Friday:
It was supposed to be very windy this day and I was a bit tired from Cerro Solo, but it was our last full day in Patagonia and I wanted to spend it in the mountains, even if that meant getting blasted by the infamous winds. I chose Loma de las Pizarras since it was on our map (though marked as not having a trail) and would provide incredible views, if the skies allowed it. Sheri and Derek declined to suffer the wind. Oh well, I didn’t mind going alone, as I expected Loma de las Pizarras to be a fairly casual, though possibly incredibly windy, hike.
I went light, with just some extra clothes, 20 ounces of water, and some food. I hiked the trail towards Laguna de Torre, but peeled off to the north like Derek and I did on our first big hike in the area. I followed that trail until I had gone 8 kilometers. Still in dense woods, I broke cross-country up a ridge. I soon found a faint path and that eventually joined a well-worn trail. I followed this to tree line and then followed cairns up a barren, rocky ridge. The rocks on the lower portion of this ridge were unique. They were thin slabs of rock that sometimes lay flat, but other times were vertical, but in such close proximity to each other (2-4 per inch) that you could walk on them just as easily as the flat ones.
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| Unusual rocky terrain |
The higher I went the greater the winds. It was coming from the west, so by walking on the east side I could find some shelter. I had to hike through some saddles on the ridge where the wind was ferocious. The ridge was a sequence of small summits, with gentle dips before continuing higher. Eventually the ridge narrowed to sharp, steep, rocky, semi-loose gendarmes. I could see two very steep drops to cols and knew I wouldn’t make the true summit. The wind was crazy strong, the skies were now spitting rain on me, and I was alone. I carefully scrambled to the top of one intermediate summit over steep, heads-up 4th class terrain. That was enough for me and I carefully reversed back to easier ground.
To bypass a particularly rock section I dropped a bit to the west, the really windy side. When it came time to regain the ridge, the wind blew me back up the talus at a Kyle-Richardson pace! It was thrilling to feel, for just a moment, what it would be like to have his speed over steep terrain. All it took was a 70mph tailwind.
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| Starting up the ridge and everything looks mellow |
I took a short break down in the shelter of the trees and while eating my sandwich a gust of wind, blew my pack down the hill. Granted, I only had clothes in it. I reversed back to the Laguna de Torre trail and was hiking out at a quick pace, passing people when I could, when I heard someone behind me. I turned and saw a young, lean guy with a small pack and stepped to the side. He was moving along, throwing in a few running steps here and there to pass others. He motivated me to pick up my pace a bit, but I didn’t have thoughts of staying with him, at least not originally.
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| Getting rockier... |
The young guy eventually was out of sight when, I decided to start mixing in some running. My plan was to run a tenth of a kilometer (that’s funny. Who would run such a short distance?) and then walk a tenth and alternate the rest of the way back. My motivation was mainly to just get back to town quicker, as I was a bit tired and wanted to lie down. But the running felt pretty good. Heck, the angle was mostly downhill and I wasn’t carrying much weight, so I kept on running. Actually, “trotting” would be a fairer description of what I was doing. Not a real run, but more than my usual pathetic shuffle.
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| Crux climbing that I did. I turned around at the this intermediate summit. |
With continuous running, it wasn’t long before I was approaching the lean guy. I figured he was a climber, because he was fit, but not out for a trail run. When I caught him, I asked if he was a climber. He spoke about as much English as I did Spanish, but we were able to communicate and really bonded a bit. His name was Julan and Spanish wasn’t even his native language. He hailed from a province in northern Spain. I think he was Galician, but I wasn’t sure. He wasn’t Basque or a Catalunian. He was here for two months to hopefully try Cerro Torre. We had a great time trying to communicate while moving quickly down the trail. I found out that he had done Moonlight Buttress (mostly free) on his one trip to the USA. We parted ways close to my apartment.
After a shower, we went back to The Grill, hoping to have more fabulous steak. Unfortunately, our steaks were mediocre. Mine and Derek’s were good, but Sheri’s wasn’t. Just a bad cut, with tons of gristle. Our first night was so good that we thought that was the level of cuisine and service every night. Not so.
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| Some of the remaining terrain |
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We leave in the morning. Normally I’m very ready to go home at the end of a trip, but I could stay a lot longer here. Why? Mostly because Derek and Sheri are with me. I’m with my family and going home usually means returning to them. But with them already here, I’m good. I’d come back for a longer stay to try again for Fitz Roy, except that Sheri is done here. It isn’t that she didn’t like it here, but she’s done all she’s interested in doing. Without being a climber, you wouldn’t want to spend more than a couple weeks here and even that is probably a week longer than necessary.
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