Patagonia Climbing Adventures :: Día VI & VII

Scott sending the roof on Imaginate, El Campanile.

 January 29

9:00 I awake with a carefully crafted plan to spend today relaxing around el Refugio shooting Sean and Nico slack-lining - and thereby avoodomg the 2+ hour bushwhack/scramble to the adjacent valley to climb el Campanile with Blake and Scott. It's not that I don't like climbing, but having surpassed my expectations yesterday by climbing a 5.10 pitch on M2 (broken hand in tow) as well getting a number of solid shots of the guys climbing, I feel validated in a rest day. 

10:00 Over a breakfast of fried sausage and polenta cakes topped with leftover pasta sauce, Blake and Scott proceed to convince me that, contrary to my suppositions, today is not a valid rest day. Breakfast finished, I begrudgingly shoulder camera gear and straggle out of camp in their all too chipper wake.

16:00 "Validated rest days" be damned! The climbing on el Campanile is incredible. I have invented what may become a new technique in crack climbing. It is called the "cast jam". As the name implies, it consists in me jamming my broken hand into appropriately sized cracks and then using it to lock myself in while I go for the next hold. The only downside is that it requires a fairly specific crack size, and sometimes the "cast" (actually a heavily taped 6'' metal reinforced brace) gets kinda stuck. Also you actually have break your hand so you can get a cast, otherwise it is cheating. In any case, through utilizing this, and other unorthodox techniques I manage to "flash" (climb without falling - top roped) my hardest route to date (4 pitches of 5.10-5.10c), and end up on top of the highest spire in Frey with a view of Argentina surrounding, Chile to the west, and a pair of condors circling in the valley below.

17:00 Fixing a rope and lowering off the anchor at the top, I agree to a final stint "jugging" on what I have by now determined to be a very suspect 3 year old 8mm rope. Hanging in space some 30 stories above the ground, I attempt to perform some Cirque du Soleil moves to keep myself from spinning in the wrong direction as Scott sends the roof on Imaginate. The resulting photos (above/below) leave me whooping and laughing triumphantly!

Imaginate

View from the cave

Strategizing

Imaginate

Obligatory Condor shot

Scott on M2

Blake on M2

Evening boulder session

January 30

13:00  We make a mad dash decent from Frey, fueled by fresh oatmeal cookies from el Refugio, and the prospect of showers, chapstick, and a fresh pair of pants that does not have the crotch ripped out of them. To clarify, I have been wearing the same pair of pants for 8 days - the last 4 of which they have been crotchless due too abusive climbing and hiking on my part. Also, having forgotten chapstick I have been using peanut butter as a delicious but less than stylish substitute to sooth my cracking lips. We make the decent in less than 2 hours, running groups of trekkers off the trail as we scramble across ravines and huck streams in a dirtbag climber rendition of the final scenes of the Last of the Mohicans.

18:00 I part ways (as planned) with Blake and Scott, as they head south in search of more mountains, and I prepare to hole up editing photos for the next week in El Bolson.

Scott - night solos the spire next to camp in this 30 sec exposure.

Patagonia Climbing Adventures :: Día II & III

Blake Herrington on El Piramidal

  

January 25

We climbed.

Gear prep

Blake enjoying another route en El Piramidal 

Tuna + mayo sandwiches. Emphasis on the mayo.

Scott Bennett on El Piramidal

Scott sending one of the tougher pitches we found on El Piramidal

Bloody wrists - vale la pena

January 26

 

8:00 Sunrise in Frey, and I can't sleep. Sunburn on my shoulders and my general stench, combine with the whipping wind outside to bring me crawling out of the tent. Yesterday was good. I tested out the hand on a couple of pitches and we topped out on El Piramidal tower. Hand held up OK. Spent the rest of the day jugging pitches (ascending a fixed rope via mechanical means) and shooting Scott and Blake. Challenging lighting conditions, but hopefully salvageable. I should have made more time to prepare for the trip, but Japan and holidays back in NC made it difficult.

