By Alex Wells, Middlebury College (Team Huemul)
Photos by Ben Comai, University of Vermont
It was late in the Patagonian evening when we made it back to our beachfront basecamp. After spending the previous four days backpacking a total of some 45 kilometers around the mountains and valleys of Lago Quiroz, we had returned to where we started: the shoreline of Bahía Esperanza and the military dome-tent that we’d set up there. Typically, when you get back from an arduous, multi-day trek, the first feeling is to go into relaxation mode – Netflix, comfort food, bed—but we’d returned from one wilderness into another, and things needed to get done, especially because we still had another, smaller backpacking trip before leaving the valley to return to Villa O’Higgins and Cochrane. But first and foremost, we needed dinner.
A group of us were preparing the feast in the open-air, grass-floored kitchen that we’d set up among the ñirre trees, when Mateo approached us, addressing the group with, “Do you guys want the good news or the bad news first?” He had just talked with the captain of the Chilean Army boat that we had taken from Villa O’Higgins, and because of the weather we wouldn’t be coming out in four days, but instead on the day after tomorrow. We let the news sink in that we’d have to leave this incredible place early.
But we still had one day remaining in this Patagonian Elysium and the good news was that we were going to spend it out on a day hike, exploring. The plan was to walk west from our camp, up the valley to the icy lake and glacier at the head of the valley. Even though we were still keeping an eye out for huemul deer, the idea was to have a more relaxed hike compared to what we’d been up to for the past few days. So we set out in the late morning, with our gaucho guide Misael leading us across several small rivers and dense forests to a lunch spot on the banks of the lake. The views (and food, with avocados and tomato) were magnificent. In the west, savage, ice-carved peaks towered over the wide tongue of the glacier spilled out onto the lake. Occasionally we’d hear the sound of a bit of the ice calving off and crashing into the lake.
Naomi Fien (Pitzer College) contemplates along the shores of the Oriental Glacier Lake.
On our way back to basecamp we ran into a huemul in the forest. Unfortunately, it was not as excited to see us as we were to see it and it immediately took off into the brush, disappearing out of our site. That was the only huemul we saw on the day hike, but ironically we soon found out that the group members who stayed back at the basecamp had seen a whole group of female huemules, with a newborn fawn. While Ben and Mateo went off to take a look for them, we got to work on the nights feast. Our last night of the expedition was spent eating an enormous pile of quesadillas, sopapillas, and guacamole, followed by a campfire and s’mores, a surprise treat to celebrate Cole’s birthday.
A pair of Huemul deer captured on one of our camera traps while we were backpacking towards Lago Quiroz.
The next morning we wasted no time in moving all of our gear out onto the edge of the beach, where we waited under the melancholy gray sky for the boat to arrive and carry us back to Villa O’Higgins. While we waited for the boat to arrive I went off for some alone time for some sort of farewell to the far removed place where we’d just spent the past week. I remember looking up at the clouds streaming by the crags at the head of the valley, feeling a mix of sadness that I would almost certainly never see those mountains again and contentedness to be standing there in the moment, surrounded by wind and trees and glaciers.
The boat ride back, in comparison to the rocky ride there, was truly placid, with only minimal crashing down upon the waves of Lago O’Higgins. In the early afternoon we were back at El Mosco, the lovely hostel in Villa O’Higgins where we’d stayed the two nights before we went to Bahía Esperanza. The day’s adventure however had not yet come to an end, as we soon learned that Juan Carlos, the cheerful guardaparque who had helped guide us on our trip, was holding a party at his house that night, in part to celebrate his birthday and in part to celebrate a successful trip with all the group (and in part to celebrate American Thanksgiving!).
Because we left early from the Bahía Esperanza, we ended up with more time than we had planned in the small town of Villa O’Higgins, which sometimes lent the four days we spent there a listless and surreal feeling; it was like an extended uncertain, waiting period, spent trapped in the awkward space between the Lago Quiroz, the objective of our expedition, and Cochrane, our home. But what I do remember from the 25th, listless though the day may have been, was the sunset, splitting the overcast sky between subtle, tranquil shades of warm orange and cool blue.
The Hostel “El Mosco,” with the Submarino Mountain behind.
