I am now in Puerto Williams, Isla Navarino. We are leaving today and from now on no internet contact, just glaciers fjords and storms. I hope all is well and when I can I will post more photos on Flickr - by the way this is the link, without having to sign in you can just look at the photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44544772@N03/
News to come in 2-4 weeks! now to the high seas!!!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Backcountry to the sea.
I just climbed a mountain in the snowy cold Ushuaian backcountry. We hiked in, bushwacked through a valley and above the tree line and skirted our way around the scree of a mountain, camping high up near a lake. The next day we awoke in the dark and after a hat breakfast we began the ascent. Up up up the snowy scree and rubble to where we thought we could access the peak - but a cliff got in our way, close to the summit so we had to give it up and climb the mountain next door. Bizzarre clear skies, white mountains all around, a ton of adrenaline as some of this should have been climbing but with such loose rock its impossible to put protection in... so we had to be very careful. Last night we came back, tired, wet and muddy, showered and had a big potluck at the clubhouse with all the french and italian sailors. Today we are finally leaving for the sea, the ocean voyage, with a quick stop in Puerto Williams (Chilean customs). More news to come, bon voyage a tous!!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Voyage
This will be short. Ushuaia, the most southern city in the world, is beautiful, surrounded by mountains, built on the slope of the base of snowy peaks, it has a sheltered harbour on the Beagle Canal and in the distance across the channel the Dientes de Navarino loom large and to the right the massive Darwin range towers in the distance.
I will be back in June to teach cross country skiing with the Club Andino and do some randonee/backcountry skiing in the mountains as well as perhaps some iceclimbing and light mountaineering if I´m lucky... but first...
I am going to crew on a 40ft sailing yacht, owned and captained by an Australian man who has been sailing, solo and crewed in every corner of the world for the past 9 years. We are heading to Puerto Montt, the same route as the Navimag ferry, through massive fjords, past untouched, and indeed unseen glaciers, deserted bays in the rain, wind, snow... i have no idea what it will be like, I cannot even imagine, but at the end I will post a big blog!
This, for me is a dream, an opportunity of a lifetime and a peice of what is becoming a perfect puzzle of a chapter of my life! I am now hanging around Ushuaia, buying gear (rain stuff and rubber boots, thick socks... - as there is a lot of waiting in the cold storm stay weather) and buying books for all the down time.
The voyage will last, with many days for exploration and storm stays (waiting for better weather, because in these thousands of islands and narrow passages you cannot sail in very bad weather nor at night, so progress is very slow) - including all this it could take almost 3 months maximum to arrive in Puerto Montt. I will likely hop off in one of the few ports along the way (really there are about three populated ports on the rout before Chiloe) with a total of 3weeks to a month and a half on the boat.
More news to come.
I will be back in June to teach cross country skiing with the Club Andino and do some randonee/backcountry skiing in the mountains as well as perhaps some iceclimbing and light mountaineering if I´m lucky... but first...
I am going to crew on a 40ft sailing yacht, owned and captained by an Australian man who has been sailing, solo and crewed in every corner of the world for the past 9 years. We are heading to Puerto Montt, the same route as the Navimag ferry, through massive fjords, past untouched, and indeed unseen glaciers, deserted bays in the rain, wind, snow... i have no idea what it will be like, I cannot even imagine, but at the end I will post a big blog!
This, for me is a dream, an opportunity of a lifetime and a peice of what is becoming a perfect puzzle of a chapter of my life! I am now hanging around Ushuaia, buying gear (rain stuff and rubber boots, thick socks... - as there is a lot of waiting in the cold storm stay weather) and buying books for all the down time.
The voyage will last, with many days for exploration and storm stays (waiting for better weather, because in these thousands of islands and narrow passages you cannot sail in very bad weather nor at night, so progress is very slow) - including all this it could take almost 3 months maximum to arrive in Puerto Montt. I will likely hop off in one of the few ports along the way (really there are about three populated ports on the rout before Chiloe) with a total of 3weeks to a month and a half on the boat.
