Northern part of Los Glaciares National Park
Trip Start
Mar 01, 2006
1
295
551
Trip End
Dec 01, 2007
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El Calafate - El Chalten,
Argentina
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
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In the morning I took the bus to El Chalten with Milva and Lionel. The landscapes were beautiful, we had to drive around huge Lago Argentino, then go north, and drive around huge Lago Viedma and its glacier, before reaching El Chalten. While on the road we could see in the distance the distinctive shape of Cerro Fitzroy in the mountains, with clouds moving along the cordillera.
We had tried to book a room the day before, but every guesthouse we had called was full. El Chalten is a very very small town, self proclaimed capital of hiking. Directly from town start the trails to go to different valleys, including those from which to see Cerro Torre and Cerro Fitzroy.
From town we had views of Mt Fitzroy, and especially of Cerro Solo, with its impressive glacier.
We found beds, and in our dorm we met Robert, an American who was going to trek as well. His plan was the same as ours: go to Cerro Torre, sleep there, take the transverse trail to Cerro Fitzroy the next day, sleep there, and come back on the third day. He had a tent for 2, and proposed to share it, so we just had to rent another two person tent and the mats. Milva had not ben too sure if she wanted to go, but it was a good occasion, and the hikes were not very difficult (less than 400m denivelation per day, with only 3 or 4 hours of walking each day), so she had eventually decided to come with us.
We went to buy the food, prepared the backpacks, and went out for diner. We met up again with Meg, the American girl from El Calafate, but she had already done the hike we were planning (in one day, but without going to the intersting viewpoints).
We decided that if the weather was good we would start with Cerro Torre, as it is the peak the most likely to be covered by clouds, even when the rest of the area is clear.
There was no way to predict the weather, except that we knew that if there are glaciers at low altitudes, it is because the micro climates allow it. In clear: cold and clouds most of the time, and snow fairly frequently.
The peaks and glaciers we were going to see were, just like the glaciers near El Calafate, on the east side of the Campo de Hielo Patagonico: a huge mass of ice and snow, covering the Andes, and representing a significant amount of the world's freshwater reserves. On the west side the glaciers flow towards the Chilean coast, and down south they reach Torres del Paine, on our "to do" list.
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