Christian, Emily and I met our two guides Felipe and Waldo at 6.45 am in El Chalten. I had thought that the early start was due to our guides being “morning people” or the fact that the glaciar was better to climb in the morning. Little did I know it was because we would be hard-pushed to be back before dark! Two Dutch guys joined us (there are a lot of Dutch guys in South America) who looked completely underprepared, and made me look like Ray Mears.
We walked up hill for a few hours before we came to a campsite on a lake and took a break. Here we were met by three large Argentines (I’m not talking about their personalities) who would be joining our excursion. We were all fitted with harnesses, which posed more difficult for some than others, and we continued walking. We soon reached a gushing river and found that the only way to cross it was by rope. We were harnessed onto the rope and had to pull ourselves over. We were crossing at the same time as a large group of Americans who were whooping and high-fiveing for all they were worth. In true European style we crossed quietly and swiftly, and smiled politely at the Americans.
Next we had a mountain to climb, both figuratively and literally. The climb was in places steep, in places slippery, and at times there was nothing between the sandy hill you were clinging to and the valley 100 feet below. Luckily our two guides were like mountain goats with sticky feet, and they were always there when you needed a hand to hold or a word of encouragement. When Emily dropped her crampons down the edge, one of them even scampered after them. I hoped they would be as agile if one of us fell.
We eventually got to the beginning of the Cerre Torre glaciar and all put our crampons on.
Girls with killer feet
We had a quick lesson in how to walk on a glaciar. Basically you had to walk like a penguin, a pengiun that stamped. We stamped over the ice like angry penguins. It felt like you were walking on a very hard slush puppy or frozen daquiri (some of you will be more familiar with one than the other I’m sure). Walking up hill was fine, but as soon as the ice slanted downwards it became very difficult to trust your footing, and all of us, including the boys, were glad of a hand to hold. The ice was dirty white, where layers of soil had been exposed, and there were bottomless blue holes that went down to the water on which the glaciar was sliding.
After finding our glacial feet, it was time to stop walking and start climbing. Felipe asked for a volunteer and I couldn’t resist the urge to go first. I was harnessed up, give two ice piks, and started my ascent. Wow, ice climbing is difficult! The toughest part was ramming my crampons deep enough into the ice (without breaking my toes) so that they took my weight, before I was able to reposition the ice piks. By the time I reached the top my legs were shaking with tiredness. After I had absailed down, I wanted to go up again, but had to make do with watching the others climb. The three Argentines were the only ones not to make it up, which is probably a good thing for Waldo, our guide at the bottom, who would have been pulled up the cliff when he tried to support their decent back down.
Ice climbing the Torre glaciar
Once we had finished our climb and trek on the glaciar, there was just the small matter of getting back down to El Chalten. With tired legs and weary bodies we retraced our steps back down from the glaciar. We dislodged stones on the walk back and watched them plummet down the cliff, luckily none of us followed. Getting back across the river by rope was much more tiring the second time, the wooden bench at camp felt like the best chair in the world, and the final decent down to El Chalten seemed to go on forever. When we finally stumbled into town, we had been gone twelve hours, twelve long hours. We showered and headed out for a drink at the Microbrewery in town where we learnt a valuable lesson “Don’t assume that because you had a good experience at a place, that it will be repeated the next time you visit”. After 45 minutes waiting for two beers and a glass of wine, we walked out. We then forgot the lesson and went back to the restaurant Como Vaca where we re-learnt the lesson we had forgotten “Don’t return!” This time we waited an hour for our food.
The next day, we walked up to a viewpoint and then I spent the afternoon in La Chocolateria, eating chocolate, writing, and meeting some very posh girls who had taken two weeks off work to trek Torres Del Paine (Chile), only to find they could not enter the country. That evening Emily and I headed to La Tangueria, one of the few late-night bars. To be honest when we arrived we didn’t think we would be having a late-night, since the place was empty, but in true Latin American style, everyone turned up at about midnight, and once again Emily and I partied the night away, and crawled into our beds in the early hours.
The next morning, with very sore heads and dehydrated mouths we boarded the bus back to El Calafate, with Christian who was annoyingly well and hydrated after an early night. This time on our journey South, we were determined, we were going to get across the border to Chile.
In El Calafate, we had the good news that the border was open to Chile and through the rain, the sun shone and a rainbow formed. Good news all round.
Pot of gold, here we come!
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