Leaving the Gnar!

The internet is extremely slow, but I´m going to fork over the 15 pesos and try to get you all at least moderately up to speed...

We are headed out of Chalten on a bus to Bariloche tonight at 1 am. 34 hours on a bus, we might have to put down some Quilmes to help us sleep, or ambien. The weather here went south and there is a window coming up, but the days are shorter, the temps are lower, and Jay and I are looking forward to a new scene.

We ended up climbing three different routes in the Torre valley. They all were incredible in their own ways and all in all they went well. The wind kept us from the summit of our last climb, but we had great views and climbed very well regardless. (Gwen don´t read this) Jay took a fall on the ice field going up to San Raphael (our 3rd climb) and somehow righted himself, but had a bit of shock and scared the absolute crap out of me. I am not as experienced on ice and snow, so I was really paranoied on the way down and pretty much walked backward (frontpointing on my crampons) down the entire snow and ice field that evening. The conditions had changed really fast because three days earlier when we had hiked to the base of that climb the snow filed was much larger and much softer, the sun melted out the majority of the soft snow and left a big old field of ice. No bueno. Anyway, other than that near death experience, we´ve come out of Chalten unscathed. We came down to Chalten and did a 4 day backpacking trip with my friend Jean ( the 9-13) which was incredible and gave us views of the Viedma Glacier and the lake. It was about 10 or more miles of hiking a day and the third day the wind was strong enough to knock Jean and I down. I was thinking it was going to be a nice stress free walk, but nothing in Patagonia is easy. After getting back from the hike and celebrating Valentine´s day at our favorite little hotel, we pretty much moved into the hostel called Del Lago with all the American climbers. I´m hanging out with INCREDIBLE people. Athleticism that I can´t even begin to understand, but I´m happy to say they also have a lot more going on than just climbing and are great people to be with! We still had a stash up at the high camp (Niponinos) so on the 15th we headed up there. From town it´s about 10 or 12 miles I think. The wind was pretty rough that day, but we had very little to carry up there and Jay took it all. We got to high camp in 5 hours and the glaciers that we had to cross were all pretty soft since it had been sunny most of the morning. Just as we got there it started raining and it turned to snow by the next mid day. We stayed in the tent for about 16 hours trying to stay warm and eating as much as we could so we didn´t have to carry it down. We could have waited longer, but it was cold, and there was very little wind (which would have been way worse than rain). The only issue going down was that the glacier was a little harder due to the rain and we had big heavy packs on. We hiked down to our low camp (only about 6 miles) and were glad to sleep there the night of the 16th. We awoke to snow covered peaks all around us and a team of 6 very enthusiastic Russian climbers who gave me coffee and tea. We are so lucky in that the sun came out and dried up most of our stuff and we packed it ALL up and headed back to town on the 17th. Those packs were heavy, and although the trail is very easy, I had to stop often to make my hips stop screaming at me. It was so good to have it all down though!! It´s looked pretty ugly up there since we came down, but today is sunny and clear and the troops are rallying to go up ¨into the gnar¨ tomorrow.

We´ve basically been hanging out in El Chalten eating and drinking beer with some of the most amazing alpinists in the world. It´s been excellent. Alas, we are Bariloche bound. We need to climb more and stop eating so much bread! Google earth Bariloche, Mom.

I MISS MY BRUTUS!!!