November 2006
From El Calafate we rented a car and drove a few hours north on the infamous Ruta 40 to the tiny town of El Chalten which is the gateway to the Fiz Roy range. Ruta 40 is a thousand or so miles of gravel road (in Spanish they say ripio which captures more of the flavor) from El Calafate along the Andes to Esquel with only three or four tiny villages along the way. On the way to El Chalten from the road you could see this glacier, which is the other end of the ice field 100 miles away at El Calafate. This is the largest one in South America, third largest ice field in the world after Greenland and Antarctica.
We hiked two days here, the first was misty and rainy and cold. This was a 4 hour hike (one way) up to a glacier. We also saw condors and fox. The cool thing about El Chalten is you start hiking from town, you don't have to drive anywhere.
This is a view of some waterfalls on the same hike. The water has that milky blue because it contains sediment from melted glacier ice.
Evidently there is some kind of touring club, we think they are Germans, that does Patagonia every year. They travel around in these two vans, the second one with all the little windows is for sleeping.
The second day of hiking was absolutely perfect. Many people told us that sometimes they don't see these mountains for a month at a time. We talked to people who made three and four trips here and didn't see the towers. Evidently clouds (and snow and rain) blow over from Chile and bock the view most days.
The Fiz Roy range is spectacular and we got to see them all day long on an 8 hour hike. We also experienced the famous Patagonian wind here. It really is something, very strong and relentless, just about knock you down.
This was some kind of weird rainbow, probably from ice crystals directly overhead.
One last look at the Fiz Roys.
