Our Weather Luck Officially Runs Out

For most of this trip we have been pretty lucky where the weather has been concerned. We arrived in Puerto Piramides the day _after_ it rained, and the unsealed roads were dry by the time my stick-shift initiation began; in Ushuaia it was calm and clear when it mattered most, on the Channel; Torres del Paine gave us three out of five days of pleasant, calm weather and never once soaked us in our tent; and if it was cloudy and rainy at the glacier this only added "sultry" and "mysterious" to the litany of praise I sang into the frigid winds blowing in across its luminous surface. In a little village a few hours north of Calafate, however, the weather finally, forcefully, thoroughly stuck it to us for real.

El Chalten is a tiny centre in a gorgeous setting by a river and a long wall of cliffs, which grew to tiny from virtually invisible after the trekking masses discovered it a dozen years ago. It's the base for trekking the northern parts of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, the southern portion of which is home to the icy object of my desire. The north features some world-class super-spiky mountains known as the Fitz Roy Range. Our plan was to do a day trip or two in the area to see them. Due to some scheduling complications in El Calafate, however -- which story will have to wait, alas, but the ingredients of which include misinformation regarding bus times, ill will on our part towards the dude at the hostel who misinformed us, and subsequent restoration of our faith in humanity in general and that hostel in particular through the generous and apologetic actions of another, possibly more senior, hostel employee upon learning of the snafu -- due to this complication, we ended up with only one full day in Chalten instead of two.

Things got off to a bad start when we arrived at the hostel we'd booked. This was the one booking I'd continually neglected, because my preferred choice, Albergue Patagonia, was not bookable online and I never got up the willpower to go through the comparative inconvenience of actually phoning them. And so the day before we were to get there I chickened out once and for all and booked another place online without ever calling our first choice. This is how we arrived to find a hostel which immediately instilled in both of us that sense of stress and dread and mild panic that comes when you are somewhere you really don't want to be. To start with, the place had been disinfected that morning and our room was thick with unbreathable toxic sweetness, which we were assured would dissipate in an hour and furthermore was not at all indicative of bedbugs. The person telling us this seemed entirely non-plussed to see us, which was also off-putting, but then he gave the air of being non-plussed about everything so it was hard to take it personally. The coup de grace, however, was the DVD library: it was, as advertised, extensive, numbering well over a hundred titles; but EVERY SINGLE ONE of these titles was a metal, hardcore, or hard rock concert DVD. We knew what we had to do: taking big gulps of the relatively clear air in the downstairs lounge, we plunged into the toxic soup, up the stairs and into our dorm, chucked all our packs on the floor and wished them a hopeful au revoir (there were no lockers, nor a lock on the door to the room), and fled to the nearest confiteria to plot our escape. Which plot, in the end, was pretty straightforward: given the size of the village, we decided to just walk to Albergue Patagonia (which was maybe five hundred meters down the road) and ask if perchance they might have a couple of beds to spare for one night. To our overwhelming relief, the friendly, smiling woman at the desk said they did. We retrieved our bags from their still-smelly prison, not needing more than the three word opening -- "we can't stay..." -- of our carefully constructed cover story (that I was asthmatic) on account of the proprietor mumbled "bien" and barely looked up on hearing said intro. And so we ended up at the Albergue Patagonia after all, and it lived up to the recommendations we received -- cozy, cabin-like, friendly, and relaxed. Also, extremely proximal to La Cerveceria, a microbrewery with outstanding homebrews and delicious food, which is about fifty meters from the hostel's front door.

But this is a story about the weather. The day we arrived, it was mostly cloudy and a bit breezy but warm when the sun did show itself. We took it easy, though, after all the to-ing and fro-ing between hostels, and went for a short walk to a waterfall just outside of town, reckoning too that it'd be better to start our longer trek early in the morning on the following day so as not to run out of daylight. However, as the night came on the wind picked up, and by the early hours the house was shaking and creaking with alarming vigour. In the morning, as we watched the stunted tree outside being buffetted mercilessly under very low cloud cover, we seriously debated calling our hike off, and if we'd had the luxury of another day would certainly have done so. But it seemed pointless coming to the town and spending our only time there lounging around watching movies, and, aware that the weather could get better just as suddenly as it could get worse, we got ourselves organized and headed out into the bluster. We were not at all sure we'd get anywhere, and thought that if we reached a lookout just an hour away that would be enough of an achievement to call it a day.