More news to come.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Trekking log: Torres del Paines
The Crazies
After much negociating and I think a valid attempt at penetrating further into the park, I gave up. Without a guide or a packraft, Glaciar Tyndall and Geike are virtually inaccesible...a guide offered me half price (you have to pay for a boat, horses, permission to be on private land..) at 200,000 pesos - about$400 - thats the sort of clownery we are dealing with!!!
Anyway after paying an arm and a leg to get into the park, get the shuttle bus and take the ferry to the start of the trek I met a freindly Swede named Henrik. We were going to the same place and we were both going quite fast. So we hiked the 15 km up to Campamento Guarda, pas the Glaciar Grey Camp (where you have to pay!) We set up our stuff and then we continued with just food and water another 6km up the trail. This section wound up and down the rocky shore of tLago Grey along and above the glacier. I ran this section and consequently got some pretty funny looks fro uninitiated tourists!!! Henrik ran part of it too and what we saw was spectacualar. Everything is so whit that the littl black rock of the moutnains in the distance that does appear, does so lika a mirage in the sun, it looks like smoke. The massive blue white glacier went as far as the eye could see, feeding into the Campo d Hielo Sur (aside from the poles the largest section of continental ice in the world! The white peaks and the misty clouds surround. As we went up, the glacier infront of us, we saw and heard a massive chunk of ice the size of a house or perhaps larger, break off and splash into the lake, slow motion! Day 1 27km
On the way down the next day we there were chunks of ice, iceburgs, floating surreal blue in the grey water, against the dark clouds and the deep gren forest...The rest of the day was rather uneventful, again we just went very fast, doing 22km or so before 2pm. Then we set up at Campamento Italiano (where there is a mouse problem!!) and we ran up tthe Valle Frances.Fom there we ascended to Campamento Britanico and the lookout in the heart of the valley. We said we´d meet up at Britanico as I was running and Henrik was not. I ran past the burning fall colours, up, up the steep rock, past the massive Cerro Paine, little talked about but massive and impressive, big blue glaciers hanging off its jet black and jagged faces. The clouds were high so everything was visible; past the thick permanent snow that pads the glaciers and peaks I arrived at Britanico and i sat down to grab a handful of GORP. I waited probably 10 minutes befor a) starting to get cold andb) starting to get a bit worried as to the whereabouts of Henrik. I didn´t let myself worry though but as I was getting clold I started to head up to the mirador (lookout). Just as I left I saw three people we had both passed on the way up so I asked them if they had seen Henrik... no they said, only when he passed them with me... Ok now I started to worry. I ran down instead, winding through the rocky and muddy singletrack through twisted trees, about 15 minutes before I arrived at a river crossing where the trail was not overtly obvious... there I saw Henrik - even in that moment he was lost. He had got the the river crossing, not seen the trail, seen an alternate one that went up the riverbed and taken that for 20minutes. When he realized that it was not the trail he started to come down to look for the proper one but said he had passed this point already and not seen the trail... lucky he didn´t turn out a statistic!!!
So we both headed up to the mirador, a decision I am glad I mad. On the right and behind are the bicoloured cuernos (horns) tan coloured granite topped with jagged mudstone and dipped in snowy frost. To the left a huge black mountain and one of the frosted Torres followed by a line of jagged snoy super crisp peaks in front and below this ring of rock and ice a belt of fiery fall colours lighting up the valley. All the peaks looked like they had been put in the freezer. Misty snowy frosted and crisp! In the valley you are absolutely surrounded by rock walls that flow into one and other - multicoloured and gigantic. Its almost a full circle as if you are in the embrace of God Herself. Day 2 29.3km
Today was spposed to be short, only 21 km but with the fatigue of the other days it was the hardest. This side is like a highway in April - I cannot imagine what high season in Jan-Feb is like - suffocating I imagine! Some Americans, Brian and Emily, had a frisbee so we played on a rock/mud plateau under the shadow of rocky faces and a smiling glacier... now dinner. Day 3 21km, tired as shit!
