By Becca Holdhusen, Middlebury College (Team Guanaco)
We faced the morning of November 9th with silence, hugs, and tears as we all absorbed the weight of the election and embraced the end of the chaos of the season. Team Huemul left the quincho earlier than us, heading out for their round of homestays. Meanwhile, our group finished packing and loaded up two trucks with our gear for the next two and a half weeks we’d be spending in Bernardo O’Higgins National Park at the CONAF refugio by Glacier Bernardo. Our main goal for the trip was to collect data about Huemul in the area around Fiordo Bernardo and census the population of cría, the term for Huemul young, which were being born around the time we were in the fjords.
I left the quincho in a car driven by Kyla, with Julia, Charlie, Alex, and Will. Ten minutes into our drive, in the middle of Charlie reading us Trump’s victory speech from the night before, the car (likely in protest to the words of America’s president elect) overheated, spewing radiator fluid across the windshield. We turned around, limping back to the quincho with a well-timed drive-by from Mateo. After convincing ourselves the Chevy Luv was ready for a turn around, we headed back out, only to have the car overheat in the same location after the car remembered what America’s populous had done. Mateo returned as our savior, offering a less politically outraged Chevy to deliver us safely to Tortel, where we met the other half of our group and spent the night before embarking on a boat to Fiordo Bernardo. Our car was greeted with cheers while we recounted our epic journey to Tortel, and the other car informed us they had also had an eventful drive: listening to a Dixie Chicks album three times on repeat.
The CONAF guardaparques who would be spending time with us in Bernardo met us where we were camping with a boat to load our gear for the trip. Lucho, a stout man who is perpetually smiling, is the captain of the boat, named the Agüilaf. His brother, Felidor, and Felidor’s son, Fabio, were aboard as well. We had previously spent time with Felidor on our first field campaign to Tamango National Reserve. He is arguably the best Huemul tech Chile has to offer, a wonderful guitarist, and is notorious for yelling “VAMOS BABIES” at us whenever we stop to take a break while backpacking. Fabio, at 19, shares Felidor and Lucho’s smile and singing voice and greeted us all warmly, remembering all of our names after only hearing them once.
After throwing gear bins on the boat, we turned to see a beautiful rainbow in front of the mountains that bordered the stunningly blue Baker River. We stood in awe, as the Agüilaf bobbed in front of the sun, reminding us gently that there is still beauty in the world.
The rainbow over the Baker River from our campsite near Tortel. Photo by Becca Holdhusen
Alarms went off at 4:45 am for half of our group as we awoke in the dark and packed up our backpacks to head into Tortel and board the Aguilaf for an early morning departure. We walked the Ciprés boardwalks of Tortel down to the boat ramp, clambering aboard the Agüilaf as the day grew light. The boat ride took us south through the Messier channel with views out towards the Pacific, and then to the rocky shores in front of the CONAF refugio. The boat ride was spectacular, with steep granite walls plunging into the glacial blue fjords. We watched new species of waterfowls dip and fly over the smooth water while Lucho, Felidor, and Fabio called and pointed out dolphins and sea lions along the way. We set up tents and admired the new flora of the area, everything saturated in water and green. The refugio felt spacious with just six of us in the small, two-story cabin. We played guitar and attempted to sing while we waited for the rest of the group to join us the next day.
The following morning, November 11th, we awoke to rain, a typical occurrence in the fjords where there is an average annual rainfall of 3.5 m a year. Our half of the group explored the area around the refugio during the morning. We walked through dense vegetation, learning new bog plants and appreciating that a trail was cut through the hummocks of moss and thick calafate and chaura, both spiky and unfriendly plants. Arriving at a rocky beach, we admired the spectacular Glacier Bernardo, and Kat even took a plunge into the frigid water.
The other half of our group came on the Agüilaf later that day, making the refugio feel slightly less spacious but twice as entertaining. The next couple days were comprised of a significant amount of rain, limiting our time outside to trips around the refugio. One of our day trips took us to a nearby cave where we stumbled across a female Huemul and her two-day-old cría hidden in mosses at the base of a coigüe tree. The defenseless cría are easily preyed upon by culpeo foxes, which makes our census of cría important in order for the guardaparques to understand the recruitment of cría into the Huemul population from year to year. The survival of cría is variable; two years ago fifteen cría survived, while last year only one did. To understand the predation pressure of culpeo foxes on cría, we also collected culpeo scat that we encountered on our surveys and are now dissecting the scat to identify the prey species in the samples.
One of the days at the refugio, I was able to join Eli and Felidor on a boat ride to the nearby pampa, a flat area of glacial outwash across the fjord channel that was kept in a state of arrested succession due to occasional flooding from released glacial dams. This area is home to the largest known population of Huemul in Bernardo. In the short time we were surveying the area we saw 17 deer, two of them cría, and at least seven pregnant females. As the weather forecast began to promise clearer skies, we prepped for our big backpacking trip, which took us into the field for six days.
