El Chalten and Fitz Roy

I have less than two weeks left in South America. In a similar fashion to the start of my trip where I posted up for a few weeks in the beautiful mountain town of Huaraz, Peru, I am bookending my time with a few weeks in the beautiful mountain town of El Chalten, Argentina.

El Chalten has some similarities with Huaraz - it is a tiny town that is a hub for hiking, rock climbing and mountaineering. Everyone who drives down the one road into town is here to do one (or all) of those things. The town sits within a glacial valley. It is boxed in with steep rock walls on either side that make for good climbing. The salient point from anywhere in the valley is the Fitz Roy massif, a towering cluster of rock, with peaks reaching 3,500m into the sky (El Chalten lies at about 200m above sea level, so these peaks look huge). The mountain range is extremely striking. It feels like it is an instinct of anyone hiking to want to get a close to the base of the mountains as possible. Climbers and mountaineers instincts go a step further, where they want to climb as high up the peaks as possible. 

Ending my trip in El Chalten, with Fitz Roy as the backdrop feels like a fitting way to close out my time in South America. Hiking and adventures have a big part of my time over here, and El Chalten offers plenty of scope for more of the same. Starting from town there are probably a dozen long day hikes you can do (to the base of Fitz Roy, to glaciers near the range, to peaks adjacent to the range for a panoramic view, through neighbouring valleys to see the range from different angles etc. etc.) which can be chopped together into overnight and multi-day trips. ​

There is something about the range that seems to have collectively captured everyone’s imagination. I first became familiar with this part of the world about 10 years ago via a rock climbing movie that follows 2 climbers ( Alex Honnold and Tommy Calwell - ever heard of them?) as they worked across the entire Fitz Roy range, summiting each of the 7 peaks in one single traverse. The pair were the first to ever complete a full traverse of the range. You can see the documentary for free here, it’s an awesome watch that captures the magic of El Chalten and the Fitz Roy range really well. After seeing the movie all those years ago I filed away in my head that El Chalten was a place I had to visit when I made it to Patagonia. 

Elsewhere in culture, the Fitz Roy mountain range are the silhouetted mountains that comprise the logo of the clothing company Patagonia. In 1965, the eventual founder and at the time, avid rock climber, Yvon Chouinard was on a climbing trip with some friends in Patagonia. His group climbed to the summit of Fitz Roy, making them the third climbing group ever to reach the top (another member of this group was Doug Tompkins, founder of The North Face - couple of outdoor gear heavies on the trip).

El Chalten is right in the heart of Patagonia. The weather here is wild. Think of the way you can get four seasons in one day in Tasmania or South Island New Zealand, and take it up to another level. Clouds sit at all different heights in the sky and are pushed around by the strong winds. Multiple days can go by where clouds obscure some, or all of the view of Fitz Roy. Seeking out good weather windows is everything for any hiking or climbing missions. Weather forecasting is a fickle exercise in Patagonia, but the collective knowledge agrees that the website WindGuru is the best hope at predicting what the coming days may have in store. WindGuru has quickly become one of my favourite sites, I like how much data you can read off of it quite quickly. Any BOM radar enthusiasts would enjoy having a look. 

Huemul Circuit

The Huemul Circuit. It is a 4-day, 65km hiking loop to the south of the town that is packed full of technical walking. At the end of my first week in El Chalten, WindGuru was showing a very clear four day weather window - no clouds, very little wind. The park rangers said this was the clearest window they’d seen in months. I got my gear sorted, food packed and set out early the next day to start the Huemul Circuit.

The walk did not disappoint. A summary of the four days: 

Day 1, 16km - Lots of spring wildflowers to walk amongst, and great views of the Fitz Roy massif. The walk passed over some hills before dropping down into a valley which you followed and camped at the end of. There were a couple of river crossings to navigate with knee-high water, and a glacial lake to swim in once I arrived at camp. The lake was literally painfully cold - another walker who had a temperature reader on their watch clocked it at 3 degrees celsius. 