12:00 Today Blake and Scott will climb two of the tougher routes on Torre Principal (No Te Olvidarmos and Sinestro Total). Ambitious to say the least. I have opted spend the day shooting lifestyle shots - or in other words, hanging around the Refugio drinking matte, swimming in the lake, napping and stuffing my face. In no particular order. 

17:00 Folks sit in a scattered circle around tables with route maps, while a guitar, harmonica and drum are passed around - occasionally accompanied by voices singing in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German or English. Every once in awhile a particularly interesting show will come on the "Frey TV" (the tower some hundred yards from camp) eliciting yells of encouragement (or cat calls) as a climber wrestles with a crux on one of the half dozen routes that spackle the tower's face. 

sleeping in

the band

Lucia studying the route guide

rope modifications

El Refugio

Looking back down the valley from El Piramidal

22:00 I was thinking to myself just this morning that I wished I was more experienced with climbing in general, and the gear I'm using in particular. I've only just started shooting and climbing seriously a couple months ago. Well, tomorrow's the test. In the morning I will get up early to meet my new friend Julian, Lucia and their crew of Argentine climbers to try and nail a couple shots on the Aguja Frey...

Patagonia Climbing Adventures :: Día I

El Refugio Frey

  

January 24

11:00 We arrived yesterday in Buenos Aires. From there we caught another flight to Bariloche (located in northern Patagonia) and spent the night sleeping on a pebble beach on the outskirts of town. We woke to the sound of weed whackers and a beautiful view of the lake and mountains that bookend it to the west and east. 

Morning

Today we hop a bus to the trail head, and from there hike on to Frey - where we will set up base camp for the next week's climbing adventures.

Blake and Scott

17:00 Hiking. Sort of. A ravenous covey of flies, spurred into action by my irresistible stench is hot on my trail. We are doing battle. Four hours into a three hour hike and I now find myself face to face with the harsh realization that I am both the lame duck as well as the fat kid on this expedition. Not only am I out of shape, but with a broken hand and a mind and body still befuddled and in the grips of the flu, my current predicament - abandoned by my companions and veritably crawling up the mountain - should come as no surprise. 

Mired in self pity and petty thoughts of murder directed at the flies and the occasional "in shape" passerby, I hit a new low as, sloughing off my pack, I proceed to guiltily stash half a chocolate bar in a convenient nook a few hundred yards up the trail. This inspires me to put the pack back on and even serves to lighten my mood for all of the thirty seconds it takes to devour the loot. 

 

With the weight of a weeks supply of provisions, climbing, camping and photo gear (and a disproportionate amount of coffee and chocolate) begging me to set my pack down again, my mind strays back in time (aprox. three hours) to when a younger, stronger, more optomistic me had commented blithely to Blake (one of the "in shape" people) that "I would rather pack heavy and have plenty of food, than go hungry!". Ahh the foolishness of youth. At this point I would throw the rest of the food into the ravine below and canabalize another hiker when I get to the top. If only I could devise some sort of trap to snare them - "Hola!" my dark wanderings are cut short by a cheerful greeting. A group of middle aged Argentines have pressed themselves as afar away from my staggering path as they can; motivated laess by politness than by fear that my drunken sailor's walk and ponderous bear of a pack could easily knock them overboard. 

As the trees thin into subalpine terrain, it would be nice to stop and appreciate the view (read: throw up in the bushes) but I am spurred on by the fear of being overtaken again by the not too distant Snookie of a creature with whom I have already exchanged the lead several times. 

Cresting a final ridge my sullen mood is shattered by the sound of a guitar, cheerful laughter, and the bustling jingle of camp life. Desperately trying to hide my fatigue in the presence of my future friends, I up my pace to double shuffel and nearly bowl over the dark haired angle rushing to great me with a cold glass of nectar of the gods (which in retrospect I think was actually apple juice). Unsure of whether I have died and gone to heaven, or arrived in Frey, I shrug off my pack and collapse in welcome relief on the edge of the lake. 

This place is to be my photographic playground for the next week, and what a playground it is... 

Kicking it in the evening and watching other climbers on the Aguja Frey - aka "the Frey TV"

Dentro El Refugio

Dinner en el Refugio