NoNewsFromHere: BACK TO PATAGONIA –

A bit of graffiti in Puerto Natales, Chile. I'll explain later about the footprint.

It was November of 2007, and we were in Patagonia. Before that Ken and I had spent a week in Buenos Aires. There we stayed at an inn in the Tango District, a few blocks from where Che (real name Ernesto) Guevara grew up. Went to local milongas (local tango dances), visited the Palermo district, museos, and sampled various parillas (steakhouses)––all that.

Why does Patagonia 2007 come to mind now in 2017? I had been invited to give a talk to the Green Mountain Club in Middlebury about Patagonia. Even though our trip took place ten years ago now, places like this don't change much. Descriptions today would be the same as they were then. Yet, imagine: in 2007 Facebook was a new thing and iPads didn't exist. I didn't yet write a blog. We didn't live in Vermont. Four more years would pass until then. So here I am in Patagonia again, as if it just happened.

(I could add that because of a mix-up of cords and computer systems at the Middlebury venue my photos had to be presented haphazardly. So I am making up for that here.)

After Buenos Aires, our trip began at the top (Neuquen) of Patagonia and ended at the bottom (Cape Horn)

The first European explorers of the area we now call Patagonia observed that the indigenous people were taller than the average Europeans of the time. Their description morphed in no time as tales were told by other explorers like Francis Drake, turning them into "giants," perhaps nine to twelve feet tall, and having big feet. When Magellan visited Patagonia in 1520 he might as well have been visiting Mars, so remote was this area. In a Spanish chivalry novel published in 1512 and hugely popular there was a character named Patagón, a giant who wore fur for clothing, was barefoot, and ate raw meat. Well, here he was in the flesh, in a land of barefoot giants. The name Patagonia stuck. It is arguably the only region in the world with a discrete identity, yet consisting of two distinct countries.

NORTHERN PATAGONIA: THE ESTANCIA

Estancia Rio Quillén, near Neuquen, Argentina, in northern Patagonia. The main lodge is visible on the hill.
Volcano Lanin in Chile is in the background.

The estancia where we spent nearly a week consists of some 75,000 acres, not an unusual size in this sparsely populated part of the world. (On the drive from the airport near Neuquen to Rio Quellén we spent about half an hour driving past land owned by Ted Turner, the largest landholder in Patagonia.) This is an Eden of trout fishing and horses. Everyone drinks maté.

Beautiful trout caught by Ken in the estancia's river; it was still early season for fishing

Pablo, the estancia's new manager and horse whisperer

Pablo leads us on a ride. Saddles here (typically gaucho saddles) are not one piece: they consist of layers of blanket,
sheepskins and leather sections. Rein handling is casual and one-handed.

We saw stands of monkey puzzle trees on hillsides. They are a native evergreen.

It was early spring in this part of Patagonia, the equivalent of our early May. The weather is better here in general than further south where the oceans converge on both sides and the continent narrows and begins to break into peninsulas and islands. A ten day weather forecast for Puerto Natales, our next goal, might typically read much like this: rain showers every day, temperature around 50 degrees, wind 30 miles an hour. The notable statistic is wind; we're talking about a steady 30 miles per hour, with gusts likely to be higher. This is the windiest town I have ever visited.

Here we saw our first lenticular cloud of the trip. Essentially turbulent eddies, they are not unusual in this part of the world.

THE FIRST TREK: GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, ARGENTINA

A drive took us to Bariloche, a jumping off point for Andean skiing, with, appropriately, a touch of Swiss architecture. From here we boarded a flight to El Calafate, Chile. The windy town of El Calafate, a tourist center, is a major hub for hiking outfitting and R&R. It was here we met David Albert, our guide for our first trek in Glacier National Park. And we picked up Bill Kan, our fellow hiker.

David Albert, besides being a guide for ordinary hikers like ourselves, is also a well-known technical climber and professional photographer. It was only after our hike together that I found his photos sold as postcards and discovered a book of his Patagonia photographs. Why did he bother with us? It was simple: neither his photography nor his climbing gave him much of an income, and he had a family to support, a wife and young son. Up to this point he had never even managed to leave Argentina. He told us he hoped one day to climb in Chile's Torres del Paine National Park where we three (Bill, Ken and I) were shortly to be headed. It was only recently that I learned via Facebook (we are still in touch via FB) that he has at last managed to get there. His family and all his friends are also climbers. David added another dimension to our trek. We three considered ourselves very fortunate to spend time with him.

