Chile’s Aysen Patagonia is bordered on the west by the vast North Patagonia ice cap and on the east by the Patagonian desert....fourth largest in the world. It is a wondrous and diverse area with permanent ice, rainforest, and desert all within shouting distance of each other.
Trails are extremely rare and where they do exist are intermittent and hard to follow. This is wild country, very unlike the numerous groomed trails thru open forest in the Fitzroy/Torre massif and the Torres de Paine to the south. Here getting to the peak is often the crux.
Forests have totally different characteristics depending on their exposure to moisture flowing in from the Pacific. A mile or two difference in location can make a world of difference in your ability to negotiate them.
The area is rife with unclimbed peaks due to the dearth of climbers and the difficult access. To be first to summit here calls for a climber’s skills and an explorer’s mentality. The objectives range from virtual walk ups to a 3,000 ft. granite face.
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I have largely had this playground to myself and every year I seek out an objective and THEN...try to find the way in.
This year my wife Angela and I worked on getting to yet another project. This mountain can be seen clearly from the Caraterra Austral (the main road, albiet dirt, in Aysen) but getting there is a different matter.
We first had to seek out obscure dirt roads that would get us as close as possible with our trusty 4by4 Hilux pickup. The next question was the nature of the forest....would it be just somewhat difficult or absolutely heinous? We lucked out and found a relatively open Lenga forest that offered tricky but doable passage.
The approach to a beautiful remote valley took five hours and included several stream crossings.
This left us in striking distance.
But I still had to get to the base and leave a cache for later in the month when my partner would arrive after guiding Aconcagua. He is 40 years younger than me so I wanted to get as much gear in place to cut down on the size of the loads when we went in together. A two day window opened up and on January fourth I went back in solo to finish the job. I hiked for five hours thru beautiful forests and the occasional bog.
I then bushwhacked 1,300 vertical feet to the top of a ridge where I had previously left a cache in bad weather.
This time, in clear weather, I went 300 meters further and saw spread out a thousand feet below me a broad river valley with the peak rising above. I had thought that I would need to do a long traverse to the right and then back left over several kilometers of broken glaciers to get to the climb.
I scrambled a thousand feet down steep, loose scree to the valley floor and spent the night. The peak was now a steep but straightforward approach directly above me.
The next day dawned cloudy with light rain. Luckily, I found a way directly out of the valley without having to climb up heinous scree and over the ridge. I was lucky to see a rare Magellanic Woodpecker and the footprint of an even rarer Huemul on the hike out.
Now all that remains is the arrival of my partner and a wee three day window for, hopefully, the ascent of another unclimbed peak in Aysen Patagonia.
You earn your baubles down here. Look for another TR with the rest of the story in the near future.
Get on down here...unclimbed peaks don’t reproduce themselves!
Sorry about the line of photos below the main photos, don’t know what to do about it....doing this from Patagonia with spotty internet.