4am wakeup call from the Americans. I pack up my sleeping bag, mat, warm clothes, stove and breakfast and am walking by 430am. I could see Emily and Brian´s headlamps ahead of me as I laboured up the steep trail. I caught them after ten minutes and as our headlamps are made for seeing around the campsite and not seeing far ahead we lost the trail. (On coming down I have no idea how because it was very well marked and extremely well travelled...but alas.) We scrambled up the rocky loose morrain to a point probably 150m above the glacial lake that sits at the foot of the Torres. It started to rain as I took out my sleeping bag to get ready for breakfast and sunrise at the Torres...oops didn´t think of that! They made coffee, I made some killer oatmeal and we watched the sunrise and the massive obelisks of rock! Unfortunately due to cloud cover we didn´t get the show of colours you see in photos, but beautiful nonetheless. We were the only ones up there. Indeed, on our way down, in the light we saw, at the foot of the lake about 20 people who hadn´t lost their way - I think it was better that way though we had it all to ourselves ina matter of speech. We came down, I said goodbye to my companion, Henrik drank so mate with the americans and we headed out toward Campamento Japones. We walked an hour by the winding grey glacial river , past the forest and changign leaves, sometimes skirting the river within inhes and others climbing the scree morain for views of the valley. We said goodby at Japones and they turned back. Now I was by myself. I began my run/hike up further into the forest, then above the forest, scrambling over rocks on the bed of a stream. Then I crossed a riverbed of sedimentary bedrock that was steep steep. With the water and the rain that was now gently falling I would have been a splat on a rock without my hiking poles! I wound my way around and up the base of the huge mouintain, past the colours, the black charcoal coloured rocks , the granite, into the misty Valle del silencio...
Solitude
All this sound; it is the fault of the rocks, that break the silence in every way. For the water that falls from the silent blue glaciers wouldn´t make a sound were it not for the rock that it drills and slaps and flows over, tumbling to an invisible river that rushes below. The wind would be silent too were it not for the towers of granite that stood thousands of years of ice that now whistle and the wind that howls through cracks and past million year old edges; and my feet, were it not for the remnants of endless rock slides would flow silently in the air... but instead they upset the stones that line this pat, wrapping around the mountain between colous and clouds that sit in this dead valley. Ia m alone in this valley. I run, scramble, walk, with care, make my way deep into its heart, around the back of the torres. Only climbers come here and its not climbing season so I am alone with the rock and ice, the clouds and the wind and I feel wonderfully tiny and insigvificant, that black dot that drags itself about the earth, but just a dot, as I sit snacking, in my foul-weather gear on a massive granite boulder.
I run down, heart racing, adrenaline pumping, endorphins flowing through my veins, making sounds sharper, colours clearer, and making the rain the clouds the countless glaciers and incomprehensible rock formations more beautiful... and I a alone.
On my way down I met two people coming up...my whole human body was broken. The aloneness that I felt, the beautiful solitude so rare in this park of 200,000 visitors each year, was shattered not by presence, but by my knowledge of human presence (of course they did nothing to bother me, just said hi and passed). My solitude smashed, like a bottle on the balck rocks under the glowing manderin canopy.
I scramble down the riverbed and into the windy mud/sand pack narrow singletrack where I fly, navigating some hairpin turns using trees to slingshot myself around the bend by grabbing it as I go. The river is crisp sounding, flowing over the rocks and everything is on fire. I love Patagonia. This night I cook by myself under the shadow of the Torres. The next day I walk out under a raining and then completely revealing sky. And that is it.
After much negociating and I think a valid attempt at penetrating further into the park, I gave up. Without a guide or a packraft, Glaciar Tyndall and Geike are virtually inaccesible...a guide offered me half price (you have to pay for a boat, horses, permission to be on private land..) at 200,000 pesos - about$400 - thats the sort of clownery we are dealing with!!!