And it was unpleasant out there in the wind. Much worse than Torres del Paine ever was: constant, hard, sustained wind, with occasional stronger gusts that really did push you around. Though it was warmer and drier, it was still a lot like walking the streets of Toronto in January during a blizzard, with no streetcar in sight: hard work every step of the way, with a lot of wishful thinking (for salvation) and a lot more rueful thinking (at having decided to go out in the mess in the first place). But as soon as we reached the top of the ridge above town, the wind abated, and we peeked out from under our hoods and saw small patches of blue sky here and there, though the clouds still hovered very low overall. Encouraged, we continued on, much more easily now, until we came to the lookout that was supposed to be our consolation destination. At this point it was almost comically cloudy -- Cerro Torre (yes, there was a Torre here too), object of the lookout and our would-be ultimate destination, was completely invisible, as was pretty much everything.

The, er, view. There was a rainbow, at least.

But we were in good spirits, and somewhat hopeful that the clouds might still lift, and up for adventure even if they didn't, so we kept going. And we went down, into a wide meadowed valley, and then through a beautiful old mossy forest and through the burnt-out, grassed-over remains of a forest, and along the side of a river, and over a moraine, and at last we reached our goal: Cerro Torre, that jagged finger of stone set among a ring of razor-sharp peaks, a scintillating glacial lake at its base.

We got to see the lake, anyway.

See that glacier crawling into the lake? That's at the base of
the mountain we came to see.

Still, the wind was mild and it was lunchtime, and who knew what might happen in a few minutes' time? So we sat down and made our cheese-n-mustard specials and ate them, and while we ate we implored the clouds to lift, just for a moment, to let us see the mountain we had come so far to see. We implored them in song and verse, we cajoled them and used reverse psychology, and even offered up an interpretive dance improvised on the spot by my lovely and talented companion. We begged the clouds to leave for about forty-five minutes without any discernable improvement, and finally gave up. Thanks for nothing, clouds, we said, picking our way back over the moraine to the path.

This, it seems, the clouds heard.

It started raining at about the burnt forest, lightly and intermittently at first; but by the time we reached the lookout it was coming down with a steadiness that suggested the rain was here to stay for a while. It made for slower going on the rocky, hilly path back from there, but we kept on in good humour without too much trouble until we got to the ridge above town. At this point the rain really began coming down. Worse -- much worse -- the wind returned with a vengeance. Our good humour quickly dissolved in the driving rain; the adventure became an unpleasant slog.

Now, we all know that precipitation can be annoying, and strong winds make for hard work, but it turns out the combination is a third thing: it is acutely painful. Rain drops become very very hard when accelerated to speeds above 60kph, and when they drive at these velocities into the skin of your face they feel like hail. Which we thought they were at first, but forensic evidence confirmed it was liquid water droplets that seemed to be piercing our face-skin. To reach our hostel through the fusillade took maybe twenty minutes, objectively speaking, but in the tradition of pretty girls and hot stoves, it felt like an eternity. We had to pull our hoods right down so we could hardly see where we were going, which meant stepping into more puddles than before, plus the occasional sharp sting of a bullet that managed to sneak past our defenses. At last we reached the hostel, and just stood dripping in the vestibule for a minute decompressing and considering whether we were hardcore or just foolish in the end. Then we peeled out of our rain gear, slopped out of our puddly boots, and sat down with our heaven-sent over-sweet vending-machine hot chocolates, and decided confidently that we were indeed hardcore. A few sips later, enthusiasm restored, we agreed we would just have to come back and try again some day. Next time, with enough flexibility to wait out bad weather.