Nahuel Huapi Traverse
Trip Start
Jan 10, 2007
1
2
11
Trip End
Feb 24, 2007
Parque National Nahuel Huapi,
Argentina
Friday, January 12, 2007
Left some small bags at our hotel (full of camping food!) and caught a taxi to Cerro Cathedral, the ski hill in the winter. Immediately we could see that it was a late summer in the area, as the flowers that were in full bloom along the highway were lupins which we had not seen before in Argentina. But the weather was hot already, about 25 degrees C at 10am as we started our hike.
To keep things short, a quick review (okay after reading over not very brief!).
Day 1: Started at the ski hill and hiked to Laguna Frey. Hot, dusty, a few tabanos (big black flies). Hiked slow and steady to keep our feet happy. Lots of flowers, spring ones too. Got a great tenting spot in the trees, only 4 hrs of walking so we had lots of time to chill and explore. Washing in glacial water. Could see lots of snow up on the mountains, climbers on Cerro Cathedral. Clear skies, windy as the night came on. Brown geese on the lake, tadpoles where we filtered water. Cool night but warm in our down sleeping bags.
Day 2: Laguna Frey to Laguna Jakob, up two passes with of course two steep downhills. Up at 7am, cool but clear skies. Maple oatmeal. Up the snowy rocks to the small Laguna Schmol, filtered some water, very sunny already. Up to the pass Cancha de Futbol and to outstanding views! Down the scree with our gaitors on, we whipped by two hikers with small packs because they did not know how to scree run! Through the valley, a bit marshy, glad to have gaitors on. Through the tenting site at the bottom of the valley, two guys still getting ready to leave and it was after noon already and very hot! More trudging up the next uphill, getting tired and sunburnt, more snow on this section than Theo had ever seen! At the next pass we had outstanding views of Laguna Jakob and the hut, but had a very steep downhill ahead of us. Down we went, picking our way, trying to scree run when we could but big rocks made it hard. At Laguna Frey we found an amazing tenting spot overlooking the lake, tucked in the trees. Found a great washing spot on the lake, but the water still glacial cold! The tabanos came as the afternoon became hot, we retreated into our tent for protection. Our tarp, named Tarpie, kept us shady! Planned to stay here an extra day to explore the area and to see how high we could get up the snowny traverse section with just day packs. Eating at 7pm when the tabanos had retreated because of the cooler night, great view over the lake, better than TV! Hot cocoa.
01) Lupines!
Leaving fly off the back of our tent and watching the stars, seeing the Southern Cross and Crab nebula. Falling asleep hearing only the roar of the huge waterfall across the lake!Day 3: Day tripping around Laguna Frey. Good sleep in til about 9:30am! Packed our daypacks, and headed up to Laguna de los Tempanos and to try to climb up the traverse as much as we could to see the high views. Laguna de los Tempanos was filled with little icebergs! We started scaling up the rocky climb up the tranverse, and realized that snow was obscuring the trail. Hard going, lots of scrambling and rock climbing, we would lose the trail repeatedly because of snow, but would find a cairn now and then. The tabanos did not like to be up high in the wind so we had a relatively quiet climb up without them. Finally we reached a snowy top section, and we could see the southern face of the mountain ridge that we were warned about. It was covered in snow (sun comes from the north down here!) and would make it hard going without crampons (unless the snow was soft). We hung around, ate some food, and climbed one of the peaks named Pico Refugio which had an egyptian "eye" drawn on the rocks below (we assumed meant "lookout"). Back down rather quickly since we were able to remember the trail better, but harder going down. At the refugio (hut) at Laguna Jacob we talked to one of the "guides", a guy who could tell you about the traverse and the trail conditions. After hearing that we had made it up to Pico Refugio, he told us in pretty good english "you have done the hard part". He felt the rest of the traverse could be done safely by us if we were able to handle the climb us, as we just had to make sure the snow on the south face was soft enough to kick in deep steps. Stunned, we made some food at our sight and comtemplated doing the traverse. Should we? We desperately wanted to! We had barely enough food to stay an extra day, but after buying a huge chocolate bar at the refugio we fell asleep with big plans for the next day. Once again falling asleep with the Southern Cross in our view!
