El Chalten & Aguja Guillaumet

A Mountain Town: El Chalten, Argentina

Down sleeping bags don’t perform well when wet.  Especially in the rain at 1:00 AM on the side of a road.  But I really didn’t care.  I was cold and it made me warm.  This was not a long term solution.  It was short term satisfaction.  Not a particularly exquisite end to an epic day, but things could be far worse.

Twenty hours earlier I woke up in a tent with a new friend I had met only two days before.  My first thought of the day was about the tent.  Not how it had held up in the wind, or whether not it was dry, but how it could smell so badly so early in the morning.  Outside there was no light.  I guess the beginning of the day would be as odd as its end.

The Terrain

A group of five that had befriended me was from Spain.  Two of the group were brothers and all of them were friends who had traveled together in the past.  All five of them had just returned from a sixteen-day glacier trek that circumnavigated through some of the wildest and most treacherous terrains in all of South America - this probably explains the less-than-favorable scent of the tent.  But, luckily for me, only three of them were interested in climbing.  One had broken his finger badly on the glacial trek and another had to return to Spain.  Taking on a fourth (who happened to have some nice climbing gear and looked very eager) made a bit of sense.  They were able to overlook my pathetic Spanish and focus on what mattered - I had nice gear and a rope.  They were a kind and fun-loving bunch that I knew absolutely nothing about.

The Gear

It was still dark as some sort of Spanish lullaby came from the tent next door.  My guess is that the intention of this early morning song was not to put us back to sleep but to bring us gently into what would be a long day.  I giggled along with everyone else even though I had no idea what the song was about.  Soon we were up.

Within two hours my three climbing partners and I had eaten breakfast, secured our site, and hiked from our base camp 1,500 ft up, and two miles across, to the first pitch of Aguja Guillaumet.  Our goal was to climb one thousand plus feet of ice and rock, rappel back down, hike back to our tents, and carry our 60-pound packs 4,500 vertical feet down (to a road that was over eight miles away) to meet our taxi at 10:30 that night.

One other person in my group spoke English well, one spoke English that was much like my Spanish (malo/bad), and one, my climbing partner, spoke no English at all.  On the way up to the climb, I learned four terms: reunion (off belay), pilla (take), dame (slack), and piedra! (stone).  We all agreed that these words were necessary.

The Goal

The climb started with 500 feet of thin ice squeezed between smooth, granite walls.  Not extremely technical compared to the ice I have climbed before, but loaded packs and a solid approach made this class II+/III pitch of ice somewhat challenging.  We broke into two pairs.  The first pair set up only two belays.  They climbed simultaneously and did the entire 500 feet in two sections.  My partner and I split the 500 feet into four sections.  I led the second and third pitches of ice and took a thrashing on the fourth.   Being anchored 150 feet below three climbers in a gully that was 60º degrees and six feet wide was not what I would refer to as a great time.  Even though those above me climbed with care I took a pounding from all of the small chunks of ice that rained down from above.  I was anchored to the wall and I felt like I was in front of a rubber bullet firing squad.  To add an extra richness to the experience one of the ropes I was attached to got wedged into a crack so I had to wait in the shade while one member of the other pair down climbed to set me free so I could ascend.  Good, clean, cold fun.

Once we emerged from the ice gully we placed our crampons, alpine boots, ice screws, and ice axes in our packs and pulled on our thin climbing shoes over already frozen feet.  We also took off our gloves to prepare for the six pitches of rock climbing ahead.  We swapped gear and chatted strategy as the wind began to accelerate.  Soon we would be in the sun climbing some of the world’s best granite.

The climbing went smoothly even though the route meandered up steep sections of vertical rock and across narrow (and very exposed) traverses.  The climb went up about 500 vertical feet, but we traversed three times this distance.  We climbed as two separate pairs, but the first pair would leave gear in key spots as directionals to provide protection.  The second person of the second pair would “clean” and the first person of the second pair would feed gear to the second of the first group.  In the first pair, Miguel was the lead climber throughout the climb and in my pair, we swapped leads back and forth.  Far less confusing than it may sound.  There were only two technically “difficult” pitches of climbing, but all six were very exposed at several points and a slip would mean a dramatic turn of events.  We stayed roped up for the last pitch - an easy, but relatively exposed, ascent.

