El Chalten Mon Capitaine

The photo album for this entry

Our first two days in El Chalten were basically rest days. We initially arrived in town late at night, after a long day on busses getting from Puerto Natales via the Perito Moranio glacier and El Calafate. When we got into town, we just went stright to the hostel and crashed.

In the morning, we talked to our host at the hostel about the potential hikes and the weather report. There are two main full day hikes you can do, one to the base of Mt. Fitz Roy, or El Chalten. The second goes to the Laguna Seca (TODO check this) at the base of two glaciers. The weather has to be absolutely perfect for the Laguna Seca hike and it has to be pretty good for the Mt. Fitz Roy hike because it will cloud over very easily. Looking at the weather report, it looked like Tuesday (our first day) wouldn't work, Wednesday might clear up, but Thursday and Friday were looking perfect. There was one catch. We had a flight out of the El Calafate airport at 7:30 pm on Firday. It's a 3 hour drive and this time of year, there is one bus early in the morning to El Calafate and one at night. However, our host told us about a direct transfer to the airport for those flights that would leave the hostel at 2:30pm, so it would be possible to do the Laguna Seca hike, which is 3 hours each way, and still make the flight. So, our rough plan was to relax for the first couple of days, rest the knees and maybe do a short hike.

So, Tuesday, we explored town. It's ridiculously small, but spread out over about 1km, with a lot of empty lots. Apparently it was only incorporated in the 1980s and we saw a lot of construction going on. It'll be a very different place in 10 years once it becomes more popular. So after exploring, and this didn't take long, we just parked in a cafe for the afternoon that had a better internet connection than the hostel. Incidentally, it seems like all of El Chalten has a very poor internet connection, so don't plan on uploading any photos.

For dinner that night, we went to the Cervizeria, which is the town's local micro brewery that specializes in pasta and pizza. Now you might be wondering why we'd go there when Catherine can't eat gluten, but it turns out, they have an amazing gluten free pizza crust and are generally celiac aware. It's not a pizza crust the way we think of it because it's much thicker. They also seem to put their pizza's in the oven less so that the cheese isn't brown yet. Catherine got them to put it in the oven longer. As another bonus, their bar snack is popcorn. Great idea. I had some squash ravioli in a tomato sauce and their in house pilsner, which was excellent. For desert, we tried a liquor made from the local El Calafate berry. It's a dark purple berry that grows on a spiky plant in the area. There is a myth that if you eat the El Calafate berry, you're destined to come back to Patagonia. I'd say that's likely in our case.

For the second day, we had a relaxing start and then did a quick 30 min hike up to the mirador de condor that overlooks the town. Just as we got up there, the clouds finally started to break and we could see the sun for the first time in El Chalten. Later in the day, it cleared enough that we could actually see Mt. Fitz Roy from town. This was a big surprise because I thought that we'd have to hike to see it at all. Nope. It looks majestic just walking down the street.

For dinner, we went to El Murro on the recommendation of the laundry guy. It's a parilla, or Argentinian steak house and oh my, was it ever fantastic. First, the waiter was hilarious. For example, they had a number of single bottles of wine on the table that they were trying to clear out. Some were Patagonian, so we asked if they were any good. According to the waiter, absolutely not. They're terrible. Well ok, the reserve Patagonian wines can be fantastic, but the cheap stuff is awful so don't even bother.

For dinner, we ordered a chorizo (or sausage), patagonian lamb, rump steak, grilled veggies and potatoes gratin. We just shared everything. We learned that it's always a good idea to get a chorizo when doing parilla because they are cheap and they vary significantly. So, if you get into a good place, it can be mouthwatering. This one was mouthwatering. The veggies were good and smoky although the eggplant was too big so it was dry. The lamb and steak were both some of the best pieces of meat we've ever had. It's so simple. Grill up the meat on a wood fire, but the smoke, along with the fact that the animals are fed on the famous Argentinean pampas (or grassland), make the meat something special.

