Trekking log - March 17 to 20 paraphrased.

We left our extra gear, what we did not need for the trek, unguarded in the driveway of the hostel we had stayed at in Coihaique...Patagonia Hostel, run by an amazing German couple. (the man spent 2 months on the northern icefield of patagonia and has decided that GoreTex is shit - his two month expedition which saw more than 6 meters of snowfall and at times winds of 300km per hour used no goretex at all - just light plastic waterproofs - he says goretex is for taking your dog for a walk - or I suppose for colder conditions - but pure wet... plastic is the way to go!!) With our gear we left a note saying we would return in 4-5days. After 3 stops to by high energy, light weight food we walke out of town and hitched the 95 Km to the trailhead in a pickup driven by a young couple who themselves had hitchhiked almost 1000km to Coihaique and only there had rented the pickup for better access to the area. We were dropped off in the middle of the highway, at the trailhead with a light rain. They wished us good luck and continued south. The first day was uneventful and untechnical - it was long, following a 4*4 trail, cows, 4 or 5 river crossings, mud, forest, rain and a few moments of confusion as to where the trail continued.
Day two when Olivia and I awoke we both contemplated seriously (and embarrassingly) turning back. It had rained all night and everything was wet. When you looked outside you could see nothing, just fog and clouds and the quiet green and black of the trees. We thought it would be all pain and no gain so we decided to leave the tent with our stuff in it and just take the necessaries for a day hike. 20 minutes into the hike the clouds parted to allow us a view from the riverbed of towering mountains of red and black, their peaks blanketed with snow, and the snowy red pass at 1300m that we were to cross. We changed our minds. We turned back, packed everything up and left at 11am - late. We climbed in the lenga forest until the trees ended giving way to rough big scree. the trail was marked by piles of rocks. Tough going in the rain, fog, and increasing cold. We reached the snowy pass and trudged further up craggy cavy crumbly peaks closed us in on two sides and clouds infront and behind... We stopped to eat at the top but a thick cloud began to close us in so we had to move. Descending the meltoff stream that at times ran underneath the permanent snow, we navigated down an extremely steep section of loose rocks. Finally stopping to eat we were greeted and welcomed by a sudden parting of clouds. Across from us, almost directly a massive glacier revealed itself. Blue, black, white. Sun shone off its surfaces and the shimmering water that flowed down the steep craggy rocks that gripped the glacier. Black clouds with a blue glacier and fiery white water on rock. Then below us, something I have never seen, with the rain that suddenly began to pound down, a brilliant rainbow - all is a gift!
At the end of the day Olivia fell in the river so we finished quickly and spent the rest of the day/night in the tent as the rain continued.
Day 3 we awoke to what we thought was a blue sky...not so! It began to rain as we started the hardest day of the trek, up, up, up through lenga forest again and into a rocky section. We met an israeli couple and did a small hike up to a sudden vista of spiky spires, a hanging glacier that melted away to aquamarine pools in the black rocks a few hundred metres directly below our feet. We came down and had to cross another river, this time it was my turn for a soaker... only two hours into the day!!! Again we climbed big rocks, scree, up, up, up over and around a turquoise lagoon. Across from us was yet another glacier, clinging apparently precariously from the rock face and flowing in cascades down to the lake below. To the right we could se clouds that whisped mysteriously and vaguely about the black spires of Cerro Castillo (literally Mount Castle) curling up the faces of the silouetted moutain sides and swirling through the massive river valley. Far far below you could see the snaking silvery river we had traced as well as the snowy 1300m pass from yesterday. Everything appeared and disappeared in moments. We climbed up straight past the huge glacier covered in snow on our way to over 1600m, chased by an ominous cloud, wet snow and strong wind. Rocks were getting slippery. Over the pass and into the flat section at 1600m, a sudden silence acosted our ears, indeed our beings. No rushing rivers running from the glaciers to fall on rock and water, no wind no snow, no rivers, no rumbling of avalanches... a deafening silence when all you can hear is the earie (sp?) sound of your breath heaving and your heart pounding. Past the precipice of black rocks, of red rocks, purple rocks, rusty rocks, green rocks, past our martian horizon black clouds. And to the right a stone spire pearcing the same clouds that covered and discovered it. As suddenly as the silence came it was cracked by a ferocious wind and an immediate cold. We had to go. We started the impossibly long (we couldn´t have known it then) descent of loose rock almost straight down the face at more than 45degrees. Then into a river bed with walls of earth on either side. Some dangerous, precipitous forays into the forest, more steep rock. More than anything it was mentally and emotionally exhausting because more than two hours before we reached a campable sight, we thought we were "almost there". There was one moment on the face of this rubbly mountainside that a cloud closed us in... this is a very earie feeling because you cannot tell where you are, there are no points of reference. All you see is fog/cloud and the rocks directly beneath your feet. Nothing else... up the mountain a few metres grey cloud, down the mountain and along the face ten metres of rocks and then pure fog.
The saving grace you might say was that the sun did accompany us the last few hours and dried wood enough so that after half an hour of trying we were able to start a fire. We hung up all our wet clothes and sleeping bags and boots even the tent fly to dry. At night the stars were amazing so we went to the nearby riverbed with our sleeping bags and just lay there infinitessimally (sp?) small.
Day four was uneventful. After a halfhour confusion of direction in which we almost went back up the mountain by another trail (our map was shit) we descended down the side of a canyon and into the Rio Ibañez valley where the trail meets another 4*4 trail of about 6km that brought us back to Villa Cerro Castillo on the Carretera Austral. In the middle of the road, outside the restaurant where we ate some wonderful sandwiches (this restaurant is two buses put together, painted with the colours of the rainbow and attended by a sunny woman named Sole.) In the middle of the Carretera Austral, lending creadence to the fact that not only is this road almost deserted but we are in offseason, was a dog, sleeping! In the restaurant we met a man, don´t know his name. He asked us where we were from... Canada and France we said. What part of Canada? Ottawa. NO??!! I lived there two years! and then he recited his address. He went to Brookfield highschool and then Rideau Highschool!!! He said ottawa and Canada were the best places he´d ever been!!!! Coincidences are crazy. In the middle of offseason in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Patagonia, in south of South america, a man whose father worked at the Chilean Embassy in Canada and went to a highschool that I played soccer against!!!! BIZARRE!

WE finished our sandwiches and hit the road, hoping to get back to Coihaique. The rain started. Up the road a pickup pulled over and four people got out and were watching us for a time. Then they whistled and motioned for us to come so we grabbed our bags and went over... who was it? None other than Felipe and Lorena, the couple that had dropped us off at the trailhead. It was like seeing old friends!!! A smile broke onto my dirty and tired face! we got in and they drove us to Rio Blanco, chatting joking, and even sleeping (not them, just me!) , where we almost immediatly got another ride with some builders right to the street where the hostel sits! We were welcomed with smiles and chatter, and tea and beautiful beds!!!
Now I´m waiting for Jarek to do some backcountry stuff in some unknown, relatively unvisited and remote national parks here in the south, weather permitting!!! WOOHOO PATAGONIA!!!
Thats it from me and you can see photos of ice climbing, glacier stuff and a few inadequate photos of the Cerro Castillo trek.
Until next time
Ciao