On Wednesday we took a bus up to El
Chalten, four hours to the north, to go "Supertrekking". El Chalten is
at the base of the most dramatic mountains in Argentina, Cerro Fitz Roy
and Cerro Torre, which are both huge granite spires piercing the sky.


Cerro Fitz RoyOff
the bus (which traveled three and a half of the four hours on dirt
roads), we met our guide Andreas, and the three other trekkers going
with us, Rich from New York, and a couple from Mexico City, Lenny and
Marta, who are living in Houston. After dropping off some extra gear, we
drove to the trail head and started our six hour hike along the river
valley. The
views of Fitz Roy and the surrounding granite spires were spectacular
and the weather was perfect with bright sunshine and a nice cool breeze.
The scenery was seriously some of the most beautiful I´ve seen on this
earth. Up with the Napali Coast on Kauai, the Swiss Alps, and possibly
Yosemite Valley it was definitely one of the most awe inspiring,
pristine natural settings I´ve experienced. Half way into the hike, the
giant rock tower of Cerro Torre appeared to our right stabbing into the
sky and dominating the geological skyline.

We camped overnight in
a beech tree forest and I convinced Doug and Rich to stay up to watch
the stares. Again we saw the Southern Cross, the Milky Way and,
strangely, an upside down Orion. We each caught site of shooting stars
and saw satellites zipping across the sky.

The
next day we hiked two hours to the mouth of the Torre Glacier. On the
way, we climbed a steep hillside with the aid of some fixed ropes and
crossed over a rushing stream via a rope ¨bridge¨to which we had to tie
our harnesses and pull ourselves across. We stopped to fill our water
bottles and Doug asked the guide how the water was. He answer was,
"Perfect," which said it
all. Back down at the bottom of the valley, we donned crampons and
hiked on the glacier for an hour until coming to the first row of seracs
(ice cliffs caused by the constant cracking and shifting of the
glacier). There we stopped for
lunch and took turns roping up and using ice axes and crampons to ice
climb up the cliff. After lunch, we continued our zig zag path through
the glacier around crevasses, rivers through the snow and half frozen
pools of crystal clear blue water. The views of Cerro Torre and the
adjacent rocky mountain peaks, surrounded by a surreal ice landscape
were incredible. The whole time, our party of six were the only people
on the giant field of ice!

We hiked back to our camp, grabbed our
gear and trekked another three hours back to town. We spent the night
in the tiny mountain village of El Chalten, then did a day trip up to an
alpine lake in the shadow of Fitz Roy before catching our bus back to
El Calafate. Now we are witnessing the true Patagonia we came for and
are loving it! Dan and Rich Supertrekking on Glacier Torre!