Written October 13, 2014
By Blaise Sullivan (University of Vermont)
What a day. What an absolutely crazy day.
I’ll give a little context to where we’ve been: we arrived in Tortel seven days ago, a town of 500 people in southern Chile, which was only accessible by boat until 2000 when the dirt road down here was extended to reach it. After spending a couple nights in Tortel, we hopped on a boat to take us to the fjords in the Bernardo O’Higgins National Park—a destination that has evoked feelings of extreme excitement and nervousness in the group for the past two weeks.
The trusty CONAF boat!
The fjords of Bernardo O’Higgins are a sunken mountain range, with valleys shaped by the great glaciers of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field and flooded by the Pacific Ocean. We had been told to prepare for cold, rainy weather during the whole trip, which will last between 20-30 days.
After our four hour boat ride to the wet, forested islands of Patagonia that are only connected to the mainland by the Southern Icefield, we met our Guardaparques (Park Guards) Orlando and Felidor who are some of the only people familiar with this land. Most of the places we will be backpacking through for the next few weeks have never been seen or stepped on by other humans. It has proved hard to imagine what something like that will look and feel like.
Overall, the past five days of hiking have been a very wet, cloudy, beautiful experience of working our way through a valley made up of bogs and dense forests in search of Huemul deer—an endangered species. The mission of this trip is to survey for and document the presence of this endangered deer species.
This morning, we woke up early with the purpose of needing to get over a mountain pass that leads to a different fjord. We scoped out this pass two afternoons ago from the other side of the valley—it was green and by the far the least steep and rocky place to pass, making it an obvious choice for us to use to cross. Over the past day and a half however, the temperature has dropped and rain, sleet and snow have been coming down. Looking up, we see that snow covers the mountain starting half-way up.
Hiking up to the pass in snow.
We set off after a breakfast of oatmeal and taking down our tents. Unfortunately, it was raining where we are at the moment, getting us wetter than snow would. We hike up at a strong pace though, warming up. Soon enough, we gain enough elevation that we’re at the point where the rain turns to snow and the landscape is whited-out. The idea of being this wet and cold when we stop moving and make camp for the night is miserable to think of and burdens me a bit. I turn to Izzy and say “I keep thinking that we’ll get to the top of this pass and we’ll be rewarded by the sun shining.” Looking up at the sky though, it’s obvious that this is not going to happen: the clouds are dense and low.
We keep charging up, crossing over cascades, grabbing at vegetation to get up steep sections, and giving each other a hand up the hard parts. Amazingly, the wind and snow calm down, and a few rays of sun shine through—even these weak rays are very welcome by our group. The clouds quickly cover back over, but we make it to the pass!
The top of the pass is otherworldly.
Somehow it is calm up here, which is better luck than we could have asked for. The pass is beautiful. The dark rocks contrast strongly with the fresh snow on the ground and I’m overwhelmed by the knowledge that this land has never been viewed by humans before.
This landscape is other worldly, the only resemblance in my mind is the craters of the moon. The huge lake to our left and jutting rock walls to our right take my breath away and give me a smile that I can’t wipe off. It’s a challenge to continue walking because this landscape demands me to pause and look at it—it’s literally stunning. We continue on though the pass though, with a few slips in the snow, stopping for cookie and water breaks, but only briefly because we need to keep moving.
After about 30 minutes through the pass, the wind has picked back up but we need to get down to lower elevation before we can camp. We hike through mostly flat terrain, but it’s covered in slippery snow and rocks and we have to be careful because injuries in such an isolated place are not an option. We pass by more lakes, and the beauty of this place cannot pass you by no matter how cold your hands and feet are. At 1:30pm we still haven’t eaten lunch, but a snow storm rolls in so we press on. We’re moving faster than we have any other day because we need to stay warm. Our only break is for our instructors to use the satellite phone to make a quick phone call to let someone know that we are definitely moving forward to the other side of the pass today.
Eventually, we get to the end of the mountain pass that lasted about one mile and tested us against the elements and terrain. Just as we can see the other side and we start to descend, the sun breaks through! Halleluiah! We have been looking toward the end of the same valley for four days and now BAM, we see something even more beautiful and the sun is shining for the first time in almost five days. We look up to appreciate and soak it in, but we need to keep descending to get lower, especially since the weather has been changing so quickly.
The sun finally comes out and we get our first glimpse of Valle Horacio.
Moving further down, it’s green and sunny and we have to bushwack through a short, dense forest to get to a flat lunch spot. We find a beautiful spot to eat our salami, cheese, and cracker lunch at 2:45pm. We’re able to de-layer and feel the warmth of the sun on our skin. Is it possible that we were just in a raging snow storm 30 minutes ago? It’s an absolutely beautiful day now. The rarity of sun that we have had on the trip thus far helps us to appreciate this weather even more.
It’s hard to believe that our rain jackets and pants are already close to dry, when that seemed an impossible concept this morning. We continue to descend this side of the pass, which is open and rocky, until we find a good camp spot at a low enough elevation. We get our tents pitched just before new rain comes in—the reputation of temperamental Patagonian weather proves true.
Hiking down to the fjord, in the sun!