Chile Day 6 - Human Challenges Prove more Difficult Than Geological Ones

refugio italia
Originally uploaded by wolftone.

I had thought that the hardest point of my day was going to be scaling the col to the next refugio. How wrong I was.

Things started innocently enough. Waiting for a break in the rain, I set about around Lago Negro for today's hike. I expected it to be challenging, with steep glacier fields, windy ridge walks, and poorly marked routes. Everyone at the refugio had given me as much route-finding assistance as they could and I mostly kept to the track. In the morning, the clouds rested low in the sky and glared at me in an ominous fashion, but did not send down any rain. With a brief detour for a misadventure through a heavily overgrown bush field, I eventually reached the bottom of the Big Climb. This is the one which had scared me all day. Everyone in the refugio had spoken of it in soft, frightened tones. And they had gone DOWN it, whereas I was ascending. Once I saw the Big Climb from a distance, I interpreted it as some sort of geological impossibility: a scree slope held far beyond its angle of repose by some malicious mountain trickster-god. Closer inspection revealed it to be a within the bounds of known physics, but barely so. With each step, I could feel the entire local region of shattered rock shifting under my weight, ready to race uncontrollably downwards. When I did dislodge a plate of rock (requring a quick jump sideways to not to join it), I could hear it recede into the depths of the valley long after it left myfield of view. As I climbed, the surface became increasingly steep and unstable. I began to wonder if I would even be able to climb the slope. And then it began to rain. Hard.

Later, on talking with a marine ecology fullbright scholar from SUNY stonybrook, I learned that this is an El Nino year. Hence the rain. Absent this knowledge, I became convinced that I am cursed.

I slogged through the remainder of the up-climb. Because of the rain, cloud cover obscured the undoubtedly amazing view from the peak. Then I began the climb downward, which was somewhat complicated by a complete lack of trail markers. After taking a very circuitous and highly individual route, I reached the next Refugio an hour ahead of book time. Not bad, considering. This refugio was the exact opposite of Italia - bustling with families and day-hikers with a freezer full of ice cream and a posted price for bathroom use. This refugio is one of the easiest to access from the road, so many families with small children and large school groups frequent it. It is a madhouse, utterly lacking in the weary camraderies of the remotie Italia. On some level, I'm glad I hiked the trail in reverse. Passing disneyland-on-nahuel-huapi, I hiked down to the road with 20 minutes to spare until the bus arrived.

But it didn't arrive. Ultimately, returning to Barilochoe was a grueling fiasco involving hours standing in the rain with no shelter, busses passing but not stopping, improperly followed routes, and even an unexpected trip to the municipal salvage yard. Ultimately, it took me over 5 hours to get from exit trailhed to city center, only 2 hours less than I spent hiking today.

Arriving in town far after the tourist information center closed, I was forced to wander from hotel to hotel in the rain, begging for a room. Because of the influx of high schoolers, cheap rooms are impossible to find. In the end, I had to purchase a rather expensive quad room at the gallingly-named Hotel Panorama (where I am in a basement room facing the street).

At least being back in the city means that I can have a big dinner. I'm eating mexican (real mexican, not tex-mex) and enjoying a margarita plus a plate deadly sauces. I even had half my guacamole (doused in incendiary salsa) and pretended to enjoy it.

Here are my conclusions about my trip so far: I really, really like this corner of the world. The terrain is amazing, the people welcoming, and the quisine inspiring. As long as I'm not being rained on or handling a transporation fiasco, it's been wonderful.