After an overnight stop in El Calafate (back in Argentina!) - wherefrom one visits the Perito Moreno glacier (if you have not been to Antarctica...) - we arrived in El Chaltén, the capital of trekking in Argentinian Patagonia. El Chaltén offers a variety of hikes of different lengths and difficulties. As the weather promised to be extraordinarily good for four days, we directly opted for the Huemul Circuit. The shorter and easier treks we saved for later. The Huemul CircuitThis 4 days hike (ca. 70 km) leads through an extremely diverse landscape, passing along pastures with blossoming dandelions, the mountain ranges of Fitz Roy, Poincenot and Cerro Torre in the background, thick forest, rough rocks and gravel moraines, finally overlooking the immense Southern Ice Sheet and Viedma glacier and lake with floating icebergs. The trek is technically demanding and we had to rent harnesses to traverse the Rio Tunel twice on a Tirolesa zip line, but otherwise we were good to go after we had registered at the Ranger station where our competencies and gear were checked. The required technical skills and necessity to carry all gear and food for four days makes this trek still to be completed by only a few hikers. Having the chance to experience this breathtaking Patagonian landscape nearly for us alone was a real treat. The first day we started in El Chaltén shortly before midday and reached the first campsite, Camp Toro, in the afternoon. We walked through springy forests and crossed pastures while looking down on Lake Viedma scintillating like an emerald. Finally we followed the milky Rio Tunel upstream. Early the second day, as we had circum-walked the Laguna Toro, we had to cross Rio Tunel. You could basically ford the river in a few places; as we anyway had to rent the harnesses we naturally opted for the fun part: at the Tyrolian-zipline we traversed our backpacks and ourselves over the gurgling stream and afterwards stood grinning and boosted by the adrenaline in the warming morning sun. The trail continued over the glacier and moraine, steeply uphill along the gravel flank towards Paso del Viento (Windy Pass), which pays credits to its name! Once overcome, we had a spectacular view over the gigantic Southern Ice Field and Viedma glacier. We descended a few hundred meters to the second campsite, Refugio Paso del Viento. On the morning of the third day we walked over muddy and mossy grassland, adorned by blossoming mountain flowers and, occasionally, Calafate berries (the berries that guarantee your return to Patagonia if you eat them, according to the legend). It was a sunny day in the mountains and the sudden strong wind gusts that hit us, once we had started our climb towards Paso Huemul, could not have been foreseen. We grit our teeth and tried to overcome the pass as soon, steadily and safely as possible. A few times we had to get on our knees and hands and hold on to the ground in order not to be slammed towards the rocks or falling all over. Our hearts beating we had made it and were looking at the beautiful Laguna Viedma with the Viedma glacier calving icebergs into it. However, the descent proofed to be another challenge: the slope was extremely steep and of slippery sand and rubble. We held on to every possible root and branch; luckily the trail was in midst of a bonsai forest of stunted lenga patches. In the late afternoon we arrived at the third campsite at Bahia de los Hornos, the bay just next to the Bahia de Tempanos, where the icebergs were floating. Much to our concern the wind had not ceased and further continued to build up strength... We secured our tent with additional strings and prepared for a rough night. Wind gusts of wildly estimated 80 km/h maltreated our poorly aged MSR tent, but it withstood the torture. One of our neighbours, however, was not as lucky and his tent’s poles broke in the middle of the night. Early on day four we set off for the last leg, leading us back towards El Chaltén and hopefully into less hostile terrain. We spent the morning searching for the trail in the vast, thorny grassland… It seemed that the people providing the GPS track we used, were doing the same! Midday we finally could see the embarkation station, the official ending point of the Huemul Trek, and the delta of Rio Tunel, where the second Tyrolean-zipline was waiting for us as a final hurdle. This time, though, the zip line was very long, in bad shape and hanging low over the torrential river. As the 20 m rope (explicitly advised by the ranger station!) was too short, we were unable to pull our backpacks. Philipp thus decided to wear his big rucksack, which proofed to be the wrong decision. Once successfully traversed, he was unable to land and get grip under his feet as the backpack’s weight turned him over and he was hanging head down in the harness. Fabienne, on the other side of the river, could not do anything than hoping he could escape of this unfortunate and dangerous situation on his own. He had no other choice than trying to free him from the backpack and let it fall into the water, which he luckily did. In the end, we both had made it safely to the other side and were drying our sleeping bags, mattresses and clothes in the afternoon sun… Why not making the best out of this situation and meanwhile take a coffee break to process this shaking experience? Afterwards we had enough energy to finish the remaining three-hours walk back to the ranger station in El Chaltén. Exhausted but happy we had made it and still think it was a fantastic trek!
1 Comment
Ursi Stössel
12/12/2016 09:28:14
Hallo!
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