[009] The Huemul & El Chalten
I'm travelling in South America. Here's what I'm up to, some photos and other bits
The messimessimessi wifi passwords confirmed I was back in Argentina. That, and that fact I’d shown my passport to a man in a small white building at the border crossing.
The blisters on my little toes were asking for rest, so I’d come to El Calafate to see the Perito Moreno glacier. We rented a car from the hostel and were told that if police ask us just say we borrowed it from a friend, so it seemed legit.
First stop was to pick up two Brits who’d chased me across the border to deliver my replacement monzo card (legends). My original had gone AWOL in a supermarket and Monzo's letter arrived an hour after I had left Puerto Natales - bloody Royal Mail!
Perito Moreno is a huge glacier with a 70m tall face. We cracked open a bottle of £3 Malbec and from the network of walkways on the opposite cliff watched huge blocks of ice plunge into the lake below, turning little toy cruise boats on their heel and away from surging waves.
My next stop was El Chalten, and my WhatsApp black book of ‘First name - random place I met them’ continued to bear fruit. I’d been introduced to a German girl who was also keen to try the Huemul Circuit, a four day ‘physically demanding’ hike which included two zip line river crossings, a 40 degree descent and a glacier walk.
We registered at the National Park centre and I generously ticked the box which said ’intermediate’ mountaineering experience, and ‘don’t know’ if my insurance includes helicopter rescue. We were taken to a back room with a big 1990's television and shown a slideshow. The phrases ‘the getting on and getting out of the glacier can change periodically’ and ’48 hours after your stipulated return, the National Park will begin search and rescue activities’ weren’t exactly filling me with confidence, I have to say.
When it explained the zip line it said ‘previous skills in using this kind of installation are indispensable’. But previous skills I did not have… unless you count the Tottenham Hotspur ‘skywalk’ experience. But with that I was simply clipped onto a railing at the doors of the Spurs club shop, then was herded carefully up the outside of the stadium for fear that I might lose my balance on the six metre wide gangway and plummet over the edge.
Spoiler alert: I made it, and The Huemul was probably the best hike I’ve ever done. Coming over Paso del Viento the Southern Patagonian Ice Field opened up, and its mesmerising curvy lanes of transported moraine stretched as far as the eye could see.
Fun fact: the Southern Patagonian Ice Field extends for 350km and is third largest area of contiguous ice in the world (after Antarctica and Greenland), and Dickson Glacier and Perito Merino Glacier which I have visited in the south are also part of it.
I have to say, walking on the glacier scared me shitless and in my head I re-ticked the box hill walker instead of mountaineer. As we ventured further onto the glacier the crevasses got wider and deeper, and my imagination ran with those films where people fall down a crevasse, soil themselves then cut off an arm. I put my finger to my neck to feel my pulse racing, and my head was turned left and right by the echoing cracks and groans of this moving mass of ice.
On our final evening we took a dip with an iceberg then admired the clouds over the lake as we made instant mash on the stove. We left camp the next morning to battle a big headwind roaring across the Pampas, and rolled into El Chalten at seven. We raided the liquor store under the guidance of Dublin Tom, our in-house bartender who we’d picked up along the way, and got gently tipsy on Boulevardiers (a negroni with whisky instead of gin).
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I had one last stop to make, a sunrise hike to Mt. Fitzroy which has been iconised on the Patagonia clothing logo. I woke at 4am to climb by head torch, then blindly found a nook between two rocks to snuggle into my sleeping bag and make tea on the stove. I stuck on KID A MNESIA by Radiohead and watched tiny satellites chase each other across the jet black universe. It was one of those moments you feel so incredibly insignificant and mortal, and any worries melted away for a while. The westward sky behind the mountain changed from black to mercury to blue, unveiling the famous silhouette of the Fitzroy range before it lit up orange for a moment. I floated into a deep nap and when I woke up my fellow sunrise hikers had headed down the mountain, and an Andean fox was sniffing about on the rocks in front of me.
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I’m in Chile Chico now (it’s in Chile, surprise bloody surprise) and can’t wait to explore Patagonia National Park, a conservation and re-wilding project pioneered by Kris Tompkins and Doug Tompkins - it’s covered in a really nice documentary on Disney+ called Wild Life. After that the plan is to hitch hike up the Carretera Austral.
Love as always
George