Soon we were on the summit of Aguja Guillaumet exchanging hugs and taking pictures.  We all wanted our summit pictures to include Aguj Mermoz, one of the most sought-after peaks in the area, in the background.  We also held up the business card of our host hostel in hopes that we would make it onto the “wall of fame”.   This wall at the entrance of the hostel included pictures of some of the world's best alpinists on some of the larger, neighboring summits. We ate chocolate, drank tea, and watched as the sky thickened and the wind began to surge.

I took pictures at the top of the first rappel while I waited my turn to head down.  At the bottom of the third repel I noticed that my camera was no longer on my pack.  To my horror, I realized that I had left it at the top of the first repel.  Luckily the two repel lines above me were still up and my partners were empathetic to my situation.  I knew this was a mistake that put all of us at risk, but we all agreed that I should retrieve the camera.

The Hostel Promo

I quickly climbed the third to last and second to last pitches on top rope (with my alpine boots on) and free-soloed the last pitch of the climb to get to my camera.  By the time I got to the camera, the wind had picked up to around forty-five miles per hour.  Even though the climbing was easy, the wind and my pack made the ice and rock tricky to descend. Later my newfound friends joked that I liked the end of the climb so much, that I climbed it twice.  My guess is that at the time they were not very amused by my delay.

By the time I had down-climbed and “cleaned” the ropes on the second and third to last pitches, the fabled winds of Patagonia were in full force.  All relatively easy tasks, like throwing a rope down to the bottom of a rappel, became difficult and risky.  Cracks could “eat” ropes and one (more) mistake could cost us precious time.  The rest of the afternoon became a controlled but rushed, scramble.  Since the climb, known as Amy, was a popular and well-traveled route in the area there were old and new, pitons and slings to repel off of the entire way down.  This made the exit easier.

By the time my partner and I reached the base of the climb the first pair had already started the journey down to pack away our camping gear.  We began our scramble down through loose scree in winds that were gusting at seventy miles an hour.  The sand and gravel from the basin below blew up the walls of the valley and into our eyes, ears, and noses.  The trail was steep and icy.  My pack contained two 60-meter ropes, a trad rack (climbing gear), a thermos, climbing shoes, ice screws, two ice axes, and crampons.  I had not consumed any water in two hours and the last real meal was almost twelve hours earlier.  By the time the sun had set, I was only halfway down the long approach back to our base camp.  My headlamp only offered a twenty-foot view of the vertical world around me and my climbing partner was 100 meters ahead of me.  I was exhausted but determined.  I moved as quickly as possible back to base camp.

The Summit Surf

When I finally arrived I drank some sort of Tang and water mixture and ate a piece of ham and cheese.  Five minutes later three of us began our eight-mile, 4,500 vertical foot trek to the road.  My partner had left fifteen minutes earlier to see if he could make it to the road in time to secure our ride home.  We all knew we would miss our cab, but the storm that was upon us was not to be trifled with so we had to exit the area and head for a safer spot to spend the night.  We kept up a furious pace and marched without rest until half past midnight.

The Partners: Thester and Pablo

Soon I was alone with three packs as my two partners set out down the road in search of a phone and the fourth member of our group.  It was raining, there was no more food, and the only shelter I had was my down sleeping bag.  As I mentioned earlier, down-sleeping bags don’t perform well when wet.

An hour later my three partners returned, but no phone or ride could be found.  Apparently, the Refugio down the road was closed for the evening and the caretaker had no interest in answering the door.  We quickly set up a three-person tent, drank some untreated river water, and piled into our shelter. 

 

We spent the night together under the driving rain and powerful winds forty minutes outside of El Chalten.

Six hours later I woke.  Twenty minutes later our gear was piled into a fifteen-passenger Mercedes Sprinter.  The driver, who was returning to El Chalten after dropping off some tourists for a glacial tour, would not take payment for the ride into town.  Climbing is what El Chalten was founded upon and alpinists were still held in high esteem in this little town.  El Chalten was, and is, a mountain town.