El Chalten is a tough place to leave. It is an easy to settle into, close knit, climber community, in a spectacular mountain scene; and it is also surrounded by ice sheet to the west and desert to the east. There is always a day bus to a flight out of Calafate, or one of the monotonous long distance sorts that take you through the night up barren Ruta 40, the highway travelers pride themselves in completing for the sake of completing and little other sightseeing reason. I chose to let the views guide me. Continue reading Candelaria Mancilla, Raw Patagonia
Yearly Archives: 2012
Sailing preparation
Tortel
The guidebook says “Coleta Tortel is one of those places that simply has to be seen to be believed”. And, it certainly is surreal. The town didn’t have a road to it until 2003 and is built on the slopes of a steep fjord. There are no roads within town, only cedar walkways, miles of them. See the Photo Archive.
Carmela Mancilla
These three days are worthy of a full blog post (coming soon): trekking out to Glaciar O’Higgins, staying on a ranch where I was told only twenty a year pass through, in a natural landscape that was right up there with any I’ve seen. Inspiring to experience the traditional subsistence ranching the father and son carry on. The true Patagonia.
Entering Chile
Villa O’higgins
Huntington Days
Alpine climbing Huntington Ravine, Mount Washington, NH. The footage is actually from three different days in Jan-Feb 2012. The climbs include Pinnacle Gully, Damnation Gully and the top-out is from South Gully. Winds on Pinnacle and Damnation were high those two subsequent days in February, upwards of 90 MPH, but conditions throughout most of the climbs were picture perfect, calm and sunny!