Day 2, 12km - The most technical day, after the first couple of kilometers I reached a river that needed to be crossed on a wire with a harness and pulley. You pull yourself and across the water that is rapidly flowing about 10m below. After this crossing the path goes up where you zig-zag between walking on and alongside Túnel Glacier. This section didn’t have a clearly marked path, and had lots of loose moraine that was quite difficult to walk across. Lots of checking with AllTrails to stay on the approximate path.

After this, there is a steep (600m elevation gain in 2.5km) section of uphill walking where you reach the Mirador Paso del Viento. Coming over the top of this pass, the view is dominated by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. The ice field is kilometres wide, filling the entire width of the valley, and runs all the way up and down the valley as far as you can look, spilling over the horizons in both directions. It’s a huge amount of ice to look at, it is truly one of the most unique and amazing things I have ever seen. The rest of the day is spent walking alongside the ice field, where the night 2 camp is in a little protected valley next to a lake. 

Day 3, 14km - The first 12km of day 3 is more walking adjacent to the ice field, amazing, unfathomly large in size, before a small incline up to another high pass. After this pass is a very steep, difficult descent (700m elevation loss in 1km) on very soft silty track. The reward for finishing this descent is the night 3 camp. Tucked in to a little bay of Lago Viedma, and next to the ice field, large chunks of ice break off and become icebergs floating in the lake. It was a surreal experience to swim next to these ice bergs. The walker with the temperature watch clocked this lake at a much warmer 9 degrees celsius. 

Day 4, 26km - It was an early wake up to see the sun rise over the lake. The early light hit the mountains next to the lake, making them glow a bright red. The orange of the sun hitting the white ice bergs in the water was a very pretty way to start the day. The final day is a long walk back to El Chalten, alongside the lake and across big fields. There were great views of where the ice field meets Lago Viedma and the surrounding mountain peaks. 16km into the walk was another wire/harness river crossing. The last couple of hours of walking saw the perfect weather window coming to a close as the wind picked up and cloud started to cover more and more blue in the sky. 

The O Trek Machine

A couple of weeks before this hike, I walked the O Trek in Torres Del Paine National Park, in Chilean section of Patagonia. Some people have described this National Park of the Disneyland of hiking, which I think is an apt comparison. This hike, and its shorter variant, the W Trek are one of the most famous hikes in the world, and for good reason. the O Trek had some great walking, with technical sections and beautiful views. However, I found the amenities provided at each of the campsites each night (which you are required to camp at) jarring, and feel they detracted from the overall experience. Along with the basic stuff like flushable toilets, hot showers, dining rooms and washing up sinks, the camps had kiosks where you could top up on your snacks, buy cold beers and hot coffees. Most of the camps had fully enclosed, heated dining rooms serving 3-course meals, pouring draught beer and shaking up made to order cocktails. These areas would always be blasting music and would often have TVs showing live sport. For me, it was a bit much. 

In general, I think the more people who get out into nature, the better. If having a few creature comforts are what you need to do a big long hike, then fair enough. Not showering, eating dehydrated food and setting and packing up camp each night for a week are not for everyone. But I wish that the people who that life is for, could still enjoy it without so much normal life stuff going on at camp each night. It’d be great if free camping was allowed in the National Park, or some super simple no-frills camping areas were set up a couple kilometers from the small glamping villages I was forced to stay at each night. 

The Huemul was a great walk, one of the best hikes I have done this year. I loved how wild it was. You packed all your own food in and out, to get clean you had to swim in freezing water, there was no cocktail bars to be seen (which made the first meal back in El Chalten after the hike, that much more satisfying!) The tourism machine hasn’t quite got its hands wrapped around it yet. Part of me feels like it is only a matter of time before it does, though. Those wire crossings will be replaced with bridges, serviced huts will be built at each of the campsites and before you know it the O Trek 2.0 will be in operation.

The Blog

I appreciate its been a minute between posts on this blog. I really wanted to keep the momentum from earlier in the trip going, but things got busy and it got hard to find time to write. It’s only now that I have slowed down for a little while here at the end of my trip in El Chalten that I have had a spark of motivation to get a post out. 

Once I get home I would like to try and make a post for each of the hiking and cycling adventures I have been on, as there’s been a lot of them and they’ve all been lots of fun, lots to write about. Watch this space!