El Chaltèn
We arrived late on Saturday in pretty good weather, at least in town. Sunday morning it rained steadily into the afternoon. Rolo checked the weather maps for us and the next weather window looks to be a week away. Oh well, we knew what the weather was like before we came here. That's why we came as long as we could -- Derek's entire winter break of three weeks. Even then we weren't guaranteed a weather window. But it looks like we'll have one in a week. That will probably mean we'll approach and camp high on Saturday.
If you look at the distribution of land masses on a globe you’ll immediately see that almost all of that mass is in the northern hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, at the southern latitudes of Patagonia (50 degrees and higher), this is almost nothing. Africa and Australia don’t dip down that low and Antarctica is much further south. So, you get winds that blow around the entire globe without hitting anything until they come screaming across the Patagonian Icecap and hit the Fitz Roy Massif. Cerro Torre, being to the west, gets the worst of it, but Fitz Roy, a thousand feet higher than anything else, lies exposed and is brutalized for it. Which is why one friend told me not to come to Patagonia to climb. He said it was only for pros, since it required a 2-3 month commitment for a reasonable chance of success. Even then, some peaks go unclimbed all year. This isn’t Yosemite. The weather is not conducive to climbing. Hence, it is reasonable to avoid this place.
It’s the photographers fault, really. Well, their portrayal of what nature has wrought, anyway. We see these horrendous, terrible, beautiful, enticing, foreboding, scary places and the dichotomy is too much to resist. It might be enough to just come here and be near these peaks; to hike below them and around them. But I couldn’t come here without being prepared to climb. To possibly test myself against them if the stars aligned to bring weather, conditions, and mental fortitude into syzygy. If that happens, we’ve brought the gear with which to do battle.
Sunday:
The long, late Saturday night made for a rough Sunday morning. I initially awoke at 6:45 a.m. but felt like you’d imagine after a long day of travel and less than four hours of sleep. It was windy and raining outside. There was no need to get up. We had just planned to get the lay of the town today, check-in with the park, find the trailheads, do some grocery shopping, and recovery from the travel. I dozed and listened to my NYT podcasts until nearly 9 a.m. I then made some instant Starbucks coffee that we brought. The apartment has no coffee maker, but we’ll deal with it.
I spent the morning listening to the rain and writing up the rest of this story. It’s been an eventful trip just getting here. I hope the events become more positive here. We haven’t seen that much of the mountains yet, as it has been overcast, though the ones we can see are still spectacular.
I had some coffee and an omelette in the cafe under our apartment and waited to Derek to achieve total consciousness, like the Dali Lama (big hitter, the Lama) conferred on Karl after a round of golf in Tibet. Patience is handy in these situations and the weather helped: drizzly and windy. I made a trip across the street to the supermercado for some milk and eggs.
We ventured outside in the late afternoon and crossed the bridge over the Rio de Las Vueltas. This river is wide and moves very swiftly, despite the flattish looking terrain in which it flows. It is much bigger and faster than the Rio Fitz Roy, which merges into it just south of town. On the other side we follow a trail below a 350-foot cliff. We are looking for some bolted routes that ascend this escarpment. We spot of group of three climbers starting up from the ground and hike up to them. It’s raining and none are deterred in the least. Only friendly Austino speaks English. He tells us about this route: 6c (11a) and so good! I mention the weather and how I am impressed they are going up. He says, “This is good weather for Chaltèn!” That might be true, but still I hope for better weather, to climb rock without it raining at the same time.
We continue around and find the one-pitch climbing area and lots of routes, some looking very hard and some that might be doable. All are rated 6 (10a) and harder. We backtrack and scope the middle route marked on our one photo. It is the easiest one, at 6a, and climbs up to what looks like a clean slab with a single crack splitting its center. Agustino has assured us it is not a crack, but that the route is good and not very hard. “Not very hard” is a relative term and here in Chaltèn, I suspect it doesn’t mean that same thing as when we say it in the Flatirons.
We cross back over the river and wander the town. We find the climbing gym and ask about the local climbing there. We are directed to a short cliff north of the gym and find a pair of climbers there as well. Climbing in the rain. At least a couple of routes here are less steep and the gym guy has assured us there are easy routes here.
