5.12 kilograms of cheese

Written November 19, 2015

By Emma Velis (Carleton College)

If you will forgive me the irony of starting with an ending, I would like to begin with a sunset. The afternoon of November 4th, we made ourselves at home in tents nestled into the foot of the mountains lining the fjord into which Glacier Jorge Montt is every year more rapidly melting. That evening, we watched the sun slowly drop behind the glacier, casting a cool glow across the fjord. This was, and remains, the only sunset I’ve ever seen to truly rival those back home over Lake Michigan.

This is no small thing; ask any of my Round River cohorts how I feel about Lake Michigan and they will tell you of my, “passionate spiritual connection,” to that fantastic inland lake (direct quote from Matt McIntosh). In fact, my love for Lake Michigan has become something of a joke to our group. However, all of this is beside the point. What I mean to tell you is that this was, in no exaggeration, the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. That night, I fell asleep with the sound of waterfalls on one side of my tent, and the subtle but persistent thunder of ice-burgs calving to the other side.

Icebergs finally feel a reprieve from the oppressive sun as it beautifully hides behind the Earth for the night. Photo by Adam Spencer

The next morning we began our trek up the mountain, planning to top the pass to the East and make our way down into the Borquez Valley on the other side. Our CONAF guardaparques (park ranger) guides Orlando and Felidor led the way. As we went, slowly climbing with packs on, we collected data for Round River’s research projects in the fjords. This included keeping lists of all plants and birds seen as well as tracking the distributions of huemul deer (Hippocamelus bisilcus) and different plant species throughout the hike.

A rumble in the fjord below alerted us to the sight of an iceburg turning over as it calved. El tempano està derretiendose, we practiced Spanish as we hiked. By late afternoon, we had yet to reach the pass and were getting anxious to be on the other side of the mountain. We came across the research camp of Instituto del Campo de Hielo Sur, the residents of which welcomed us in with orange juice. As the students sat around marveling at the liquid sugar that the kind Chilean scientists had bestowed upon us, the kind Chilean scientists set to work pulling out maps for our instructors, wearing serious faces and speaking words of caution. I caught enough Spanish to understand that they were pretty certain we were about to kill ourselves. Something about deep snow, you’d need skis to do it. Eventually, we set out on our way so that we could make it over the pass by nightfall. I’ve since been told that they had misunderstood our plans, thinking that we were attempting to walk over the ice field, and recommended that we take the pass we’d been planning to take the entire time.

We climbed on and topped the pass, a moment that I will always remember as, “that time I stood on top of the world,” for the magnificent view of the fjords on either side. Once over, we began to descend through a maze of melting ice sheets and near-freezing streams. We then reached what I feel only slightly unreasonable calling a cliff. “Volamos,” Orlando said with a grin, we fly. He explained the three problems with mountains: you have to go up them, you have to cross them, and you have to go down them. Now we had to make it down. We began to pick our way around the more cliff-ish parts of the rocky mountainside.

Now feels like a good time to remind you that we were backpacking, each of us with very full, first-day packs. It also feels like a good time to mention that a large portion of my group gear was a 5.12 kg block of cheese. Despite efforts to reduce the technical difficulty of the route, we inevitably found ourselves doing things I can only describe as rock climbing. A word to future Round River students and anyone else interested in outdoor research: the most useful class I have ever taken for field work was my intro to rock climbing class.

As I moved down the mountain, I perfected something that (RRCS Instructor) Eli calls the “veggie rappel”, choosing strong plants to hold so that I wouldn’t slide too far when my footing unavoidably broke. I even moved on the more advanced, “spin move,” a variation of the veggie rappel in which you start with your back to the mountain, then flip around as you descend holding onto some poor unsuspecting plant so that you end facing the mountain with your hands still grasping the plant above your head. While truly a very fun adventure, parts of this descent moved into “type two fun” (if you’re unfamiliar with the fun rating system, please see the guide at the bottom of this post).

At last, we made it to a flat bog, some of us grinning about the down-climb more than others. Here, we made camp and ended our day with dinner, a favorite part of every Round River day. After hot chocolate with the crew, I tucked my cheese in for the night and settled into my tent to read Sand County Almanac.

The author with her cheese

Type One Fun: It’s fun in the moment and it’s fun to talk about later.

Type Two Fun: It’s not really fun in the moment, but once you’re sitting around back home drinking hot chocolate, you’re stoked you did it and it becomes a fun memory. It’s fun to talk about.

Type Three: It’s not fun in the moment and it’s not fun to talk about later. No amount of hot chocolate will make talking about this fun.

Top photo: The top of the world. RRCS Instructor Shalynn Pack celebrates reaching the pass over Fjord Jorge Montt. Photo by Adam Spencer.