By bus it takes two or three days to make your way from Buenos Aires to El Calafate. Needless to say we flew. I had to try really hard not to act like a groupie when I met the owner of my favorite hot dog stand in Boulder, Mustard's Last Stand, on the plane. When we landed it was cold, but the sun was shining and it was beautiful. On the two hour bus ride to El Calafate to El Chalten the sunset was amazing and seemed to last forever. I immediately fell in love with Patagonia.
When we got to our hostel we made big plans to get up early for our Friday hike. We were slightly disappointed to find out that the sun didn't rise until 7am. I guess that's what happens when you're only 1,000 miles from Antarctica in the winter. In the end it didn't matter since we finally managed to leave around 9am. With only 12 or 13 hours of sunlight a day racing against the sun was our biggest concern.
The plan was to hike to a lake with a great view of Cerro del Torre. From there Sean, Daniel, Brandon, Sarah and I were going to keep hiking to a refuge in the mountains, while Tiffany, Rachel, and Ani headed back so they could catch the evening bus to El Calafate. We weren't sure if the refuge was still open because it was so late in the tourist season and there were no lines of communication between the refuge and the outside world, but we decided to go for it anyways.
After parting ways at the lake the five of us hiked for almost three hours without seeing any other hikers. After seven hours we finally found a ranger. She told us that she didn't think the refuge was open. Our biggest problem was if we went and the refuge was closed there was no way to make it back to town in time. We would either have to hike back in the dark without flashlights or spend the night in the freezing Andes with no gear. Unanimously we decided neither were outcomes we were willing to risk. Now the question was whether to turn around and go back on the path we knew or cut across to private property and see if we could either spend the night or hitchhike back. We chose Option 2. I was pretty excited about the prospect of hitchhiking.
As we continued hiking the path started getting harder to follow. There was no longer a beaten trail and we were walking single file on precarious cliff that hung over a dried out riverbed. About an hour in we were lost. At this point we decided to turn around and hike back the trail that we knew. This left us with four hours of hiking and roughly four hours before the sun went down.
By the time we made it back the sun was just about to drop behind the mountain. We were all exhausted and happy to be back in the hostel. Pictures don't do it justice and words can't describe how beautiful our hike in El Chalten was. They also don't fully describe how much the hike kicked my ass. I have never sorer in my life, but all the blood, sweat and tears were worth it
The next day I left for El Calafate to meet the rest of the group. We set up ice trekking on the Perito Moreno glacier. Sunday morning the excursion group picked us up early and we drove out to the national park. We took a boat to the glacier for a quick tutorial on Perito Moreno and got fitted with crampons.
Tiffany and I Modeling Our Crampons
Our guides Flavio and Juan led us up the glacier. I didn’t mind hiking up, but walking down freaked me out. We weren’t tied in and I didn’t completely trust my crampons. At one point I panicked when crossing a narrow crossing between two pools of water. Flavio grabbed my hand and all I could think to say was “Tengo, tengo, tengo…scary!” It all worked out though. At the end of the trek we hiked down to a lone table and group of chairs for some whiskey on crushed glacier ice and alfajores (dulce de leche cookies). With the help of some whiskey the scary se fue.
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