Soon the snow was moving by the window almost horizontally, and silence gave way to the wailing of the wind.It fiercely attacked and tried to shake loose everything that wasn't firmly attached, rattling window panes and shrieking in the chimney. And suddenly I was back in Patagonia ....
When we were in Argentina two years ago, we spent the bigger part of one night hanging on to our tent stakes because we had foolishly thought we had outsmarted the wind by putting up our tent in the protection of a hedge. During the night the wind shifted directions, however, and showed us that we really didn't know what it was capable of. Since then we have learned that, when travelling in Patagonia, there is no use complaining about too much wind: it simply is a fact of life there, and it is best to embrace the wind as a sometimes annoying but loyal travel companion.
Of course, it sometimes sleeps during the night, even forgets to get up in the morning, which happened on the first day of our stay in Torres del Paine National Park in southern Chile. We had travelled from Puerto Montt through the Patagonian channels on a "Navimag" ferry and disembarked three days later (and about 1200 km further south) in Puerto Natales, where we arrived in the late afternoon of January 3rd. Our friends Wilfried and Doris had booked a hotel in the Park, and we had hoped to find a place at the Refugio Las Torres, not far away from their hotel. My attempts to inquire about the booking process and availability were met with the same standard package in two different emails, which didn't answer my questions at all, and we finally decided to trust that there'd be room. If necessary we could sleep in Koch's SUV: we had our sleeping bags with us, after all, even though we had opted against a tent for Patagonia this time.
We were late getting off the ferry in Puerto Natales, had to pick up the vehicle, do some grocery shopping, get a message out to friends and family that we hadn't even noticed the earthquake near Temuco earlier that day, and still had a one and a half hour drive ahead of us. My confidence that we'd certainly find a place to sleep was waning with the fading light - even if there were still beds available, would they let us in close to eleven at night? And if not, and we needed to sleep in the car, would they ban us from the parking lot of the fancy hotel? And was it even permitted to just sleep by the side of the road in a national park in Chile? Suddenly I saw a mountain higher than all the snowcapped ones awaiting us. Johann was unperturbed.
A bridge so narrow that we had to fold in the mirrors to cross it had all of us worried about reaching our destination that night, but with the encouragement of some kids in the car behind us we overcame that obstacle, too, and soon arrived at the refugio.
How could I have doubted that a place that calls itself a refugio would take in weary travellers? Yes, they did have room for the two of us, in a six-bed dorm in which four guys were snoring quietly already, and we just had time to go through the check-in process before the generators were turned off for the night and we were left in the dark, me scrambling to climb up to the top bunk without knocking anything over and waking everybody up. Big sigh of relief!
The view I had from that top bunk the next morning made up for all the worries the night before: I was looking straight at the three "torres" after which the park is named, glowing in the early morning sun!
One of the things I had tried to find out with my email inquiry was if there were kitchen privileges at the refugio. It turned out that there was no kitchen use available, although one could eat any or all of three daily meals prepared there. Thus we gathered our bread and cheese and palta, avocado, and had breakfast under the low-hanging branches of a small tree outside, guarded by a circle of thorny calafate bushes. An abundance of birds, from the funny, long-billed bandurria to swallows and chipping sparrows, entertained us with their morning songs, the sun was already warm, and the slightest of breezes stirred the long grass. A perfect day to go hiking up to the foot of the Torres!
Some of the men in our dorm, Americans about our age, had done the hike the day before, and we knew to expect a partly strenuous but very rewarding climb that would take us most of the day. The four of us were on our way at nine, so it would be no problem to get back when it was still light.
