By Sylvia Kinosian (University of Vermont)
Being up high is somewhere I’ve always loved to be. As a kid I climbed trees, rocks, scampered around on my roof, pressed my nose to airplane windows. I fell in love with hiking in the Adirondacks, standing atop Mount Marcy, above all of New York State. Mountaintop ecosystems also have a special place in my heart: the miniature world of alpine plants, indifferent to cold, snow, drought, and high winds that constantly challenge their very existence.
I had been looking forward to our backpacking trip on the Lagunas Altas trail in the hopes of experiencing the Patagonian alpine. This trail, on the southwest edge of the Chacabuco Valley, skirts the slopes of Tamango and Tamanguito and passes several lakes before descending again to the valley floor. Our first day on the trail was spent hiking up from Los West Winds campground, conducting a few vizcacha surveys, and establishing camp on the shore of the second lake in a lovely lenga forest. The next morning after bird surveys, Liz, Elliott, Eric, Blaise, and I decided to hike Tamanguito before our second round of vizcacha surveys.
Calafate enano and red crowberry growing in the alpine community of Tamanguito
As we began the ascent of Tamanguito, the morning clouds burned off and the sun began to peak out. We traversed a stretch of Patagonian steppe, encountering several dark-faced ground-tyrants and guanaco foraging in the grass. As we gained elevation, I was excited to see the steppe slowly melt into miniature. The large grass tufts faded, the calafate bushes shrank to calafate enano (enano in Spanish means dwarf); as the slope increased, rocks and scree took over from all but the heartiest plants and lichens. I watched this transition as I plodded uphill, head down, trying to find places for my feet. About two thirds of the way up, I finally lifted my head to see a guanaco staring back at me from about 10 meters away. It gazed at me for a moment, increased its distance from me by casually walking across the scree, over which I was slipping and sliding, and went back to grazing. I was obviously not a proper denizen of this windswept slope, and my clumsy scramblings did not seem much of a threat.
After a brief rest just below the summit, we scrambled up the last few meters of open rock and found ourselves on the small, flat summit of Tamanguito. To the west, the snow-capped summit of Tamango dominated the view with the Northern Icefield peeking out from behind; turning north, the jagged Jeinimeni Range sliced across the sky; east, the Lagunas Altas trail snaked between the bluegreen lakes, and the Chacabuco Valley melted into the endless Argentine steppe; and south, Lago Cochrane shimmered in the sun while Cerro San Lorenzo loomed on the horizon, wreathed in ice and cloud. This view, while breathtaking, made me feel very, very small. Working in the Chacabuco, the wideopen valley and flat planes become your world. Emerging above the steppe and forest, with mountains as far as the eye can see, you realize this massive valley is but one small part of a very rumpled piece of continental plate.
View of Tamango from Tamanguito
Being in an alpine environment once again brought me back to my summer in British Columbia with Round River. A large portion of our time was spent above treeline; I spent a large amount of that time with a hand lens to my eye doing “the naturalist crawl,” examining the carpet of alpine plants. On Tamaguito’s summit I was excited to find a species of Belloa (a member of the Aster family), a few different mosses, as well as green map and orange rock lichens. These lichens were two of the species I often encountered in British Columbia; I’ve seen them in Vermont and New York as well. The similarities between alpine ecosystems, even on opposite ends of the earth, continuously amazes me.
Bello sp. growing on the summit of Tamanguito
Green map lichen and orange rock lichen growing on a rock on the summit
By coincidence, there was another person on the summit. At first we sat in silence just taking it all in – the view, the warm sun, an Andean condor sailing past on thermals. Some pictures were snapped, and then snacks opened. We introduced ourselves, and as we shared our peanuts and apple, our conversation soon turned to conservation. Our fellow mountaineer was named Bongi. Originally from Spain, he told us of his first experience with conservation in Indonesia. Although he loved the work there he did not like the attitude of some of his coworkers, who were just in it for the money. Since leaving that job, he has been traveling around looking for a new place or project to dedicate himself to. Bongi told us one of the most important things he’s learned is that conservation needs to start from your own person: “…let go of your ego and just receive.”
After talking for almost an hour, Bongi said farewell and quickly disappeared down the mountain. All of us were equally impressed by his wisdom; none had been expecting such a philosophical discussion on the mountaintop. On our way down Tamanguito not long after, I kept thinking about what Bongi had said: the importance of being aware of your surroundings, learning from the natural world, finding something you are passionate about and a way to give back. I would have loved to talk to him for the rest of the day but perhaps his ephemeral presence, like my time in the Patagonian alpine, makes the experience all the more valuable.
Top photo: Blaise and Eric just bellow the summit, looking north over the Chacabuco Valley
All photos by Sylvia Kinosian.