Trekking in the Andes
No regrets is what they say, right? We couldn’t pass up the chance to go hiking in the Patagonian Andes, or trekking as it seems to be called in the rest of the world.
We had talked to the guys at the National Park office and at the Club Andino Bariloche to find out where to go and what to expect. There is a pretty popular 3 day/2 night hike with stops at refugios along the way. The refugios offer food, overnight stays and cooking facilities, all for a slightly elevated prices. For those of you interested in more details, you can check out the place we stayed, Refugio Frey. As you might expect, half of the fun is that we don’t have any of our normal hiking/camping stuff or at least very minimal. We figured we could get by without a stove and eat dinner at the refugios and have breakfast and lunch without heating anything up. So all we really need to rent is a tent, sleeping bags and a pack to carry it all.
After making trips to three different rental shops, the grocery store and repacking everything in the middle of a park, we were off to the bus station to get a ride to the trail head. After two hours of waiting for the bus, then almost missing it at the last minute, it was a quick ride to the base of the mountain. We then had a couple of options, take (and pay for) the ski lift up and walk for four hours, or just walk four hours around the mountain instead of up and down. We went with the cheap route. Most of the trail was pretty easy, but the last mile or so was almost straight up hill. BTW, we have noticed that Argentina doesn’t believe in switchbacks, so we’ll see how long these trails last. With the wind picking up, we quickly pitched our tent and hoped it was sturdy enough to last the night. Dinner was basic, but very social. Lots of people were telling us about the spectacular views form the lift route, but we figured we see enough of that the next day.
As the winds picked up, the rain started and the temperature quickly dropped. So much so that we awoke inside a snow cave. Our little tent had survived the night and kept about four inches of snow from falling in on us and we get a little extra insulation. All at an elevation of 1700 meters in the summer?!?
We retreated to the refugio for some hot chocolate to go with the rest of our cold breakfast and tried to find out the forecast and trail conditions. Strangely, these refugios don’t really have a weather station, just a high-frequency radio for emergencies. With the wind still howling and snow still falling, they could not advise us to go onto the next refugio. Do we stay another day or go down the way we came now? We decided to use the refugio for shelter and sleep there that night and hopefully go down the chairlift route the next day. The rest of our snow day was spent playing chess, cards, socializing and drying out our rental tent in the gale force winds. There was quite a mixed bag of people there. Some serious rock climbers, I can’t imagine hauling all that gear up there, people on summer vacation from other parts of Argentina and a fair number of foreign travelers as well. Refugio Frey is apparently quite a climbing destination, and people spend weeks to months up there waiting for the right conditions to climb this or that route.
The next day was clearer and less cloudy so we headed out for the infamous chairlift route back down. We made it over 1 ridge to a lake and then about 100 yards from the top of the second ridge before we had to turn back. The snow was starting to melt, making the terrain very slippery and some of the trail was more like rock climbing than actually hiking. We snapped a couple of pictures and returned the they we came with a two hour sightseeing adventure at the beginning.
Back at the base of the mountain, the chairlift had not been running that day due to the weather! So, it would have been a long walk down either way we went. Back in town the trekking continued as we had to return our gear to the respective three shops and then back up hill to the hostel.