Work or Play?

Friday, January 23rd, 2009.

This is my office.

The big update in my life is that I am now employed. My employer is Diversidad, an active tourism agency. Besides guiding for rock climbing and trekking, I am a porter for one of the refugios. That means that I carry around 20 kilos (SEE 45 pounds) of groceries in my pack up to the refugio.

From Colonia Suiza, Refugio Italia and Laguna Negra are a 14k uphill trek. I expected it to take me 6 hours with the 20 or 30 kilos that I shoved into my Exposure 50 Osprey pack and into the backpack that I attached thereto. Nothing less than delight jumped into my eyes when my clock read that I had arrived to the Refugio vista just short of 3 hours!

I was met inside of Refugio Italia by the workers there (SEE Natalia, Santiago, y Guadalupe). These awesome people gave me juice, a seat, and a nice little bowl of spicy veggies with quinoa to complement the 2-day-old bife de chorizo with sliced tomato that I had lugged up along with the 2 24-packs of soda, cans of fruits, and tubes of cookies that weren't for my lunch! Also, Natalia gave me contact names for some other refugios so that I could complement my current sporadic job with porting for other beautifully located refugios!

This trip I was just cruising to get a fastest-time gauge for future trips up to the refugio for work. I also left late (SEE 12:30) and was afraid I'd have to take out the headlamp for the return trip, missing dinner, etc. Also, Ben and Lindsey, two awesome, groovey climbers from Seattle are visiting us and they were set to return from their 4 days at Frey this very night! So rush I did. I descended in a mere 1 hour and 40 minutes, jogging almost all of it, light as a feather with only the empty packs.

More to come!

3 Day Trek, 1 Day

My plan was to do a 4 or 5 day trek in 1 day. Instead, due to icy conditions on the steepest part, I accomplished instead a 3 or 4 day trek in 1 day. I'm still happy and have put the former plan on a to-do list along with the portion of it I didn't manage to see. As a note to all concerned readers, I brought lots of food and 7L of water to complement the streams and lakes, and a rain jacket, to cover my bases. I also planned to turn around and retrace my steps at 2pm if I did not make it to the halfway point. Unfortunately, as mentioned, forces other than not being on time (SEE ice) blocked my mission.

7:20am Leave the house. Say goodbye to Alisa who will wait for Bus 50 into town. Walk to the end of Avenida de los Pioneros to wait for the Catedral Bus to pick me up.
8:20am Keep waiting.
8:50am It's too late to start walking now.
9:00am Catedral Bus picks me up.
9:10am Start hiking from Cerro Catedral, South America's famous ski resort, to Refugio Frey.
10:01am Reach the 4K marker on the trail and take a picture so looking back on the pictures and the timestamps I will know what time I hit this marker and the shaded Van Titter stream valley.
11:00am Frey! Laguna Tonchek! I'm here! Sit down and eat rapidly, saving most of the potatoes and beaf for later. Meet up with Brazilian friends made while slacklining in the park the previous day. Check the clock. I made it up in less than 2 hours (SEE 1h50), giving me some slack time in order to trek all of the refugios (four) in one day. If only I had enough time to stop and climb with these climbers:

11:52am Lagoon Schmoll! Just above Frey and its granite spires sits a beautiful high-mountain reflective lagoon, shown here (First from below, then from above).

12:33pm Reach the Catedral Mountain Ridge, where the trail splits between a route back to Cerro Catedral and Laguna (and Refugio) Jakob.

1:15pm Make it down the steep scree path that I think of as a Chachani landslide and come to the valley and a shaded path in the woods.
2:03pm I hope you enjoyed the valley because next up are the rock hills and rock lands!2:16pm Summiting of the rocklands is yet another vista! One more dip from a ridgeline into the valley will see me at the well-located Refugio Jakob.

3:08pm I reach Lago Jakob. I could stay here for longer if I weren't in such a rush. I speak for a few minutes to Pablo who works at the Refugio. He tells me it is not possible to continue on to Refugio Italia and then to Refugio López because of 1) my sandals are not sufficient for a very very steep section that may or may not be covered in ice at the moment and 2) I only have one day, which is now half of a day. So it is that I get directions from him to return a direct route back to Bariloche, or, Refugio San Martín where I will find a ride back to town.

3:26pm I start trekking the 18km back to town. It's about the same distance as my trip through the remaining two refugios would have been, except is mostly flat, easy to navigate terrain through the Casa de Piedra stream valley. I am informed that I can do it in 3 hours if I'm not tired. Well, I'm exhausted. But if it's easy hiking I should be all set. If today has shown me anything, it's that I can push myself. There are some pretty stream-crossings going back to Bariloche this way.4:47pm I don't know what kilometer out of the 18 I'm on. I wish there were markers. The paths are mostly shaded, which is a huge plus for a long trekking day like this. Tried to call Alisa at work to inform her of my likely return time schedule only to have the "Sin Red" error meaning that there is no connection! Of course there is no connection! Where am I?!