On our way with David and Bill we drove to El Chaltèn, a small town at the foot of the mountains at the edge of Glacier National Park. En route we made a stop for lunch at a roadhouse called La Leona. In the early 1900's this part of Patagonia was like the USA's wild west. On February 14, 1905, two "gringo" bandits held up a bank in Rio Gallegos, a town on the coast, many miles away across vast empty plains. They had escaped on horseback with a sum that would be US $100,000 today. For almost a month they hid out at La Leona; three names were inscribed in the register: Robert Parker (Butch Cassidy), Henry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid) and Emma Place.

Except for its claim to fame (refuge for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) there's not much to see at La Leona, but it's about the only building in sight on an otherwise empty plain.

El Chaltén where we began our first trek, has dirt roads, hiking supply shops, food, drink and lodging.

Entering El Chaltén

Ken and Bill in downtown El Chaltén

The weather was not promising. It was cold and damp and the night brought snow. I was worried about our hike.

We left at dawn. It was cold, but the sky was clear.

Do I look stressed? I was overdressed; it would warm up soon and the snow would vanish.
But I didn't know that yet.

Our hike took us from El Chaltén to Cerro Torre and Rio Electrico in the NW corner.
Later we would visit (via bus) Perito Moreno glacier in the SW corner.

The next morning we hiked to Cerro Torre. But first we had to cross the Fitzroy River.

The easy part is heading down over the river. Pulling yourself uphill on the other side is harder.

This is the sight that awaited us as we came around a huge bend. Cerro Torre is the pointed peak in the middle.

David told us this story: Cerre Torre, nearly 10,000 feet high, experienced its first conquest attempt in 1959 when Italian climber Cesare Maestri claimed he and his companion Toni Egger had reached the summit. Unfortunately Egger was swept to his death by an avalanche while they were descending. Maestri declared that only Egger had a camera with pictures of the summit, but the camera was never found. There were other inconsistencies in Maestri's account and his claim was suspect.

Cerro Torre. The ice "mushroom" can be seen on the top.

Maestri returned to Cerro Torre in 1970, trying a new route on the southeast face. With the aid of a gas-powered compressor drill he equipped 350 meters of rock with bolts and got to the end of the rocky part of the mountain, just below the ice mushroom at the top. Maestri claimed that "the mushroom is not part of the mountain" and did not continue to the summit. He left the compressor drill, still tied to the last bolts 100 meters below the top, behind him. The route he followed is now called the "compressor route" and was climbed by others to the actual summit in 1979.

A lenga forest. Lenga trees (a type of beech) are the dominant tree in lowland forest in the south.

Ken, standing by an unusually large lenga

Our best view of the Fitzroy Massif. It was named after the captain of Darwin's ship, the Beagle.

We camped for four more days. Our hiking was leisurely, without steep climbs, and lasted for some five or six hours each day. At the end of our final day of hiking Ken's walking took on an odd look: his body was leaning sharply to the left. Yet his pack was not weighing on him, and he claimed to have no muscle aches or pains that would cause this. He said he just felt like leaning to the left. This was a sign of something, but I didn't yet know what it signified. It was certainly odd, especially his comment that he simply felt like doing it. Our guide, David, was concerned, and strongly urged Ken to pick up some hiking poles to help him on our next trek. We said we would let him know how things went on our next hike.

Bill and Ken taking a break

A caracara visits our campsite

At the Rio Electrico

Our final night was spent in the delicious comfort of the El Pilar inn

After our trek and a return to El Calafate we visited the famous Perito Moreno glacier. The glacier is the toe of the great Andean ice field, the third largest reserve of fresh water in the world. The face of the glacier is about 250 feet high, and calving sometimes blocks sections of Lago Argentina. At one side of the glacier there is a crampon-rental station and tourists can explore some crevasse-free parts of the glacier.