El Chalten & Mount Fitz Roy

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Woke up in El Chalten (3hrs from El Calafate) to a perfect day for a heap of walking, no clouds and only mildly warm.  Being the organised people we are we then proceeded to run around town hiring all our camping equipment including sleeping bags, mats, tent and even a camping stove (hardcore I know) stopped short at getting walking sticks and full body Lycra suits.  El Chalten is an interesting place in itself very small but was assured by on old timer it was just a camping spot not that long ago and has evolved into a town with supermarkets, expensive hotels and restaurants in a very short period. 

We actually felt a bit out of place as we first entered our hostel to find the place full of a visiting circus performers which we later realised were just experienced trekkers and climbers with multicoloured thermals (of course with shorts over the top), bandannas, big walking boots, plenty of the aforementioned lycra and caribena clips hanging off everything..actually surprised they don't wear them as earrings. 

In the end we managed to categorise all the trekkers into four groups relating to how many walking poles they employed...

1. No stickers (walking sticks): Like ourselves basically clueless people who are under prepared and just out for a walk and take at least a third longer than the estimated walking time.   

 2.  Single Stickers: These people are generally a mix of aspiring hard core trekkers who are buying their equipment one piece at a time and old people with a gimpy leg. 

3.  Double Stickers:  These are the people who appear to know what they are doing, run down hill, actually carry all the right equipment and laugh at people who only go for a three day trek. 

4: Double Stickers with Lycra:  I'm sure some of the most renown mountain climbers/trekkers in the world fall into this category but from our impression most are rich Europeans on a two week holiday and too much money, the sort that lie about having climbed Everest and go on about how the Nepalese Alps are so much better although they've probably only seen them in pictures.    

Anyway set off on our anticipated three day trek at around noon.  Jo had two sleeping mats one either side of her pack making her look like a she had a jet pack on, so was forced to alternate between calling her Buzz Lightyear and Roger Ramjet.

Enjoyed quite a pleasant walk to the first lookout for Mount Fitz Roy which was ultra impressive (as mentioned earlier the weather was great, but for weeks previously it had been terrible with the spire obscured so we were really lucky).  Mount Fitz Roy sitting squarely on the border of Argentina and Chile is certainly not the highest mountain in the world at 3000m but must be one of the most impressive, one tall spire of granite surrounded by some slightly smaller ones, the whole thing appears to be slightly reddish in colour that looks spectacular at dawn and dusk....which is probably why it is one of the main symbols of the Los Glaciers National Park. 

Also it is apparently one of the hardest mountains in the world to climb, according to a quick google search the climb is: "extremely difficult and is the preserve of very experienced climbers. Today, when a hundred people may summit Mount Everest in a single day, Cerro Chaltén (Mount Fitz Roy) may only be successfully ascended once a year."....which coupled with the extremely rare good weather would explain all the crazies in our hostel.

Three and half hours after we left the town we reached our first campsite called Poincenot.  Proceeded to set up our tent amongst the dozens of other taught tents and pristine well thought out campsites.  Turned out to be quite embarrassing for both of us especially me being the man in the relationship...tents sure have changed since camping in the backyard 10 years ago.  The actual process is quite easy, snap some poles together, stick em through some loops, whack the top cover on and peg it down...well we did that and our tent to say the least was a little bit sloppy, dunno where we went wrong but it sloped to one side, was a bit baggy in places and had some loose bits due to a lack of pegs (possibly due to incorrect use elsewhere).  Managed to fine tune it in the end and it came up alright although still the worst out of all 50 tents at the site.

Dinner was another source of embarrassment as our little camp stove looked pathetic compared to all the other professional setups around us (It could have had something to do with going to the cheapest hire place in town by a long way).  The double stickers in the camp next to us had a fancy gas bottle thingy with a big foil contraption around the burner and special tongs for picking up hot saucepans, they even managed to whip up a pretty decent meal that we looked at enviously as we ate our crunchy pasta mix that we had somehow managed to undercook and burn at the same time

Our saving grace was our electric blue and shiny metallic silver folding cutlery sets from Kathmandu (which I can assure you look quite spiffy) which we flashed around at every opportunity in attempt to recover some credibility from the camping fraternity.    

Well that's enough for now, i'm starting to bore myself and my fingers hurt.

After dinner started a hike up to Lago Del La Tres, which lies in the foreground and along the trail up to Mount Fitz Roy.  Took about an hour of hard work to get to the lake and arrived around 10:30pm at the tail end of sunset after having witnessed a magnificent sunset over all the surrounding lakes and mountains on the way up.

At the top was rewarded with a view of yet another blue glacial lake with Mount Fitz Roy in all her red sunset glory in the background and the surrounding slopes blanketed in pure white snow reflecting the last of the days rays....was really very nice and as I was already on my knees gasping for air from the hike up , thought I may as well ask Jo to marry me whilst I was down there and after a minute pause and a gentle reminder from me that she was supposed to say yes....surprisingly she did.

Well from there we proceeded to enjoy what could have been the shortest lived engagement in history as we spent the briefest moment enjoying what was left of the sunset before stumbling back down the slopes in the dark.  Obviously didn't really plan for the trip back down as I was too bloody nervous about the trip up and popping the big question, so really didn't come as a surprise when the batteries for the torch died about five minutes down the trail.

We did the steepest part of the walk back in the semi-dark extended twilight you get in the far south and north, it wasn't too bad, Jo did a couple of slides on her butt and a slight ankle twist but I was still managing to spot the marker posts. 

The last 15 minutes it was officially night and involved walking through a bit of forrest, a river crossing, a couple of stream crossings and a fiançe that is slightly scared of the dark...no fun at all.  Got back to the camp and then spent 15 minutes trying to find our tent which we finally found around midnight...definitely a night of mixed emotions.

Had grand plans of getting up at 5am for sunrise but decided against getting up, so hope it sucked.  Ended up getting up closer to 10am cooked an absolute shocker of a breakfast, can't even remember what it was as i have blocked it out of my memory, just know it was really bad.  Packed up all our stuff and walked out of the campsite around midday.  Did a quick side trip to a lookout for Glacier Piedras Blancas which turned out to be a long side trip as we walked past the lookout (well we went to the lookout just didn't realise it was the lookout) and walked a fairway to god knows where before turning back.

Next two hours we walked along the shores of a couple of lakes called Lago Madre and Lago Hija which involved some stunning scenery which we didn't really appreciate to the full due to assorted ailments including blisters, sore back, sore knee and general tiredness. 
Finally we go to the end of that path and had a decision between:
Right - an extra two hour of walking to another glacier and another night camping and then four hours walking the next day to get back to town.
OR
Left - A two hour walk to town and a seat at the bar for the afternoon and a night in a bed. We thought about it for a nano second before heading left. Well that was the end of our trekking experience in Los Glaciers National Park, our final day in El Chalten was spent mostly in the pub waiting for the bus to turn up, I was also drowning my sorrows due to discovering I had lost my thongs!! Surely the most disastrous event to occur on our trip so far, I reckon I might have left them in a dorm room somewhere which is understandable as they did have an army camouflage pattern on them.