Day 183: Feb. 14, 2008 El Calafate to El Chaltén
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2007
1
186
202
Trip End
Mar 01, 2008
El Chaltén,
Argentina
Thursday, February 14, 2008
We slept soundly until the alarm went off at 8:30. The weather was clear and sunny with a warm breeze. We ate another filling breakfast and checked out of the hotel. After gassing up, we headed eastward, out of town, with Liz at the wheel. When we reached Ruta 40, we headed north, crossing the recessional/terminal moraine that dams the Río Santa Cruz to form Lago Argentino. The golden grasses of the pampas moved in waves as the wind blew across them. The mountains to the west were magnificent having received a new covering of snow during yesterday's inclement weather. I showed Liz where the 2001 Voice of the Rivers expedition put in. The road turned to gravel between Lago Argentino and Lago Viedma but Liz held her place at the wheel, rather enjoying driving on gravel and anxious to tell James, her son-in-law, and avid offroad explorer, about her new prowess.
As we arrived at the Lago Viedma recessional/terminal moraine, the clouds were clearing over Monte FitzRoy, 100 km to the west, its tall peak of sheer granite walls towering well above all of the surrounding spires.
The road returns to pavement before reaching the paved road that runs along the north side of the lake to El Chaltén. The clouds cleared over Cerro Torre as we headed west, stopping several times to take fotos of the emerging spectacular scenery. The Viedma Glacier, descending from the ice field to the west end of the lake makes an awesome wall of ice down the mountainside. The rocks exposed in the cliffs to the north of he highway illustrate the transition from the foreland in the east, where the strata are flat-lying, to the hinterland in the west, where the strata are folded and faulted. Finally, we reached the magmatic arc at El Chaltén, where volcanic rocks are intruded by the vertical granite peaks of the FitzRoy and Monte Torre ranges.
We pulled in to the Visitor's Center on the outskirts of town and got hotel information and then drove into town and got a nice room at the Hostería Thiamalu. Our room has a beautiful view of FitzRoy, when it is not in the clouds. We arrived in El Chaltén on one of the last days in which it could claim to have no paved roads. Road crews were making final preparations for paving the four main streets. Flat, concrete curbs and flat sidewalks-a novel concept in Argentina-had already been laid.
It was such a clear, pretty day, in dramatic surroundings, that we decided to hop in the truck and drive the 37 km of gravel road north to the south end of Lago del Desierto. Unfortunately, as I backed out of the parking lot, I hit a wall, damaging the rear bumper of the truck. I had seen the lake on the map during my 2004-2005 visit and wondered what lay at the end of the road. It took about an hour to drive up the valley that had towering peaks of granite and glaciers on the west and reddish volcanics to the east.
A gendarmaría outpost is situated at the south end of the lake. They have a large boat which supplies another outpost 12 km farther up the lake. A porteño (person from Buenos Aires) couple that we met told us that there had been a skirmish between Argentina and Chile there in which one Chilean soldier was killed. He didn't say when so I assume it occurred decades ago but still justifies their presence there. No one seemed to mind our Chilean license plates!
We walked back into the woods along the west shore of the lake and climbed a low knoll to get our first long view of a pristine Andean finger lake. Lago del Desierto runs tens of kilometers long and about a kilometer wide, surrounded by forested mountains at lower elevations and bare rock or ice higher up the steep slopes. I fail to see how it got the name "Lake of the Desert"; I suspect it was an alcohol-related event. We spoke with several Argentine couples that also made their way up the knoll, including the porteños who told us about the skirmish.
We walked along the lake for a couple of hundred meters before turning back to the vehicle to return to El Chaltén. Along the way we picked up two women hitchhikers, a porteña and an Israeli. They rode in the bed of the truck and thoroughly enjoyed the ride, in spite of the bumpy road.
Back at the hotel, we meditated. The wind picked up and rain clouds moved in so we decided to drive around to find a place to eat. We stopped at El Muro, near where I camped in 2004-2005, and had pizza and beer. Satiated, we returned to the hotel at 11:00, just as darkness finally descended.