Anyway after paying an arm and a leg to get into the park, get the shuttle bus and take the ferry to the start of the trek I met a freindly Swede named Henrik. We were going to the same place and we were both going quite fast. So we hiked the 15 km up to Campamento Guarda, pas the Glaciar Grey Camp (where you have to pay!) We set up our stuff and then we continued with just food and water another 6km up the trail. This section wound up and down the rocky shore of tLago Grey along and above the glacier. I ran this section and consequently got some pretty funny looks fro uninitiated tourists!!! Henrik ran part of it too and what we saw was spectacualar. Everything is so whit that the littl black rock of the moutnains in the distance that does appear, does so lika a mirage in the sun, it looks like smoke. The massive blue white glacier went as far as the eye could see, feeding into the Campo d Hielo Sur (aside from the poles the largest section of continental ice in the world! The white peaks and the misty clouds surround. As we went up, the glacier infront of us, we saw and heard a massive chunk of ice the size of a house or perhaps larger, break off and splash into the lake, slow motion! Day 1 27km
On the way down the next day we there were chunks of ice, iceburgs, floating surreal blue in the grey water, against the dark clouds and the deep gren forest...The rest of the day was rather uneventful, again we just went very fast, doing 22km or so before 2pm. Then we set up at Campamento Italiano (where there is a mouse problem!!) and we ran up tthe Valle Frances.Fom there we ascended to Campamento Britanico and the lookout in the heart of the valley. We said we´d meet up at Britanico as I was running and Henrik was not. I ran past the burning fall colours, up, up the steep rock, past the massive Cerro Paine, little talked about but massive and impressive, big blue glaciers hanging off its jet black and jagged faces. The clouds were high so everything was visible; past the thick permanent snow that pads the glaciers and peaks I arrived at Britanico and i sat down to grab a handful of GORP. I waited probably 10 minutes befor a) starting to get cold andb) starting to get a bit worried as to the whereabouts of Henrik. I didn´t let myself worry though but as I was getting clold I started to head up to the mirador (lookout). Just as I left I saw three people we had both passed on the way up so I asked them if they had seen Henrik... no they said, only when he passed them with me... Ok now I started to worry. I ran down instead, winding through the rocky and muddy singletrack through twisted trees, about 15 minutes before I arrived at a river crossing where the trail was not overtly obvious... there I saw Henrik - even in that moment he was lost. He had got the the river crossing, not seen the trail, seen an alternate one that went up the riverbed and taken that for 20minutes. When he realized that it was not the trail he started to come down to look for the proper one but said he had passed this point already and not seen the trail... lucky he didn´t turn out a statistic!!!
So we both headed up to the mirador, a decision I am glad I mad. On the right and behind are the bicoloured cuernos (horns) tan coloured granite topped with jagged mudstone and dipped in snowy frost. To the left a huge black mountain and one of the frosted Torres followed by a line of jagged snoy super crisp peaks in front and below this ring of rock and ice a belt of fiery fall colours lighting up the valley. All the peaks looked like they had been put in the freezer. Misty snowy frosted and crisp! In the valley you are absolutely surrounded by rock walls that flow into one and other - multicoloured and gigantic. Its almost a full circle as if you are in the embrace of God Herself. Day 2 29.3km
Today was spposed to be short, only 21 km but with the fatigue of the other days it was the hardest. This side is like a highway in April - I cannot imagine what high season in Jan-Feb is like - suffocating I imagine! Some Americans, Brian and Emily, had a frisbee so we played on a rock/mud plateau under the shadow of rocky faces and a smiling glacier... now dinner. Day 3 21km, tired as shit!
4am wakeup call from the Americans. I pack up my sleeping bag, mat, warm clothes, stove and breakfast and am walking by 430am. I could see Emily and Brian´s headlamps ahead of me as I laboured up the steep trail. I caught them after ten minutes and as our headlamps are made for seeing around the campsite and not seeing far ahead we lost the trail. (On coming down I have no idea how because it was very well marked and extremely well travelled...but alas.) We scrambled up the rocky loose morrain to a point probably 150m above the glacial lake that sits at the foot of the Torres. It started to rain as I took out my sleeping bag to get ready for breakfast and sunrise at the Torres...oops didn´t think of that! They made coffee, I made some killer oatmeal and we watched the sunrise and the massive obelisks of rock! Unfortunately due to cloud cover we didn´t get the show of colours you see in photos, but beautiful nonetheless. We were the only ones up there. Indeed, on our way down, in the light we saw, at the foot of the lake about 20 people who hadn´t lost their way - I think it was better that way though we had it all to ourselves ina matter of speech. We came down, I said goodbye to my companion, Henrik drank so mate with the americans and we headed out toward Campamento Japones. We walked an hour by the winding grey glacial river , past the forest and changign leaves, sometimes skirting the river within inhes and others climbing the scree morain for views of the valley. We said goodby at Japones and they turned back. Now I was by myself. I began my run/hike up further into the forest, then above the forest, scrambling over rocks on the bed of a stream. Then I crossed a riverbed of sedimentary bedrock that was steep steep. With the water and the rain that was now gently falling I would have been a splat on a rock without my hiking poles! I wound my way around and up the base of the huge mouintain, past the colours, the black charcoal coloured rocks , the granite, into the misty Valle del silencio...