Day 4: Up at 6:30, we decided to do the hard traverse from Laguna Frey to Laguna Negra. We quickly ate hummus for breakfast instead of starting up the stove, and started our wander back up towards Laguna de los Tempanos, and then up the ridge. With full packs on our backs, the going was a fair bit slower. When we reached the rocky up climb, we had to make different decisions because of the weight on our backs, which threatened to pull us over backwards. We also had to stow the poles a few times. Perhaps it took us twice as long to get to the top of the ridge, next to Pico Refugio. One nice benefit of the early start is that we had almost no tabonos visit us! From the ridge line, our way forward was all new territory. We noted that someone else had come over the snow yesterday after our visit (perhaps two people, with crampons and ice axes). We chose something that approximated their line, which was to horizontally carve a U over the basin to a nearly equivelant col on the other side. Wecarefully stomped very good footholds since we did not have any axes to self-arrest with. A slip, leading to a slide, would the treacherous from here, with packs as heavy as ours. By now the sun had come up, and was so bright on the snow, that we were being positively roasted! When we finally reached the col at the other side, we were very happy to have finished (what we figured) to be the two hardest parts of the hike, with only easy hiking ahead of us. We now had to do another U around the upper reaches of the Laguna Navidad valley, which would let us reach a col further south, from where we could climb onto the back side of the mostly flat Pico Navidad (the front side of it being too dangerous, since it had cornices hanging off it). We thus continued via the scree and eventually reached the top of Pico Navidad, almost out of drinking water. We only had to find the right valley to descend down (Arroyo Navidad) and head towards Laguna Negra. Easy, right? Unfortunately a few minutes later we were finally able to see how much snow still remained in the Arroyo Navidad valley, how far down it was, and quite frankly, how damn steep it was!! After resting for a while and changing our socks, with hearts fluttering, we chose a line that would avoid the steepest bits of the slope, and decided to zig-zag a bit more conservatively than the crampon crew had done (they of course, had gone up -- not down). Up near the top the snow was of a little bit stiffer than the perfect consistancy, but we managed to make it down to lower levels where things got better and better. But even as we progressed down the slope, it was clear how very far away our destination lay. Up ahead, we could see the snow giving way to rock and dirt, and even some grass and such, and we were super optimistic that the worst was over. Wrong! The ground we reached was extremely difficult to cover, since we had to descend on side-slopes along a seasonal river. See, in the heat of the summertime the hiking route is mostly in the creek bed, but here we were up on horrid side slopes trying to find grip. And more snow presented itself, though this time as snow bridges over the creek. The first two were fairly easy to avoid, or safe to cross on a side not too near the creek, but finally we reached an impasse. We were on one bank of a river, with a few potential crossing points, facing a horrid side slope on both sides. It took us nearly 20 minutes to decide to switch over to the other side of the river. Nadine had some scary trouble with this crossing, but after a quick "remove her pack" rescue, she was ok and on the other side of the river (she was shaking for a while though). We downclimbed futher and noticed that the ice bridge was probably very bad to cross on this side. We could see the water split under the ice bridge, but were not sure what it would do. As well, to get onto it, we would have to jump a few meters down off a rocky outcropping which we could not downclimb because it was covered in slime. We climbed back up and deliberated, rather worried at this point. In another 20 minutes or so, we had come to a decision to cross the river again, back to the other side, but about 20 meters lower than before. That let us avoid a side slope downclimb that was horrid. Now we had a further downclimb to do, which was painfully slow. We came to the edge of the ice and looking underneath could see that we had chosen the right side. We could climb onto the snowy top, and as long as we proceeded along the wall of the canyon and re-checked a few time to see where the water underneath was going. We jumped on the snow bridge and it held! We made it to the bottom of the snow and were into the trees. The valley widened out and we entered a swampy forested area. We were free of rock climbing, and now only had to contend with trees, mud, rolly polly boulders, more mud, and oh my, what is that buzzing noise? Within minutes 30 tabanos had started circling each of us. The very muddy track continued downstream and eventually hit a canyon land which was massively damaged by the previous flood season, and put us back into climbing mode, at least this time with branches and trees to hold onto. In time we reached the main trail, entirely soaked in mud, water, sweat, encircled by tabanos, and asked three guys standing at the creek at the intersection whether there was camping nearby. Maybe they were uninformed, maybe they were shocked to see people like us coming out of a valley no one knew a trail went up, but eventually we opted to just head down the (extremely dusty) trail and find our own camping. We did not have the energy for 2 more hours uphill to Laguna Negra, as we had already been hiking for over 9 hours. We felt good to be alive after our crazy adventurous day!
Day5: We woke up very early so that we could walk out to Colonia Suisa before the tabanos woke up, and managed to make it all the way out the beautiful Arroyo Goye valley without seeing more than 4 or 5 of the big nasty bugs! Caught a bus back to Bariloche and made plans for our next hike!.
02) Huge bee!