Two Huemul, a macho and a pregnant hembra, on the Pampa. Photo by Becca Holdhusen
On the morning of November 14th, we left for our backpacking trip with the goal of surveying more remote valleys near Fjordo Bernardo for Huemul. Our first day of the trip took us along the shore of Fjordo Bernardo, where we started off our research of Huemul cría with a melancholoy note after finding a dead cría washed ashore near an iceberg. After hypothesizing about the fawn’s death, the guardaparques suggested that the cría had likely been on the opposite shore of the fjord where its mother had left it, and as the tide rose and the mother was not near to move the cría, it was swept into the channel and drowned.
Cría dead on the shore. Photo by Elizabeth Brunner
We continued onward up a steep hillside, where we scrambled through prickly chaura and over wet boulders, before we crested the pass we were aiming for and began downward into “the labyrinth,” recently drained glacial lake bed. Exhausted, we set up a tarp to cook under, ate mac and cheese (a field favorite) and fell asleep before it got dark.
The next day, we hiked up over more slippery rocks, and then down them, to arrive in Valle los Toros where we would spend the next two days continuing surveys for Huemul. The valley was named for the time when 70 head of cattle had lived in the area, although only one feral cow still roamed the hillsides. We ate lunch overlooking Glacier Tempano, always in awe of the magnificence of the ice tongues extending from the Southern Ice Field. After retreating to our tents shortly after dinner, my plans for an early bedtime where interrupted by an alarm sent by Charlie that the three gauchos had effectively cornered the lone feral cow, and had plans to kill it, which would result in us carrying out 200 pounds of beef. After what is assumed to be an exciting hunt (we occasionally heard yells and a lone gunshot from the nearby forest) the gauchos returned empty handed, but scheming on a more strategic hunt for the next day.
We went on a day hike the following day to scope out the habitat suitability of an adjacent valley for Huemul. We hiked along the lakeshore and over hills covered in bogs, appreciating the lack of heavy packs and the new plant species, including ciprés, the study organism of one of our fearless leaders, Kyla. When we reached the top of a pass overlooking the next valley, we ate lunch and recorded notes about the area before turning back to camp for the night. Long days of hiking give us extended periods of time to think about life and solve the world’s problems, so I asked different members in our group what they think about while hiking, which I have compiled in a list below:
Team Guanaco’s thoughts while hiking:
- Singing one song over and over in head
- “Yikes, I’m about to fall over.”
- Previous backpacking trips and places in the world visited
- All the good food that will be eaten at the end of the trip
- Writing plots to bad novels
- “What are my parents doing right now?”
- Obama
- “Plant, plant, plant, BIRD, plant, water, mountain, BIRD”
After another night of feral cow hunting, the gauchos were once again evaded by the elusive cow and returned with only their ropes and knives. Although we failed to eradicate the last of an invasive species from the area, we also didn’t have to hike out a couple hundred pounds of meat. You win some, you lose some.
The next day took us through deep bogs (again) and to the refugio at Fjordo Tempano in the Magallanes region of Chile. Our destination for the night was the refugio overlooking Glacier Tempano. The refugio was quite spectacular, complete with fake flowers in the windows, but being unable to enter we instead turned our eyes to the equally (ok, maybe a little more) spectacular Glacier Tempano across the fjord. We watched the glacier calve into the water, surveyed it through binoculars, and ate dinner while the sun dappled the ice through the clouds.
Glacier Tempano from our campsite on the fourth night of our trip. Photo by Becca Holdhusen
When we woke up on the 18th, none of us wanted to leave. It was hard to say goodbye to the view of the glacier, but we left the refugio in the sun and headed back towards the labyrinth where we stayed the first night of the trip. We stopped shortly at the overlook where we had eaten lunch on the second day of our trip, but this stop included an entertaining game invented by the gauchos (for boys only) that involved flinging knives in the air and attempting to stick them into to the ground impressively close to each others’ feet. Felidor and Lucho emerged as the reigning champions, although the boys of the group gave it a good shot, and I like to think the girls would have given the gauchos a run for their money.
Continuing onward, we clambered over the rock feature we had previously descended and stumbled down the other side, during which we appreciated the hot sun a little less. We camped overlooking glaciers Bernardo and Tempano, again amazed by the vastness of the ice field and the reality of climate change. The night consisted of playing dominos, laughing, and drinking tea while the sun set over the glaciers. Yet again, we had found a place we didn’t want to leave (a reoccurring theme of the semester, it seems.)
Dominos in the golden hour. Photo by Becca Holdhusen
Dusk at Glacier Tempano. Photo by Becca Holdhusen
Our last day of the trip was a sunny one, and rather than follow the path back over the pass that we took the first day, we headed down the other side of the hill and traversed across in order to get a better view of Glacier Bernardo. The views did not disappoint. We stopped to revel at the magnificence of the glacier multiple times, interspersed with bushwhacking through shrubs on steep slopes.
Alana hiking towards Glacier Bernardo on our way back to the refugio. Photo by Becca Holdhusen
By the time we reached the beach below the pass, we were sunburned and thankful to empty our packs into the boat to relieve our backs for the last stretch of our hike. Hot, tired, and happy we found various sources of water surrounding the refugio (including a nearby waterfall and a leaking water pipe) to cool ourselves off in, and spent the rest of the day enjoying the unusually sunny weather and feeling almost clean.
Waiting to load our packs onto the CONAF boat before hiking back to the refugio at the end of our backpacking trip. Photo by Becca Holdhusen