6:05pm I arrive at the end. That means I did the last 18k in roughly 2.5 hours. And I have many excuses to not have done it that fast! Here I go, ego tripping already! This sign is such good news to me, I take a picture of it. The horses and car-road that I see here are signs of civilization, so I start on my way, looking for a bus or hitchhike!
6:26pm I catch a ride back to my house with three other very serious trekkers from Bariloche and plop myself down on our futon while Alisa is wonderful and makes me a wonderful stew and rice dinner. We eat to the soundtrack of me regurgitating my day of meeting Australians, Americans, Argentinians, ABrazilians, and so on and the sites and trails I found! I haven't talked much all day due to the different trekking speeds of myself and all those I met briefly on the trails, so I'm ready to tell all!

Hitlist

While it’s Top 10 for a lot of newspapers, I’m ready to give you The Hitlist. This The Hitlist has been prepared to give you the gear reviews for the hits and the misses, for my advice and the downright “Don’t take my word for it; you’ll have to try it yourself!”s. Let’s be honest: don’t you watch those movies with bad reviews if you had your mind set to it anyway? I can tell you which of these poor performing beasts to chase down for yourself!

5.10 Daescent Shoes. Here’s what I did with these approach shoes that can also be handy for casual bouldering. I took care of them. I bouldered V5 in them in the gym. Then I tore across the US, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina with them, hiking, running, sandboarding, sliding, slogging, you name it. All of that, in all sorts of conditions that aren’t in the longevity contract for these shoes (SEE: dirt, snow, rain, combinations thereof). And so I find myself with a less-than-6-month-old pair of shoes, already flapping in the wind. The sides have blown out wings and my toes seem to be pushing to get fins installed. Although I can still wear these shoes as long as I don’t mind getting loose gravel or sand under my feet and thus the sensation that I’m wearing sandals with socks on…I feel a little silly hanging on to this pair of shoes.

BOTTOM LINE: This is a pair of shoes that you might want to give a ride, yourself. However, for my money I’d just as soon buy a pair of Asics Tiger shoes and boulder or do whatever with those, like I did back in the day! They lasted 9-12 months of my beatings.

Osprey Porter Pack. I have taken this pack everywhere with me. It’s been slashed and treated. It kicks butt. If I could change anything about this pack, though, it would be to simplify and toughen its design even more, since that’s what it’s been good for at least for my purposes. I am now finally using it as a climbing bag and rope feeding back and its as if I didn’t just trudge it through 5 countries! Unless you already have whatever you need, I’d suggest this duffle backpack bag for just about any sort of traveling or hauling.

BOTTOM LINE: I would like to work for Osprey’s design team because they are doing awesome work!

Sporknife: This plastic three-in-one utencil convention is cool. It’s a gadget. It’s plastic. It’s cheap. It’s good for easy eating. And it snaps when you push too hard because it’s plastic. So, use for cereal, not for steak.
BOTTOM LINE: In this age of compact convenience, it was bound to be made, and bound to be broken.

Cerro Ventana

Seeing as how I'm addicted to getting my climb on and Alisa has a day off, we plan for Cerro Ventana's sport climbing walls that just happen to overlook Cerro Otto, Cerro Catedral, and shimmering Lago Gutierrez. We don't pull too hard on the routes but just warm up to this summer climbing season and the windy conditions at La Ventana.
We also try out the new 9mm 70m dry rope that dad brought down. Lo and behold, it makes a tremendous difference! While unknotting it from the package is like wrestling a pile of snakes covered in Elmer's Wood Glue, it offers negligible weight and resistance while climbing and clipping, which has become habit and Pomp'N'Stance for my 10.2mm 60m Metolius rope. Oh well!

We'll be back to Ventana again for sure, especially since these gorgeously located pocket-ridden routes offer difficulty from 4's to 8a's (That's french for easy to hard).

In the meantime, we're busy thinking of our plans for the future (southern Patagonia trips, local climbing, Thailand, etc.) and friends and family back home, some of which are heading down for a visit soon!

WACHAMO!

Alisa´s Day Off

WARNING: Until we have a steadily working internet availability within the confines of our own house-apartment, blog posts will be infrequent to nonexisting and lacking with respect to vivid colors and any explanations worthy of satisfaction for a mere drugged poodle.

That said, here are some updates. My family came. We had a great time. The time was shorter than it should have been for my supreme, all-powerful liking calculator. Thanks to my wonderful parents, I now have a bigger smile, a futon to relax and welcome guests to enjoy, and an image in my mind of a family returning to the states of America with mates, yerba, and the garb of certain south Americans (SEE: sweaters, funky pants and funky jackets). Alisa and I went to see Red de Mentiras (Body of Lies) for 7 pesos each last night. Good flick. What else. Well, more to come! I´m plastering my resume everywhere in this town, some places more than once - haha! We have visitors aligned for January. I have a climbing guidebook with climbs that I hope to tick starting as early as today. Not to mention, I found a secret unclimbed location with a little climbing potential that I hope to devour within the next few weeks and months!

Lots of love from your Patagonian Bariloche!
Keep me posted and I will return the favor!

With dreams from Squamish and Seattle to the month of Maine,
-your Landescaper, n8