Seven Lakes and Osorno again

Well, it’s got to be said that the weather over the last few days has been in stark contrast to what I experienced the last time I went out for a walk! It’s been clear blue skies and blazing sunshine all the way. Having taken on a bit of a stinking head cold and throat infection, either due to sharing dorms all the time or being wet for 48 hours straight last week, I was exceptionally glad to have the offer to join a couple that I met on the Navimag for a couple of days: more banter, less exertion!

We took in El Bolson, around 150km south of Bariloche, and spent the afternoon being typical tourists around the artesan markets for the day rather than flogging ourselves in the hills. Well, ok, we did make it up a short walk to visit the site of an old forest fire where artists from around the world come to carve the dead trees into all manner of forms. Well worth the trip.

The next day Dave and Augustine decided to hold onto their rental car and we took in a fair portion of the “Seven Lakes” circuit. We managed around five of the seven, but given my inclintion for peering at rocks for hours on end through a viewfinder, and the fact that Augustine (being a photography teacher back in Oz) was similarly motivated, we did really quite well. Dave is clearly possessed with the patience of a saint….

The scenery was stunning, and constantly changing. It was quite astonishing just how much the landscape changed in the course of the day – you could have been forgiven for thinking that you were a world away from where you had sat for lunch just a half an hour previously….

And it was nice to be out with another photographer again. I really enjoy working on my own; landscape photography is a solitary pursuit for the most part. But every now and again, it’s good to get out in the hills with another photographer, and after two and a half months of solo trekking and shooting it was great to have a day out with someone else that shared a common agenda: going back to town with a good shot in the bag.

Ironically, after battling with the wind and rain for the best part of a month, the empty blue skies and the harsh, hard light made it hard to bring the best out of the landscape. I think it would take months of exploring and waiting for the right light to do the area that we covered in that one day any real justice, but we had a throughly enjoyable day out and if Dave and Augustine happen to read this, thanks again!

Dave in a Cave!

I have now returned to Osorno in Chile to attempt the walk around the Banos De Caulle, which I abandoned a week and a half ago due to the horseflies. I’ve been reliably informed that they should have been gone by the end of Jan, so with any luck they won’t be as bad now. That said, I’ve also been reliably informed that they’ll still be out in force. There was a fair few of them at the border crossing from Argentina this afternoon, so I’m not holding out too much hope but I’ll give it a go anyway, as I really want to see this place. I’ve suddenly realised that I’ve only got a few weeks left in Patagonia and there’s still a huge list of things to do, places to see and pictures to take. If this walk doesn’t come off this time around, I’m not wasting any more time on it, I’ll just move onto the next think on the wish-list.

Don’t sweat the small stuff!

Not quite the Nahuel Huapi Traverse

I should have known that it wasn’t going to be an easy ride when the bus to the start of the trek didn’t stop to pick me up: the world was trying to tell me something. If that wasn’t hint enough that I should stay in town, the fact that the cable car wasn’t running should have been.

To be fair, the first day’s walking was very pleasant. A nice traverse along a rocky, windy ridge. Then I dropped down into a beautiful valley below Cerro Catedral to camp for the night. It rained most of the night, and I staying in the tent until late morning in the hope that it’d stop. In the end I got tired of waiting and wrestling with my broken stove (I’d carried my stove on the Helio Sur trek as a back up in case the one provided by El Chalten Mountain Guides broke. It did on the second day, and we used mine – I forgot to swap them back after the trek). I decided that the weather in Patagonia had been consistently inconsistent, and it was bound to stop raining soon and I should start walking.

Apparently I was wrong: the weather here can stay the same for a whole day.

The paths became stream, the streams became torrents. The rivers… well I’d tell you about some of the crossings, but my mum reads this. After a little more than 6 hours walking and scrambling over two passes in the rain I arrived at Refugio San Martin and decided that I didn’t really want to camp. Everything I had was saturated – even the gear that hadn’t left my bag all day. I was soaked to the skin despite being gore’d head to toe and I had to borrow some trousers from the lost and found box….

The next morning however, was utterly stunning! Not exactly clear blue skies, but patchy blue and all the prettier for it. The wind was still fierce, blowing my tripod over down by the lake. That combined with a fresh dump of snow meant that it would have been reckless to try the next stage of the trek, which was a long, exposed ridge. I decided to bail and return to Bariloche, tail between my legs, and dry myself out.

It’s a shame really, but that’s just the way it goes I guess. At least when I go out again I’ll have dry kit and (hopefully) a stove that works. There’s al dente and there’s crunchy….