Trekking without a guide (at last)

The reason we came to El chalten wasn’t for the big expedition on the ice it was for a 7 day trek we planned for ourselves, so after a rest day or two, we headed off. first to Campo Agustini (famous religious preacher and mountaineer who went just about everywhere in Patagonia and has most of Chile and Argentina named after him I think.) Which is just below Cerro Torre. Cerro Torre was thought to be un-climbable for years and then someone managed it and now every year climbers with a desire to shorten their lives attempt it. It has snow mushrooms 50 high on top and having climbed up with a mixture of ice and rock climbing, you have to dig a tunnel up into the overhanging unstable snow to get on top. We saw a slide show from someone who’d been up while we were on the ice and concluded that it was truly amazing and that he was insane.

Anyway pretty view, but the mice ate my water bottle in the night. We were right next to a river, little furry bastards were just being cruel.

Next day we headed off to the next camp below Mt Fitzroy. One the way we took a side trip up loma de las Pizeras to get a better view of the mountains. It took 4 hours to get up and back to the trail and having ditched our big bags in the middle of the woods for the climb, I was rather relieved to find my navigation skills were up to finding them again. An hour later we got to a lake and our first fresh water for the day.

Taking off our boots and standing in the lake was sheer bliss. Afterwards we headed off to camp Poincenot at the foothills of Fitzroy for the night.

We’d set our alarm for 5.30am so that we could walk up to Lago Tres where the view of the sun rising on Fitzroy was supposed to be spectacular. Unfortunately, as we’d previously decided that in order to lighten our bag we didn’t need our torches we had to do this trek in the dark. Not so bad when we were in the open but as the first half of the trek involved walking through woods and crossing streams it took a bit of stumbling and feeling our way!

Some how we managed to find the way up the very steep hill to the viewpoint. Sunrise was indeed spectacular.

After the light show was over we returned to the camp and bed where we slept for another three hours. After our power snooze we set off to the next camp wandering down the valley past glaciers and beautiful mountain views.

This was a private camp which came with a hot water shower. Bliss! It’s amazing what levels camping can reduce you to. As we had been unaware that we would encounter a hot water shower we had not carried soap or a towel (you shouldn’t use soap around the rivers as the water is drinkable without need of treatment). So we were both delighted to find a tiny slither of soap in the shower that someone had left behind. Almost felt like a proper wash, I (Vicky) just tried not to think of all the people who had used it before me and then not be disturbed by having to use a clean pair of my pants to dry off with afterwards (at least they were clean and mine!).

The weather forecast had predicted that the weather would change the next day. It did too. Clouds came over and it started to drizzle. Temperature dropped right down. We’d already planned to take that day off as a rest day so the weather helped us to cope with sitting still for the day. Was still a pleasant day, chilling at the camp, playing cards, learning a bit of Spanish and updating my diary which had been neglected since mid-November- oops.
Whilst there was still quite a lot of cloud coverage the weather had improved the next day so we set off from the camp up the very steep cliff to get a bit closer to Fitzroy.
After two hours of strenuous uphill we reached the glacier under Fitzroy. As it was a bit cloudy we unfortunately didn’t get clear views of Fitzroy but the views over the surrounding mountains, Marconi Pass and the snow fields were beautiful.

However, the glacier didn’t feel like the place we should stop our ascent. The path onwards wasn’t at all obvious. Phil was sure the place we’d been told to go to was behind the very big square rock the other side of the glacier. However, this didn’t seem quite right to me as this would involve traversing what looked like unstable snow and a crevassed glacier. We could see foot print marks on the snow and it was clear some people had walked that way but as we were in the realms of the climbers it could have been a crossing made with crampons and ropes.
The other option for an onwards journey was to continue up the side of the mountain we were on. This looked like a scramble and a scree climb. This route also made me feel a bit nervous and I admit to having a bit of a strop! I foolishly thought the scramble looked like slightly more familiar territory and suggested that was my preferred route.

The next hour of the ascent involved a scramble up the side of the cliff. Was actually very good fun and as Phil chose the route and helped direct me as to whether to climb left or right all turned out alright and we reached what I thought was our peak just fine.
On relaxing at the ‘peak’ my tension came flooding back when I realized that this wasn’t the final summit we were heading for. Nope, this was the beginning of the ridge scramble across scree to get to the pass at the other side of the mountain. Commence next strop and annoyance with self for not picking the crossing the snow option. The views were getting to be pretty amazing though and as they were just going to get better I suppressed my negative thoughts about Phil and carried on.
We scrambled across the top of the mountain and after a few stomach churning moments when my foot moved in the scree and I thought I was going to plummet down the mountain side to my doom (as my knowledge of walking on scree improved I realized there was never even the slightest possibility of this!) we got to our viewpoint.

Vicky is sitting in the midde of the black rock, as high as we can go without ropes.

Phil off long the ridge to get the photo above.

We started the day down next to the river you can see behind Phil

Views were remarkable. As we afterwards realized this point had no name on the map we decided to call it Lisa’s Mirador (viewpoint for those of you without our comprehensive knowledge of Spanish, hmm) as it was Lisa Brooke’s birthday that day.
However, still not content with the point we reached Phil carried on along the next ridge to get a view around the corner whilst I sat at our pass.

The return journey pretty much involved a big scree slide. I’d never really walked on this kind of terrain before and began very tentatively (still thought the scree wouldn’t hold and I’d plummet down the mountain) whilst Phil took big leaps into it. However, after getting out my trusty walking poles to help with keeping me off my arse my confidence grew and I also got into the swing of leaping down the slope in the scree. Great fun! Also got to slide on the snow as well.
After a very steep descent my legs were in need of a rest and we decided to take the next day off.

More chilling in the camp site the next day watching other people trying to fight against the wind and rain (we were finally getting a view of what the Patagonian weather is usually like!).

On our seventh day we set off back to El Chalten. Some of the paths no longer existed as the river had risen so high in the rain (shame we didn’t have a kayak with us, we would have been back in El Chalten within 30 mins). On reaching the road we hitched back to town and each had a nice long shower using our own soap and a nice fluffy towel!

(Just so you all know, I could happily send a year here, it´s amazing, and wild like Alaska currently planning a big hike from here into chile and back across a bit of glacier.... Phil)