Solitude
All this sound; it is the fault of the rocks, that break the silence in every way. For the water that falls from the silent blue glaciers wouldn´t make a sound were it not for the rock that it drills and slaps and flows over, tumbling to an invisible river that rushes below. The wind would be silent too were it not for the towers of granite that stood thousands of years of ice that now whistle and the wind that howls through cracks and past million year old edges; and my feet, were it not for the remnants of endless rock slides would flow silently in the air... but instead they upset the stones that line this pat, wrapping around the mountain between colous and clouds that sit in this dead valley. Ia m alone in this valley. I run, scramble, walk, with care, make my way deep into its heart, around the back of the torres. Only climbers come here and its not climbing season so I am alone with the rock and ice, the clouds and the wind and I feel wonderfully tiny and insigvificant, that black dot that drags itself about the earth, but just a dot, as I sit snacking, in my foul-weather gear on a massive granite boulder.
I run down, heart racing, adrenaline pumping, endorphins flowing through my veins, making sounds sharper, colours clearer, and making the rain the clouds the countless glaciers and incomprehensible rock formations more beautiful... and I a alone.
On my way down I met two people coming up...my whole human body was broken. The aloneness that I felt, the beautiful solitude so rare in this park of 200,000 visitors each year, was shattered not by presence, but by my knowledge of human presence (of course they did nothing to bother me, just said hi and passed). My solitude smashed, like a bottle on the balck rocks under the glowing manderin canopy.
I scramble down the riverbed and into the windy mud/sand pack narrow singletrack where I fly, navigating some hairpin turns using trees to slingshot myself around the bend by grabbing it as I go. The river is crisp sounding, flowing over the rocks and everything is on fire. I love Patagonia. This night I cook by myself under the shadow of the Torres. The next day I walk out under a raining and then completely revealing sky. And that is it.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Footnote to crossing the border
As I had mentioned, I crossed the border on foot at the end of March from Chile Chico to Los Antiguos (Arg.) Everything that I own was on my back and the sun shone down from the blue sky and the crazy wind blew in my face. I began to sing to myself La Frontera by Lhasa de Sela. I heard it once on CBC at work and I know no other music by Lhasa but this is a spooky beautiful song. I will post the lyrics if I can find them, and my own (albeit amature) translation. I can´t explain my reasons for travelling and the feeling that you know you have to go, even though you love, better than this song:
Hoy vuelvo a la frontera
Otra vez he de atravesar
Es el viento que me manda
Que me empuja a la frontera
Y que borra el camino
Que detras desaparece
Today I return to the border
Once again I must cross
It is the wind that sends me there,
That pushes me toward the border
And that erases my path
That behind me disappears
Me arrastro bajo el cielo
Y las nubes del invierno
Es el viento que las manda
Y no hay nadie que las pare
A veces combate despiadado
A veces baile
Y a veces...nada
I drag myself under the sky
And the winter clouds
It is the wind that sends them
And nobody in the world can stop them(clouds)
At times it fights mercilessly (the wind)
At times it dances
And at times... it does nothing
Hoy cruzo la frontera
Bajo el cielo
Bajo el cielo
Es el viento que me manda
Bajo el cielo de acero
Soy el punto negro que anda
A las orillas de la suerte
Today I cross the border
Under the sky
Under the sky
It is the wind that sends me
Under the steely sky
I am the black dot that moves
On the shores of fate
Excuse the horrible translation but... that will have to do. Although my english version is not half as poetic one gets the idea and I must say that as I crossed the border this song and everything it means colonized my body and my mind and my spirit and I felt close to its heart.
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