El chalten and the mighty fitzroy

After a bus trip of around 28 hours, four of which were spent on a dusty floor in the middle of nowhere (Perito Moreno to be exact), I was rudely awakened by biting rain and wind at 6:00 on Wednesday, 25 March. The only thing you could make out through the gloom was a huge, vertical escarpment that looms over the east side of town. That´s pretty much all I would see on the first day because the all enveloping rain hid the mountains from sight and forced me to seek entertainment in the town itself. Chalten was the last settlement to be built in Argentina in the 1980s. When seen from further down the valley it looks like a random cluster of houses huddling together against the cold. None of the roads are paved and the place is littered with stray dogs and productos artesanales. Everything is orientated towards the tourist from mock log cabins and adventure sports shops to the hostel that sits on almost every street corner. As a French girl said to me, "Nobody is born in El Chalten". In such adverse conditions there was nothing for it but to walk down the street to a microbrewery to try some locally brewed beer and cake. It wasn´t exactly what I came for what the hell!

That night while repeatedly burning myself on the cheap, handless pots scattered around the kitchen, I met an Enlish guy from Cheltenham, Chris, and an American. We agreed to get up at seven the following morning and brave veritable tempests to reach Laguna de los Tres, a small lake that sits at the foot of Mount Fitzroy. Fitzroy´s alternative name is Cerro Chalten, which means "smoking mountain" in Telhueche. At sunrise, Fitzroy is sometimes lit up a vivid red which led them to believe that it was a volcano.

After a breakfast of scrambled eggs and a huge basket of toast, we headed out under an overcast sky. None of us were very hopeful of seeing the mountains unobscured by clouds. Uphill through a cool forest we climbed before reaching a lake. This was where we got our first sight of the mountains ahead. At first, I mistook Cerro Poincenot for Fitroy because the higher peak was circled by cloud. The American was shooting off hundreds of pictures as we went. As we emerged into the valley below, Fitzroy was ahead, grotesquely stunted dead trees to the left and to the right a long flat valley culminated in further snow covered mountains enveloped by brooding, grey clouds. Just needed Vigo Mortensen flying across the plain on a fiery steed to complete the picture.

After reaching Camping Poincenot complete with huge tents and hebrew signs, we climbed steeply for what must have been eight hundred metres . Fitzroy gradually disappeared as we entered the lee (?) of the hill. The ascent became progressively steeper; we had been warned that this last portion of the trek could be dangerous in icy or windy conditions. I was surprised that at this high altitude the air was so warm (it was soon to cool down when we were blasted by the ferocious winds of the ice field). A snowball fight followed before the final slog up to the ridge in front of Lago de los Tres and Fitzroy. Everything had worked in our favour. As we had walked, the remaining clouds had cleared giving us an uninterrupted view of the mountains, the two glaciers slipping down the mountainside on either side of the ridge and the vivid blue Lago de los Tres, filled with glacial meltwater. Against an azure blue sky, Fitzroy rose up like a dagger, its sides too steep for any snow to stick. Instead, tens of metres of snow had accumulated in a huge bowl below the peaks and was being blown off the hillside and into the hillside. Small ledges ,of perhaps half a foot, on the left hand side of the peak were the only things that looked as if they would give any purchase.

Sheltered from the wind behind a huge boulder and saw numerous rocks that had been split sheer in half by freeze thaw weathering. Salami sandwiches never tasted better. After a couple of hours gaping in awe, we walked back down the path between deep thickets of nire bushes shimmering red and brown in the afternoon sun.

Sausages, egg and potato salad, peas and sweetcorn for dinner in front of Clint´s chiselled face in Gran Terino. Good film by the way. Am now in Calafate, in a great hostel that costs $40 a night, including breakfast and free internet. Pictures will be along soon. Hasta luego chicos!