(Route topo here: http://www.pataclimb.com/climbingareas/chalten/fitzgroup/exupery/chiaro.html)
Tony and I arrived in El Chalten, the gateway town for the Fitz Roy massif, a day into a veritable heatwave. The town, we were told by a local builder, has grown from a collection of 20 families fifteen years ago to its current population of about 1000. This rapid increase is in response to the commensurate increase in the number of people visiting the adjoining Parc Nacional los Glaciares for both walking and climbing. Consequently the town provides a comfortable base, with its myriad of bars and bakeries, and the chocolateria!
Tony lamented his lack of shorts in the unexpected heat. We'd been expecting to suffer through atrocious weather in our full-on hardshell gear! We organised ourselves and packed our bags on our first morning in town, wishing we had been able to leave the previous day like everyone else will have done. The few climbers remaining in the valley expressed surprise that we hadn't left by midday. The observation grated more with Tony than it did on me, my relative ignorance protecting me from anxiety about the length of the walk-in and conditions of the glacier.
I'll exhibit some restraint and stop short of describing the walk-in as hellish, but it was a pretty grim experience. Losing the faint trail early on and having to scramble across a scree slope that was barely supporting its own constituent parts was one particular highlight. Second on the list was the ongoing discomfort in my right ankle, unused to heavy mountaineering boots. The scree slope was followed by a glacier crossing, during which Tony was kind enough to provide subtle advice and instruction disguised as off-hand comments, allowing me to avoid acknowledging the full degree of my incompetence in this environment.
Arriving last, we had no choice of sites at the bivvy area, so settled for a cramped spot between a boulder and a rocky windbreak. We left the bivvy at 4am, insufficiently rested from a combination of our late arrival the previous evening, and having shared a sleeping bag inside the double bivvy bag. We made our way up the approach gully and across snow patches, silenced by the effort, our anxiety and haste. This pre-dawn quiet was broken by voices approaching from below. Even before their words were audible, the conversation was recognisably North American in its giddy excitement.
Jason and Hayden shared their bright eyed enthusiasm with us as they effortlessly overtook, directing some of their surplus energy into feeling stoked for us. I didn't have the energy to feel stoked for myself; I already felt fucked.
Burnt off already, we soon returned to our silence. I remained aware of our companions somewhere up ahead of us by their continued chattering. I continued to breath heavily in an attempt to keep up with Tony.
Tony gave me the first block of 5 pitches to lead, which included the crux pitch. I looked forward to this, as I am recently practised at granite crack climbing, and hoped that leading these pitches quickly would make up for my general mountaineering incompetence, which was all I had managed to contribute thus far. The climbing turned out to be easier than expected, lots of laybacking rather than awkward jams. We followed long corners and juggy flakes for pitch after pitch. Climbing quickly was simplified by the rough solid rock, the amenable angle, and the windless sunny weather (the calmness and warmth we experienced is almost unprecedented here).
Despite feeling that we were moving well (especially given that we'd never tied on to a rope together), Tony and I were barely over half way when we heard the whoops of team North America having already touched back down! So maybe we weren't that fast afterall. I inwardly made excuses with some vague reference to a sore ankle.
Tony soon lead us up the final chimney system. On the summit ridge he cunningly drew on all his mountain experience to beta-sandbag me in such a way that he took the final lead to sit on the summit first. I soon joined him, and together we enjoyed the experience of sitting on a Patagonian summit.
Abseiling down was as time consuming as usual, but remained mostly uncomplicated. Reversing the gully back to the bivvy was made confusing by the fact that it was now night time (in spite of the 18 hours of daylight that we'd fully used), and the manner in which features morph and distance perception alters in darkness. We walked in circles somewhere in the vicinity of where we wanted to be for an indeterminable length of time. Eventually we stumbled back into our bivvy, through a mixture of chance and pseudo-navigation.
Another night was spent struggling to rest, fighting over the larger share of the sleeping bag through fluctuating consciousness. I discreetly tried to win back my half of the bag, but had to take care as waking Tony would inevitably lead to a loss of my increased covering. From the frequency with which I woke up cold, I guess that Tony was fighting the same battle.
Walking out on the final day was a similarly long and tiresome experience as it had been on the way in, moderated by some better route finding but exacerbated by tiredness and the growing pain in the Achilles tendon.
We staggered back to the campsite and greedily consumed anything immediately consumable, before heading to the nearest shop and continuing the treat train. Unfortunately, I was unable to alight this train for the next two weeks. My Achilles had swollen so much that all walking hurt.
Thank goodness for the chocolateria!
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