The following day, was less filled with beauty and more filled with Grinnells. For those in the world who are not familiar with what that means, Grinnells are a big part of our curriculum down here. We’ll pick a day out in the field to take meticulous notice of the ecosystems and species around us, writing our observations down in a field journal and then turning those observations into a grand, organized write-up of the day, synthesizing what we saw into cohesive thoughts about why the ecosystem exists as it does. Grinnells are rather infamous among us students for the sheer amount of time that they require to write up, with a full day often being totally sunk into completing it. That day was the 26th.
Of course, El Mosco is a pretty interesting place to spend an entire day. Villa O’Higgins, sitting at the end of the Carretera Austral and amidst the beautiful mountains of Chilean Patagonia, gets a huge (and increasing) number of backpackers and cyclists at this time of the year, so the hostel was always full of an eclectic and interesting bunch of people from around the world. There was the British cyclist whom we wound up giving a ride to Cochrane; the pair of Americans trying to walk from the southern to the northern tip of South America without using any transportation at all; the solitary and extremely vocal Dane who had driven his van down from Canada two years ago, had once spent two months in a Texas jail for overstaying his visa, was making plans to drive cross-country across Africa, and was emphatic about voicing his thoughts on anything and everything.
Taking a step away from the indoors, we spent all of the following day doing a day hike up to Glaciar Submarino, while taking notes on everything we saw for a mini-Grinnell we’d write up when we returned to the hostel. The trail itself was 7 km from start to finish, however Misael (who was guiding us up to the glacier out of the goodness of his heart) would occasionally lead us on his own trail, blazing through tall forests of coigües and pushing directly up the steep slope at times.
Eventually we left the trees behind, followed by the shrubs, and then the grass, until we were all walking through a moonscape of rocks and snow. We entered into a large bowl of cold red rocks, with the colors and formations evocative of an ice age coming to Utah’s canyon country. At the end of this bowl was the decrepit glacier, shrunken down to a sliver of dirty-looking glacier ice. The whole location had a solemn, hallowed feel to it, like we’d entered into some crumbing temple from a forgotten, ancient world. Nevertheless, we had a lovely lunch there, mixing the classic Team Huemul mostaza and tuna together in a bowl carved into the snow.
The remnants of the Submarino Glacier, that once carved this alpine valley.
Turning back down the way we had come, we soon ran into an adorable family of Least Seed Snipes, a mother and her troop of four chicks out for a promenade on the rugged, rocky terrain. While we watched one of the babies got stuck on a patch of murtilla, falling behind the rest of the troop. Its frightened, lost little bird chirps were answered by none other than our own Adam Spencer, who picked the chick up and carried it a few meters forward to where the rest of the family was obliviously trundling forward. Despite the fact that this was a tiny ground bird out on a windy, unsheltered mountain slope, Adam said the hatchling felt very warm in his hands. This phenomenon would remain a mystery for now though, as we continued briskly down the way we had come up.
After writing up our mini-Grinnells later that night, we were treated to a hot tub party. Well, party isn’t quite the right word; more like a low-key, exhausted hang out session around a tub of nigh-boiling water. By midnight, most of us had made our way back to our tents, knowing that the next morning we needed to be up early to go talk about our expedition to the Pascua at the local school.
On our way to the school the next morning we quickly ran into Juan Carlos, who let us know that he’d tried to call us, but that actually we’d need to reschedule the school visit to 4 in the afternoon. Finding ourselves with a whole morning to take advantage of, a few of us went for a drive to find a small church built up in one of the valleys around Villa O’Higgins. After first confusing an old hydropower station for the church (easy mistake), we found the small building a little ways farther down the road. Despite being many decades old and in the middle of nowhere, the church looked very well maintained, with clean red wood floors and a garden of flowers around the path between the road and the church door.
La Capilla de Padre Antonio Ronchi, a small church for the few people who live outside Villa O’Higgins.
Once we returned we made our way over to the school, hosting a presentation right in the main hallway to a turnout of what seemed to be every single person, teacher and student, inside the building. We screened a few of Adam’s videos, a staple of any school presentation by Round River, and then talked briefly about what it was exactly we’d been trying to do by conducting research where we had, and about why its important to look for huemul scat or collect data on plant presence there.
With the school visit finished we returned to El Mosco and settled down for our last night in Villa, having one last meal with Misael (whose birthday we found out was the following day; Misael is a quiet one) and then playing a very random game of salad bowl. After having spent the past few days camping out in the little town at the end of the Carretera, the whole group was quite ready to get moving again and return to basecamp in Cochrane, onwards something new and exciting: finals week!
This is how we roll. We gave a ride to a biker on the Carreterra Austral, exercising our packing expertise.