Notes from Patagonia: A Trekking Adventure

Adventure may hurt you, but monotony will kill you. I’m not sure where this quote comes from, but I do hold its value. And it was adventure we sought when we planned a hiking trip to Patagonia. 

Layla, our guide for the first three days of trekking, collected us the morning after arriving in El Chalten and we set off on our quest. There’s a mingling that goes on in one’s mind when feeling both excited and concerned. Both ambitious and anxious. Both adventurous and a bit stupid. I felt all of these.

El Chalten is a mountaineering town. Everyone walking down the street looks fit. World travelers are sharing maps, sipping Mate and hefting huge backpacks. The people working here are true outdoor activity lovers.  Our guide works here in the South American summer and then goes to Iceland or Spain for the winter. Our driver spends half the time here and the other half in Chamonix in France. They love their jobs, they love the mountains and many of them love climbing.

On New Year’s Day, Layla and two others started at 3:30 in the morning to climb Mount Solo. This is serious climbing. There are several fatal climbing accidents here each year. They returned to town at six in the evening and she was ready to pick us up the next morning for a three-day trek. The job with us was a rest for her.  

As we walk the streets, we peer into stores selling outdoor gear, offering excursions and of course there’s the coffee shops and bars. Most of them close in the winter season. The air is so clean and clear and the wind is so strong I’m thinking of cutting off all my hair. The weather changes dramatically. The first two days of hiking I wore a tee-shirt all day long and wore leggings, a wool shirt, a vest, a down jacket and scarf to bed. Today was windy most of the time so I needed a  jacket.

We ate packed lunches which moved high on the list of my past packed lunches: a banana, a bag of nuts, an empanada, a really good sandwich, a brownie and some caramel candies. They love caramel here and serve it with breakfast—whipped into some cream, it’s delicious with the morning fruit. They served a glass of Malbec with the beef stew at dinner and we drank water straight from the river. I don’t remember ever going up to a river, dipping in my water bottle, filling it up, drinking it and staying perfectly healthy. The water was fantastic.  

Our guide has gone through extensive training for her job and is furthering her education to become a naturalist. Her interest and knowledge of this part of the world is exceptional. She pointed out every flower and tree and bug and bird and mushrooms that grow on trees and act like a barometer for air quality. They only grow in perfectly clean air.

There is no thunder or lightning here. The wind always comes from the west and there is no clashing that might create a thunderstorm. They work hard to keep their ecosystem safe and clean. They take the idea of "leave nothing behind" very seriously—not an apple core, no toilet paper, no anything, and you can tell. The paths are clean and the forest is natural. When a tree falls, it is left. When the glaciers move, they create lakes and also moraines, a landform composed of glacial till, deposited by the moving ice. We walked along the top of these moraines and peered down at icebergs that had fallen into the lakes. There are more than six hundred glaciers in Patagonia. As we traipsed along these mountains of rubble, we’d stare up at condors circling above, waiting for the dinner that we could not see. 

Comfort is something important to me so I’m not sure why I choose to engage in the practice of camping. I’m so glad that I’m not homeless. Discomfort is not romantic, it’s hard work. Our campsites were gorgeous.  The forest was quiet and natural, peace seeped out of the ground. But the tents were small. As one ages, it gets a little bit harder to bend down and creep through an opening that is two feet by two feet. Then I kick off my boots so as not to get mud in the tent. We close up the zippered door quickly so we don’t get any mosquitoes or deadly caterpillars inside. The first night was awful. I was so tired from the climb up the mountain that I thought for sure I would be comatose instantly. I couldn’t fall asleep. And I got up to go to the bathroom three times. At eleven o'clock it was still light out, but the next time, probably around midnight, it was so dark that I couldn’t see my hand. The good part of the walk was when I looked up. I saw more stars than I had ever seen in one place...in my life. I used a flashlight to navigate the rooted path toward the outhouse. We were lucky to have a toilet. The following day when squatting in the woods to pee, I fell over on to my knees because my quads were so sore. And I had just told someone that my legs were just fine! The day was harder after so little sleep but our next campsite was a step up. The dome, the eating tent, had a wooden floor—oh how nice it is to have a wooden floor instead of dirt. And in our tent we had a brand-new sleeping bag liner and a fabulous fluffy pillow. And it rained. It rained hard, wet drops and sheets of constant all-night-long rain. I have a house that leaks, I have been in restaurants and shops and cars that leak. I have even been on a plane that leaked and they had to put a bucket in the aisle to catch the drips. But our tent stayed dry. What a magnificent piece of technology. A tent in the forest on a mountain in a Patagonian rain...stayed dry. I hope that I can always be grateful for what I have. A floor that isn’t dirt, a dry night in the rain, a pillow, a toilet…such wonderful things.
  
I had been training for our first hike for weeks. I thought about it constantly and hoped I could manage. I thought I’d maybe go about five minutes, stop, take a breather and then do that again. As we started the hour and a half ascent, our lovely guide said that we would move steadily and continue through the rough rubble of the first thirty minutes without stopping. Hmm, maybe I need to be told what to do, because I did it.  It was a solid, continual, non-stopping, climb through rough rocks and rubble and grit. We all made it. Then came the boulders, rocks that stood a foot and two feet high that we pulled ourselves up and over. This had a higher vertical degree and yet we continued. Luckily, we were told that we would reach a false summit before catching our breath and continued on toward the top. Layla was steady, confident, positive and inspiring. Her encouragement and our unwillingness to be bothered by young, fit, gorgeous specimens who passed us as they came down spurred us on. One young man looked at me, said I was doing great and that I was almost there. I told him I loved him.  

And then we came down from the mountain. This statement has nothing to do with being high and haughty.  It’s about humility. It’s atonement. Yes, we had this experience of pride and accomplishment, yet the coming down pained us for another hour and a half and we stumbled into our campsite feeling small. When venturing further into such a big world, we become smaller and smaller. The majesty of this place is sobering and reminds us of our oneness with humanity and the world.

Mount Fitz Roy was named after an explorer. As was the Beagle channel and the Moreno Glacier. Funny how we like to name things after ourselves. I do think about these intrepid early voyagers—the paths they laid, the history they made, the maps and routes and data they collected and passed on, are things we still use today.  I wonder what I will leave behind. One thing I do know is that, the more you wander, the more you wonder. And that is the beauty of travel.