt in Chile to Bariloche. After two days of seeing hardly any people (on the second and third nights there were only three other tents at the campsites), we reached the end of the trail at Lago Frías to find a boatload of tourists awaiting their next cruise. We bought tickets for the two boats and two buses remaining (which cost, between us, a very steep 380 pesos – US$100 – and amazingly all the money we had on us totalled 380.75 pesos, just enough to scrape by) and joined the tour – the only way to get back to Bariloche other than to walk all the way back to the start of the trail and take a bus. Both the boat rides on Lago Frías and Lago Nahuel Huapi were quite beautiful and despite the culture shock of emerging from a peaceful trail to suddenly find ourselves in the thick of high-end tourism, it was a lovely way to end the trek.

The next day, we completed our circumnavigation of Argentina by taking a bus all the way back to Buenos Aires, where we started this trip in early October. Now we just have time to duck into Uruguay for a couple of days before I head to Vancouver on Thursday.

The Nahuel Huapi Traverse

Monday, January 11th, 2010

We suffered a bit of a post-Antarctica funk for a few days while in Ushuaia and making the long journey back north (three buses, two pointless border crossings and 50 hours later, and we still hadn’t made it out of Patagonia!). But finally we arrived in Bariloche a week or so ago, ready to resume our Andes hiking tour, this time around the Lakes District in the far north of Patagonia.

View from the TrailFor our first trek in the region, we picked the Nahuel Huapi traverse through the national park of the same name, but in the end there were some variations to the trail due to the third day requiring a guide (and then in fact being closed because of excessive snow/rain anyway), and due to a route-finding mistake on the fifth day that led us down the wrong path and unfortunately caused us to forgo the final part of the traverse. But when it was all said and done, it was a memorable six-day trek with some great moments, but it didn’t quite measure up to the more famous trails around Fitz Roy and Torres del Paine. Some of the best and worst moments are below:

Ice SheetLakes: They don’t call it the Lakes District for nothing. Virtually every day of the hike we saw a new, gorgeous lake, and in all cases we looked down on them from above before descending to the shore. We even saw a completely frozen lake for the second time this Argentine summer. The prettiest of all was Laguna Schmoll, beautifully situated, surrounded by jagged peaks, and with part of it covered by a sheet of ice. We had breakfast there on the second morning, completely alone and bathed in sunshine, and it’s moments like those that make it worthwhile to hike for days on end with sore legs and sore feet and sore shoulders and even sorer hips from your crummy sleeping mats.

Rickety BridgeRivers and Streams: For much of Days 3, 4 and 6 we hiked alongside beautiful streams with crystal clear water that flowed beautifully over red rocks and through canyons and produced lovely drinking water. The various methods we used to cross them ranged from rock-hopping to rope-holding to log-crossing to stumbling across rickety wooden bridges, and these were always pretty interesting crossings, especially when we had to traverse a kind of raging waterfall on the way up to Laguna CAB.

The Weather: After a pretty uneventful nine days, weather-wise, in Torres del Paine, this time we got everything imaginable: snow, rain, howling winds and glorious sunshine. The winds on Day 1 and 4 were the strongest we’ve faced in our short camping careers, but luckily our saggy Chinese tent was up to the task and it held up pretty well, especially on Day 4 when Laguna Negra looked more like the Pacific Ocean and the wind howled so much on the way up that I was half-seriously worried about being blown off the cliff. We actually did get blown over a couple of times and had to sit down on the trail just to stay safe. On a more positive note, Days 2 and 3 were stunning and produced most of our good memories (and photos) from the trek.

The Trail: We trudged through snow, clamoured over rocks (sometimes rope-assisted), hiked through forests, slid down snow (fast becoming a favourite pastime), stumbled down scree, squelched through mud and struggled up extremely steep slopes of loose rock and tree roots – yes, this trail had it all.

The Wrong Trail: Blame here is shared between ourselves and the trail markers. Having climbed to a pass above the Laguna Negra on the morning of Day 5, we did not actually pass the signs well to our left that pointed further up the mountain towards Refugio López, and so descended from the pass as you would normally do (following the same route markers – red paint splashes on rocks – that we’d been following for four days). We climbed down into a valley, crossed a river and then went up the other side (with everything still sounding more or less like the LP description), not realising until we arrived at Laguna CAB four hours later that this was the path to, well, Laguna CAB, and not to Refugio López.

Of course, we could have also carried a better map with us, and if I’d exhibited the slightest sense of direction (Wendy, bless her, doesn’t have any to begin with), we would have realised something was wrong a lot earlier. But in the end it all worked out OK, though we never made it to Refugio López. After lunch at the beautiful but rainy lake, we headed back down and camped by ourselves next to a river for the night, enjoying the solitude. The next day we hiked all the way back up to the pass (in record time), back down to Laguna Negra (this time as calm as could be), and then a further 14 kilometres to the park exit by 2pm, which gave us just enough time to scoff down some hot ham and cheese sandwiches before taking the bus back to Bariloche.

We still have one more trek to do in the area, but since we’re pretty sore from this one and not quite ready to jump back on the trail again, we’re heading across the border once more to Chile tomorrow to check out the misty and mysterious islands of Chiloé, before coming back to Bariloche at the end of the week to tackle the fabulously named Mt. Tronador (Mt. Thunderer).

Tierra del Fuego: the end of the world

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

A few days ago we took an all-day bus from Puerto Natales south to the end of mainland South America, across the Straits of Magellan (via a car-ferry), into the Tierra del Fuego, back over the Argentina border, and ... [Continue reading this entry]

Fitz Roy: Worth the Wait

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

We arrived in El Chaltén, the base for forays into the northern part of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, with a reasonable weather forecast in hand and hopes for a five-day, four-night trek around the Mt. Fitz Roy area ... [Continue reading this entry]

Patagonia: Whales, Dinosaurs and an Incredible Glacier

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Our first taste of Patagonia was not of the windswept mountain and glacial scenery that has made the region famous, but of a coastal area as close to Buenos Aires as to Parque Nacional los Glaciares. After a ... [Continue reading this entry]

Central Argentina: wine tours and Spanish classes

Friday, November 20th, 2009

It’s been a while since my last post, mostly because we haven’t been anywhere in the past two weeks nearly as captivating as Valparaíso, and because I’ve been pretty busy this week taking Spanish classes in Córdoba, losing my ... [Continue reading this entry]

Northwest Argentina: “don’t tie your horse in the plaza”

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Fortunately, our travels in northwest Argentina in the past week have proved more successful than our previous foray into the northeast. The northwest is a charming, indigenous land a world away from the pace of Buenos Aires; to me ... [Continue reading this entry]

Suddenly: Argentina

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

The upheaval of the week after my last post seems distant now, but it was pretty chaotic at the time and I didn’t have a chance to post about it while it was happening. To cut a long ... [Continue reading this entry]