El mes pasado

After about a month and a half away (though it feels like it has been much longer), I´m excited to finally have a travel-free and quiet day to write a little about it.

Just over a week ago, my co-students and instructors returned from a little over a month in one of the harshest environments the earth has to offer. We had departed the NOLS headquarters in Coyhaique, Chile January 8th and traveled 8 hours south by bus to our drop-off point, far away from any significant points of civilization, ferried two days later across a vast glacial lake to the foot of an enormous icefall, and for the next 30 days or so we were entirely self-sufficient. We traveled with all the gear and food needed to live without human (or any other) contact for the duration of the trip.

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Our objective was to travel a general route north and west into the mountains, onto glacier, and eventually onto Chile´s Northern Ice Field where we would hopefully attempt climbing surrounding peaks.

Traveling in this manner in the Andes can be very technical and difficult for so many reasons, the least of which is the amount of gear and food you need to survive for a month. Every time we moved camps during our ascent we were required to make two trips. First, our cache of food and supplies needed to be moved. This was the harder of the two moves initially because of the size of our food rations at the beginning of the trip. Each of the nylon potato sacks that we carried our food in weighed about 60 pounds. As one of the stronger members of the group I often found myself carrying 2 bags in my pack for the cache moves. That´ll get you into shape real fast. I was imagining moves getting perpetually easier as we ate all the food that we carried, but I was continually disappointed at the weight of my pack. At some point in the middle of the trip, the combination of increased group strength and diminished food weight won and we were able to make moves in one trip. The combination of carrying all of our food and gear at once made these the hardest moves. Throughout the trip my body found itself continually challenged to use the strength it had gained from previous moves to carry heavier loads. My pack was also challenged to hold the volume and weight as it increased along the way. I´m glad to report that we both made it through alright.

The largest challenge of doing anything in the Andes, like any mountains, is the weather. On this trip, more than any experience I´ve had in my life so far, the weather had the final say on everything. Where you went, when you went, how you felt, what you saw (everything!) was up to the weather to an extent I have never experienced. On this particular course we encountered particularly poor weather that ended up limiting us from accomplishing a good portion of our elevation gain and climbing goals. I counted no more than 4 total days of optimal weather over the month we spent there, all of which were followed by what seemed like more severe storms than we had been through previously.

In the end, we spent about 2 and a half weeks camped on snow, either on glacier or higher at 2 separate camps. We used our only semi-decent days to scout for our next camp or perform a move (all of which were in less than optimal weather). Most of that time was spent getting slammed by consecutive storms with, rain, wind, and snow in a perimeter camp, our first on the glacier. Tents were buried and multiple poles broke during two separate nights in particularly bad storms, one on the way up and another on the way down. In between our time at the glacier camp, we lived on a ridge above, which was too windy to even attempt living in tents. We dug into snow caves immediately on arrival. In the 7 days we lived there, we had only one opportunity to leave camp to explore higher, which we used to summit a small nearby peak as a group.

My descriptions of the trip may sound like complaint, but I honestly look back now with pride and fondness for the trip and having survived such an ordeal. Not only that, it was so much fun! I´ve taken away skills that I never thought I would have the chance to learn and I think I just may have a new hobby. I know I will be looking for opportunities to perfect what I have just started to learn once I get home. The only thing stopping me at this point in the severe lack of glaciers in the vicinity of New York City.

Photos, musings, more details on a month in the Chilean Andes may have to wait til I come across more proper technology.  Besides, I´m on to the equally exciting journey of being a stranger with limited language skills in a foreign place.  I could easily argue that this is more fun and intimmidating than broken tent poles in a buried tent with 70 MPH gusts on an exposed glacier.

Please forgive typos…Ciao!