We walk the length of the town back to our apartment. Nearly every building is a restaurant or food eatery of some kind: burgers, pizza, bakeries, bars, supermercados, etc. There are couple of mountain shops too and we buy some fuel for our stove and a local hiking map. We both have a bacon/egg/cheeseburger with fries for dinner and I’m stuffed. We get back to the apartment near 10 p.m. and it is still light out, though growing dim fast.
Monday:
Windy here today. I’ll probably not bother to note that in a day or so. Just assume it is windy every day. If it is not, I’ll make special note of it. Hopefully by doing something significant.
Around noon I headed off to try and bag my first Patagonian summit. The big three of this area are: Cerro Torre, Cerro Fitz Roy, and Cerro Rosado. The latter looms over the town of El Chaltèn. No established trails lead to its summit and no one I talked to in town (all two of them) hadn’t been to the summit. I smelled a first ascent opportunity. Derek wasn’t interested, probably intimidated by the unknown, so I launched solo. I hiked back to the climbing gym near the bouldering area and then followed a trail up the hillside. This trail, I think, leads to Laguna de Torre, eventually, but it wasn’t heading to Rosado, so I went cross-country on hummocked hillsides and through the beech forests, winding my way on the clearest path.
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| View from the summit of Cerro Rosado, |
The going was easy and I descended grassy slopes, entirely free of the forest, down to the trail. I followed this south, back to town. In the parking lot I noticed a familiar face walking towards me with a bouldering pad on his back. It was Adrian, Sonia’s boyfriend, and Patagonian veteran. I’d had them both over to my house to milk him of as much information as possible before our trip. I knew he was down here and expected to see him at one point, but this was cool. He confirmed what Rolo had thought about the weather report: a possible mountain window on Sunday or Monday. He also thought tomorrow was going to be okay for local stuff, though slightly worse than today. Maybe I’ll bag another peak tomorrow. We bid farewell and planned to do some climbing together on this trip.
We hung out at the apartment, resting and reading, until I pushed us out the door to climb the wall across the Rio de Las Vueltas. The approach was ten minutes, door to the base of the route. Our spartan guide of one PDF sheet listed three routes on this very wide cliff band. We chose the easiest route, in the middle. It goes up lower-angled rock, heading for a smooth slab that tops the wall. There appears to be a crack splitting this slab, but our friends from the day before assured us it was not a crack. No matter, as we knew it was all bolted. Our guide rated it 6a (10a) but others, including Adrian, had told us it was easier than that. Perfect. We wanted it to be easier. We were looking for a confidence-building warmup route.
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| Cerro Rosado. The black building is the climbing gym, on the western edge of town. |
Derek wanted the first pitch and off he went. He followed bolts up very solid and blocky terrain for about 40 meters to a two-bolt belay. We thought this pitch was about 5.6. I followed and then led up 30 meters of 5.4 ground to a big ledge and two bolts, but I continued up steeper ground, even placing a cam, and found another 2-bolt belay before I ran out of rope. This pitch was probably 5.7. Derek led a 35-meter pitch of 5.7 up and left a bit to sloping stance from two bolts before the “crack” and the final slab. The “crack”, which actually did have a few possible gear placements, was soaked and dripping water. I maneuvered carefully to keep my shoes dry as long as possible. There are considerable runouts here, but the climbing is easy and blocky. I was careful, though, not to do anything rash and slip off. The final section, with a couple or more closely spaced bolts, was probably 5.7 as well. And we were on top. Obviously the guide we had didn’t have the rating right. We’re not ready to declare ourselves badasses or anything. It was a fun ramble of an impressive-looking wall.
We found our way down to the north. A little traversing and down scrambling led to a steep gully and a faint path, which then merged with a very-well defined path further down. The descent took us 15 minutes. We hiked up to the base of the left route, rated 6b in our guide and Adrian concurred that it was maybe 10c at the crux. This route looks really cool and passes a huge roof above. That isn’t the crux, though, as the roof goes it 5.7, climbing out the wall on the right to skirt it. It’s next on our list at this crag.
We headed back to our apartment, then did a touch of grocery shopping for dinner, but then decided we were too lazy to make dinner and instead when downstairs to the cafe below the apartment and ordered a pizza. In the cafe was Adrian, drinking a beer. He joined us at the table for dinner and we chatted and made plans to climb together later in the week. Cool.
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