Text, Photos, and Video by Will Green (Seattle University)
A Snowball’s Chance Over Devil’s Pass from Round River Conservation Studies on Vimeo.
A Sunny Contrast from Round River Conservation Studies on Vimeo.
The video starts on the fourth day of our research trip. Then jumps back to our first full day at Villa O’Higgins. We stayed at Hostel El Mosco. We then rode a boat through the company Robinson Crusoe and is also subsidized by the Chilean government. We stayed at Misael Tisnado’s house. He’s a gaucho who lives on a peninsula between Lago Chico and Lago O’Higgins. We spent a night there and then spent the next five days backpacking from his place parallel to Lago Chico and along the Ruta Patrimonial in order to camp at the Los Mosquitos campground. We then spent a day hiking to Glacier Chico. The purpose of our backpacking trip was to survey for the endangered humble deer and see if they were crossing over Diablo Pass to an area along Lago Chico. We got caught in a mini rain and snow storm for two days and had to spend one night at a refugio built by the Argentine gendarme. We ultimately found no signs of huemul once we got to the top of the pass and into Diablo Valley. Once we returned to Misael’s house the rest of the trip was spent day hiking along the northeast hillside along Lago Chico. On one day hike we saw a solitary female and two days later we saw a male and a female. Both sightings were seen on the same northeast hillside. A camera trap was set up and we saw the same male and female in the images and videos it took.
On the last full day a few students went on a hike to the top of an unnamed mountain peak and glissaded down parts of it. We were originally scheduled to leave on the 18th of October, but while the boat ride to Misael’s house we were told the return boat was to actually pick us up on the 21st instead. We had to ration our food and then on the 21st we hauled all our backpacks and bins full of stuff to the shore of the peninsula on the edge of Lago O’Higgins. It was very windy that day and when the boat arrived a little before noon the zodiac they had wasn’t able to pick us up because of the swell caused by the strong winds. They told us to hike to a dock on the property of Misael’s one neighbor, Mancilla.
We were told to be there at four because the boat would go finish the rest of its errands on the lake and then come back to pick us up. So we hauled all our backpacks and bins again across the peninsula and were crossed on the river between Lago Chico and Lago O’Higgins by Mancilla. We were waiting and waiting at the dock until the boat finally arrived at seven. We then watched the sunset on the boat and then slept in the cabin until the boat arrived at Villa O’Higgins a little before two in the morning. We spent a full day in that small town of around six hundred people and then spent the night soaking and relaxing in a hot tub provided by the hostel. The followed day we drove north on the Carretera Austral to Cochrane back to basecamp.