Fitz Roy

Arrived on a beautiful clear sunny day, put the tent up and woke up the next morning to four days of gale force winds and torrential rain. To go to the loo took a hour of psyching yourself up and numerous layers of waterproof clothing. El Chalten is your real wild west town, big wide dusty streets with the odd gaucho galloping down on his horse.

Allan

We are so lucky having time to play with, must be a nightmare to come here and have to hike in that weather and see nothing. Anyway, we sat it out and were rewarded with wonderful sunshine. So off we set, with every piece of luggage we owned on our backs. Usually folk leave some stuff (summer clothing etc) at the hostel they were staying at. We´d done that in Puerto Natales, left a couple of bags in a locked room at the Joshmar 2 campsite. Came back to find quite a few things missing, not that the owner gave two hoots. So, we kept everything with us and looked a right pair with huge rucksacks on our backs and knapsacks on our fronts. Only a few hours walking a day and you arrived at the most amazing views so I can´t say I was really bothered. Fitz Roy is a beautiful towering monster of a peak and this time we caught not one but two sunrises - never seen such a beautiful red rock. I just read The Little Prince last year so it´s great to see some of the mountains that inspired St Auxbrey (sp?) They even named one of the peaks after him.

Allan in the rain

It´s autumn now and the trees are a riot of greens, reds, oranges and purples. Just gorgeous. Couldn´t believe the number of holes in the trees, back in Cambodia I would have thought there´d been a shoot out but not here - turns out to be a group of Magellanic woodpeckers. Like most of the wildlife round here they weren´t in the least bit bothered by us. Spent the next hour chasing round after them trying to get ´the perfect photo´ it didn´t happen but they were still cool to watch. How do they not get headaches?

Continued on round the valley so see the awesome Cerro Torres, considered unclimbable for years. Still can´t work out how they get up there. Even if you make it up the 90 degree flat face you still have to face the ´mushroom´ of snow that has been wind-whipped and frozen to the peaks. Turned out to be freezing down the bottom as well. We zipped our sleeping bags together to keep warm and woke up to find the zips of the tent frozen and the gas in our cooker had turned to liquid! The stove finally gave up the ghost, couldn´t have picked a better day though as we were about to head back to Buenos Aires. Not sure how you give a stove a decent burial, will work on that later.

Autumn trees

Cerro Torres at sunrise

Cerro Torres black and white

Fitz Roy

Fitz Roy sunrise

Frost on leaves

Reflection of Cerro Torres in frozen lake