On Thursday, we did our main hike to Mt. Fitz Roy. Compared to Torres Del Paine, the hike was dirt easy and the path luxurious. It was wide, very few obstacles, steps on steep sections and finally, very little elevation change. There's a little bit for the first quarter of the hike out, then it's flat until the campsite at the base of the mountain. Finally, if you decide to go up, it can be a steep ascent at the end. It's about a 4 hour one way trip, so it's a long day. We got a great view of the mountain from the first mirador, which is just over an hour in. It was a crystal clear day with hardly any clouds in the sky.

When we got to the campsite, we had three choices. We could do the steep ascent up to the official Mt. Fitz Roy lookout. We could go north a little ways to another lookout, but it was relatively flat and you can't see Mt. Fitz Roy from it, only a glacier. Or, you can take the unofficial trail to the south that follows the river up the gully. Any of the options were supposed to be about an hour one way and our knees were sore so we didn't want to do the steep ascent, but, based on the topo maps, it looked like we could get a great view from the unofficial lookout, so we tried that. Big mistake. The path is reasonable for most of the way, but with about 800m to go (according to my GPS), the path ended at a boulder field that forms the river bed in spring. The river was also going through the area. This is why it's an unofficial path. It would be impossible to maintain it. Even in the fall, when the waters are low, the river is still running strong and we couldn't easily ford it. That, combined with Catherine crashing, made us decide to return back to town.

By the time we got back to town, exhausted and hungry, we were ready for dinner. We went to the Cervizeria again because I wanted to have their trout ravioli in a white wine, mushroom cream sauce. I let my expectations get too high. The trout in the ravioli was from a can and the sauce was more cream with a dash of wine instead of the wine with a dash of cream that I was envisioning. Oh well. Catherine got to have another pizza and the beer was still great.

On our last day in El Chalten, Catherine decided that she wasn't up for the hike to the Leguna Secca (TODO check this), so I went solo. I got out of the hostel at 7:30am and stumbled around town for a while trying to find the trail head in the dark. By the time I got going and reached the first mirador on the trail it was 8:20 and the sun was showing signs of starting to come up. Since I had a crystal clear view of the mountain range and Mt. Fitz Roy, I decided that I wanted to wait at the mirador for dawn and do some photography. It took a little longer than I expected and it wasn't until 9 that I was able to keep going, but it was worth it. See for yourself.

I had to be back in town by 1pm in order to have time to shower and get ready before our shuttle to the airport. That would put my turnaround time at about 10am, but the first mirador is only about 45min into a 3 hour hike. So, it tried motoring to get to the lake in time. I didn't quite make it. At around 10:30am, I was about 20 minutes from the lake and I decided that I should turn around. I was already able to see a lot of the glacier and it wasn't worth missing the plane. Plus, I had consciously made the decision to catch sunrise even if it cost me a view of the glaciers. In the end, I could probably have made it since I got back to town around noon, but you only know that in retrospect.

The hike itself is gorgeous. It's a rolling elevation hike with nothing too serious, even for tired knees. As you get closer, the two glaciers that you're aiming for start to open up and you can start to see up their valleys. It was crystal clear that day so the only clouds were those rolling in off the gigantic continental glacier on the other side of the mountains. Incidentally, if you want to be extreme, El Chalten can do it for you. The only way up Mt. Fitz Roy is, hard, vertical rock climbing. Or, you could take the many day, mandatory guide, trek around Mt. Fitz Roy and over the continental glacier. You end up spending days walking, sleeping, and living on the ice.

One last note, at the end of the hike, I ran into the two Belgian teachers again. We had met them originally in Torres Del Paine when their tent almost ended up in the lake because of the wind. They had just arrived in El Calafate and the weather report said that the clear skies were going to cloud up so they wanted to get to the Laguna Secca. It just goes to show you that around Patagonia, everybody is doing the same thing, so make friends. You'll run into them again.