The path led by the fancy Las Torres hotel through fairly level terrain for a little while before it started to get steeper. A group of about twenty German tourists with walking sticks soon overtook us. Johann, who had, together with Doris, climbed Villarica volcano with a guided group the week before, showed us what he had learned about pacing oneself and conserving energy, and we made very slow but steady progress during that first ascent. I was much too excited about the wonderful flora to be much concerned with anything else on that stretch of way: there was the strange pale beauty of the Porcelain Orchid, the vivid golden calceolaria tenella, better known as slipper flower for very obvious reasons, and, weirdest of all, its cousin, the sand lady's slipper (calceolaria uniflora) that looks more like a creature with telescope eyes and a wide open mouth than a plant. It's especially funny to come upon a whole group of them: no caricature could
give a more perfect impression of a choir in action!
After a lunch break away from the crowds gathered at Refugio Chileno we entered a beautiful old-growth lenga forest. Lenga, ñire and cohüe are the three varieties of southern beeches that can be found in Patagonia. Their leaves are much smaller than those of the European beech, and they are very slow growing, but they can get up to 800 years old. The walk through this forest with its widely spaced trees whose branches formed a closed canopy over our heads reminded me of early summer walks in the beech forests of my native Germany, the sun painting patterns on the forest floor where it was able to penetrate the green umbrella shielding us from its heat. Here, walking was easy, the soft ground under our feet a welcome change from firm rock and small rubble. Small glacier-fed creeks tumbled over rocks, sometimes disappearing underground for a while, their banks lined with moss and lush green plants.
Slowly the grade increased again, and became quite steep for the last ascent. Here, we scrambled over rocks big and small, and the sun, unfiltered by any trees since we were above the tree line now, beat down mercilessly. I was starting to feel the shortness of breath I have to contend with for the first day of strenuous hiking when we go backpacking in our Rockies in the summer, although I didn't carry even a small pack this time. It was hard work, and as always the uncertainty how far we had to go made the final leg challenging.
Looking up, we had seen a few people on a big outcrop of rock which seemed to take forever to reach, but suddenly a little army of "inukshuks" greeted us from a flat boulder, cheering us on, or so it seemed, and in less than five minutes we were gazing at the milky blue surface of a glacier lake at our feet, from whose far end the mighty towers jutted up into the almost clear sky: we had made it!
Together with about thirty other hikers, tucked in a niche between some big rocks away from the wind that had started to pick up and from most of the crowd, we enjoyed the view that presented itself to us. As always in the presence of these ancient mountain giants that have weathered so many storms, have stood silently long before any human being ever laid eyes on them, I became silent, too, and again was aware of how small and insignificant we are, swarming like ants on that mountainside, forever drawn upward to stand as close to the sky as those peaks. I had been hot on the way up, but now I was shivering, and my hands were almost numb: the wind drove the icy glacier air right at us. It was time to turn around.
Again the challenge lay in the steep section we had to traverse first. The gritty surface didn't afford much hold, and we stepped carefully, every once in awhile loosening small rock slides with our feet. Johann again led the way, and at one of the steepest sections had missed the only barely recognizable path, taking a shortcut across the scree. We had followed, not paying attention to the markers either, and I suddenly found myself slipping, looking down the steep slope at my feet and at the small figures of other hikers far below me. A brief moment of panic, but Johann's outstretched hand helped me to gain firm ground again. There had not been any real danger, but the mind sure can play strange tricks!
As usual, the descent was a lot faster than the ascent, and a lot less strenuous. Now we could enjoy the view of the valley opening up before us, the mountains on the other side, waterfalls hanging from their sheer rock face like strings of pearls.
As long as we stayed in the shelter of the ñire forest we were protected from the wind, but on the short climb after the Refugio Chileno the wind got ever more forceful. When we turned the corner at the top it suddenly hit us so fiercely that I felt it could lift me off my feet with only a little more effort. It was an uncomfortable feeling on the narrow path, the steep mountain flank below, and I was glad that the gusts were not very frequent, and I not a featherweight. Resting for a moment to enjoy the view we noticed that the wind was playing games not only with us: a small waterfall on the opposite side of the narrow valley was turned into a “water rise”, the water actually blowing upward before falling down!
No wonder they put up warning signs like these here:
No comment ....
No comments:
Post a Comment