Fitz Roy: Worth the Wait
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 starting the following day. How quickly things changed. Behind Fitz Roy and the surrounding peaks lies the Hielo Sur, which at 350km long is the second largest non-polar ice sheet in the world and basically dictates the weather around it which can – and did – change at virtually a moment’s notice. The new forecast was for bad weather for the next two days, so we holed up in our wood-cabin-hostel and tried to stay away from the devastating winds and occasional rain (and even snow), wondering all the while why anyone even bothers to trek in this region given the volatility of the weather and how much it affects outdoor activities.
After three nights in El Chaltén, we modified our trek to a three-day, two-night one and with a three-day forecast of party cloudy – sunny – sunny, it was time to go. Having bought sleeping mats, a camping stove and a cooking set in Buenos Aires to go along with our sleeping bags and Chinese tent, we were completely self-sufficient for the first time, and looking forward to our first multi-day trek since we were in Kyrgyzstan in August.
Day 1
We arose at 6:30am on Tuesday, slung our packs over our shoulders and started walking. The sun was out, there was no wind, and for the first time we realised that this trek might not be a disaster after all. Leaving El Chaltén, we climbed up forested hills into the National Park, seeing a wild rabbit and quite a few woodpeckers (some with glorious red heads) along the way. The path was pretty easy, and even though we detoured to both a viewpoint (though it was pretty cloudy by now) and Lake Capri, we made it to our campsite for the night well before lunchtime. In Argentine national parks, ‘wild camping’ like we did in Kyrgyzstan (i.e. pitching your tent wherever you want) is not permitted, and you need to camp in designated sites. This takes away a bit of the serenity of the experience, since you’re pitching your tent next to a dozen others, but so be it. The Poincenot campsite is surrounded by trees to shelter campers from the wind, but a short walk leads you to views of Fitz Roy – although by now it was completely shrouded in cloud.
With the afternoon being overcast, cold and a bit windy, we bunkered down in our tent and spent the rest of the day and night trying to stay warm and hoping the forecast for the following day would hold and that we would see what we came for.
Day 2
I’ve seen a few amazing photos of dawn light on the rocky massifs in this part of the world, so we set an alarm for 5:30am and woke up to find that it was more or less clear at this hour and that Mt. Fitz Roy was visible and bathed in soft red light. We soaked it up for a few minutes and then set off for our climb to the Laguna de los Tres, which affords the best and closest view of Fitz Roy for those not game enough to try to scale it.
I didn’t feel too well on the way up and had to stop more than usual, so it took us about 1.5 hours to make it to the lake. By now the sky was almost completely clear and the views of the Fitz Roy massif and the jagged peaks surrounding it were stunning. We met a few hikers on their way back down while we were still going up and so by the time we made it, there was no one else there and we had it to ourselves. The lake itself was completely frozen and snowed over, and the sight of the peaks rising above it, too sheer to hold snow, was really stunning. Fitz Roy itself, the highest peak in the park, is ‘only’ 3405m above sea level (for reference, we were about 2000m higher than that when we crossed the Thorong La pass on the Annapurna Circuit last October, looking at 8000m peaks), but it is still a really impressive mountain and deserves its fame.
After admiring the views for a while, we headed back down, packed up our tent and walked on a perpendicular trail to meet up with the other main trail of the region, which heads towards Cerro Torre, the second most celebrated peak in the park. We passed by three lakes, creatively named Mother, Daughter and Granddaughter, and ate our pasta lunch alongside one of them before joining with the Torre circuit. There we had our first (cloud-obstructed) views of Cerro Torre – which, like Fitz Roy, is to the west of the trails and thus best viewed in the morning light – and made it to the Agostini campsite by about 3pm (the mountaineering history of the park is dominated by French and Italian climbers, hence these names). We pitched our tent, ate a chocolate bar and then collapsed onto our sleeping mats after a pretty tiring day.
Day 3
We woke up at 5:20am but found that the sky was overcast and that the very top of the needle spire of Cerro Torre was covered in cloud. But we got up anyway and walked to the Laguna Torre, which still afforded magnificent views of a Narnia-style winter scene despite the dullness of the day. In the foreground, icebergs that have fallen from the glacier at the far end of the lake float to shore, while rising steeply from the snow, 3102m Cerro Torre and two surrounding tower-peaks could almost pass for a gothic church, complete with snow-covered flying buttresses.
After a while we headed back to the camp, a little disappointed in the conditions but at least happy that the main peak, Fitz Roy, had been clear the day before. But as we packed up and got ready to head back to El Chaltén, the ever-changing Patagonian weather took a turn for the better (for a change) and the sky began to clear, revealing Cerro Torre which was now bathed in sunlight and climbing up to a mostly blue sky. With this stroke of luck, we went back to the lake and I re-took my photos (not as good as Fitz Roy, but still decent), and then we headed back to El Chaltén. We made it back by 11:45am, early enough to eat some tasty empanadas before taking the 1pm bus back to El Calafate.
Yesterday we crossed back into Chile and, back in trekking mode, we are now primed to take on an even bigger challenge: the 10-day circuit of what is regularly described as the most spectacular national park in all of South America: Torres del Paine.
Tags: Argentina, Cerro Torre, Fitz Roy, Patagonia, South America, trekking
Nick