Feb

February 27th, 2009

Hey Everyone,

Well our trip is just about over. We leave El Chalten on March 3 at 8am for our marathon journey all the way back to So Cal. Luckily for us though the weather gods allowed us to have 1 more excursion into the mountains. We tried to hike in to the Torre Valley last Sunday but the wind and driving rain turned us away at Laguna Torre. All the residents of Casa Blanca then got an early start and headed up on Monday. The weather was good and we arrived to watch the Sender Films crew filming on Mochito.

Erik and I decided we needed a good dose of granite crack climbing to send us on our way home so we chose to head up Torre de Media Luna on Tuesday. We were treated to another gorgeous sunrise as we approached the tower and were thrilled to discover that we had the route all to ourselves, a rarity this season. Rubio y Azul (Blond and Blue) is the route we climbed and is characterized by long dihedrals in the lower 3rd, clean face cracks in the middle section, and a chimney system at the top which has an overhanging fist crack in it that forms the crux of the route. We swapped leads up enjoying a typical patagonian day in the mountains; windy and sunny. Unfortunately the weather was forecast to shut down that evening with higher winds and measurable precipitation. Erik pulled over the final roof onto the summit ridge and was greeted by the approaching storm. We chose not to make the scramble to the summit and bail from there.

Of course, how could a trip to Patagonia be complete without a full on epic? Well, we got one on the descent. It started when we couldn’t retrieve our ropes from the very first rappel. We pulled and pulled and yet they wouldn’t budge. We looked out and could see the storm building around us rapidly. Our options were pretty limited, we couldn’t reclimb the pitch since we didn’t have enough free rope to belay; prussiking up the free-hanging ropes would have been brutal and time consuming since the first 100 feet were overhanging; the last option being to cut the ropes and rappel with what we had left. The last option won out so Erik scrambled up and reached as high as he could with his knife. We were left with about 50 ft (or 15m) of each rope and we were approximately 800 ft up a patagonian spire in a building storm-the shit just hit the fan.
The descent proved to be trying right from the get-go, the ropes were first blown straight out from us and then straight up in the air! I tried to rappel but was just blown around. We changed tactics and had Erik lower me on one rope while I had the end of the second rope clipped to me. As I got to the end of the rope I would establish an anchor and then Erik would rappel down to me. Since we had an unknown number of rappel anchors to establish we conserved on the number of pieces to rap off, namely I would rap off one piece backed up to another and then Erik would remove the backup before he left the stance. Things were moving along ok in this fashion until we reached the large ledge system about halfway down. From here the standard descent route follows a chimney system straight down-not down the ascent route we were familiar with. By this time it was raining and our soft-shell garments were soaked, it was getting dark and our headlamps were in our packs at the base (haven’t I screwed up like this before), and we had to decide which way to go. We opted to go straight down figuring it was a descent route for a reason. So we continued down. Things got worse though as we found ourselves in a natural waterfall. The rest of the descent was characterized by us soaked to the bone, shivering uncontrollably at the stances, me rapping to the knots at the end of the ropes and then searching for an anchor or crack braille-style. Miracuosly I found a few existing anchors or could somehow place the correct size nut in the crack and clip myself to it all in the dark. This continued for several nerve-racking hours, all the while having to keep our cool in the face of the most intense experience of my life. Luckily Erik and I kept making sure that we each had double and triple-checked our systems each time we rappeled.

Finally we could see the snow that marked the bottom of the rappels. It still took several more raps to get there and our final anchor was a #4 Camalot-the only cam we left on the whole descent. I made it to the snow only to start slipping on the wet snow in my wet rock shoes. Immediately I fell in a crevasse. I yelled to Erik that he needed to tie off one rope so he could rappel the whole 100ft of rope we had, although he would have to pass the knot that joined them. By doing this we could continue rappeling over the numerous crevasses that separated us from our packs. We managed to do this and discover where the other crevasses were, namely by me falling into 2 more of them. We abandoned the rope and shuffled the remaining few feet to our packs. We were overjoyed at the sight of our shoes and sandwiches! After a few minutes of rest and gathering our remaining wits, we began the hike back to camp. Of course it was still windy and raining all the way back on the glacier but we managed to walk directly back to our tent with no more trouble. We crawled into our sleeping bags at 3:30am.

The storm lasted until noon the next day and that was when everyone at camp came out to share stories and dry out. We discovered that the Sender Films crew had a similar epic as ours descending off El Mocho and got back to camp only a little while before we did. They had managed to film a guy who did a wingsuit basejump off El Mocho. Our roommates Joel and Neil were in camp and watched it happen. It was really windy and nobody really thought he would do it, but the next thing they know he’s flying down-glacier in his squirrel-suit! He popped his chute but the winds were so strong that he was actually lifted another 3000 or 4000 feet higher! As he was spiraling back to camp a curious condor came and circled with him for a while.
We all sat around that next day and just ate and hung up clothes lines to dry all our remaining gear. Our original plan had been to try and climb one more day but our lack of ropes prevented that, so we packed up all our stuff and hiked out for the last time. We endowed some Belgian guys with what food and fuel we had left, shouldered our heavy packs and said adios to the mountains of patagonia. The hike out was uneventful save for the rain that fell on us for the last 2 hours back to town.

So now we’re chillin’ back in El Chalten, happy to be alive and getting ready for our return to the USA. Our bus tickets to the airport are purchased for Tueday morning, and then somebody had to go check the weather. It looks like Sunday and Monday are going to be really good! Maybe, just maybe we’ll blast back in for another round with El Mocho…

Here’s some photos for you to enjoy.

1-Torre de Media Luna in the foreground, the route climbs corners on the right side, crosses the large ledge system, climbs cracks on the face and then up through the dark chimney system just left of the summit.