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"Ale, on a scale of one to ten, how bad are these conditions?"
"Eight. Maybe nine."
"Are they getting better or worse?"
"Worse!"
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(OK, two questions was probably enough but I asked the third for good measure.)
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"If you were alone would you keep going?"
"No."
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And with that we began our hasty retreat down the Marconi glacier.
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| Whiteout conditions on the descent. |
As I mentioned previously, the weather during my time in El Chalten didn't allow for serious climbing. After resigning myself to this fact I turned my attention to finding an objective that would be possible in less than perfect conditions.
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I settled on the Marconi Pass. The plan was to hike approximately five miles to Piedra del Fraile, a small outpost on private land that sits on the outskirts of town. We'd then continue along an unmaintained trail paralleling the Rio Electrico for another five or so miles until we reached the head of the lake bearing the same name. There we'd spend the night before heading up the Marconi glacier, over the Cambio de Pendiente, and, if all went according to plan, over the pass and onto the Patagonian Icefield. The route is well traveled, nontechnical, and in good weather provides breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains -- including the Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre.
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| Map of the area. Passo Marconi is located in the top right. |
My partner for the ascent was Alejandro, an Argentine mountain guide whom everyone called "Ale" (pronounced "Al-E") for short. Our weather report showed there'd be a two-day window during which one could make it to the pass and back; and so long as you arrived before noon the second day, the weather was predicted to be OK. Our goal was to get up early, ascend the glacier, and set ourselves up to be lucky.
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The first day was rather uneventful. We left town at 11:30 a.m. and arrived at Piedra del Fraile an hour and a half later. It rained for most of the hike but that was expected.
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| Following Ale's floating pack at the start of the hike. Marconi Pass is shrouded by clouds, ahead and to the right. |
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| Views from the hike. |
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| Patagonian woodpecker. |
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| Piedra del Fraile. |
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| Ale. |
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| Our dining table. Cool fuzzy effect the result of a water-logged camera. |
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The highlight of the first day -- well, for Ale, at least -- was my extremely poor attempt at crossing one of the many streams that runs into the Rio Electrico. You can skip across most of these on rocks but there is one major stream flowing down from the Fitz Roy that requires an actual crossing. As you can see in the video below I did a shockingly poor job at wading across. The weird thing is that I knew it was going to go horribly before I started. I watched Ale go across and thought: "Boy, I probably ought to roll up my pants a little higher, use two poles, and maybe put my shoes someplace safe." But then I remembered how cold the water was going to be and for some reason decided everything would be fine if I just went for it. Poor decision and I spent the rest of the day drying out my pants.
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By around 4:00 p.m. we arrived at camp on Lago Electrico. It rained on and off all afternooon but the wind wasn't bad and we remained hopeful we'd have good weather for the next day's ascent.
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| Following Ale on the trail into camp. |
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| Our campsite. |
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| View of the lake from camp. |
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Arriving at Marconi Pass by noon called for an alpine start and thus we were out of our sleeping bags and cooking breakfast by 4:30 a.m. the next day. For our troubles we were awarded one of the nicest sunrises I've seen -- but, as they say, "red in the morn, sailers take warn."
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| The sun rising over the Lago Electrico at 4:30 in the morning. |
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| View from the tent. |
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Just as we set out from camp I turned to Ale and said, "Ale, You're the expert. If the weather turns bad and we need to turn around, just let me know." He said OK and we were off.
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| Ale on the approach to the Marconi glacier at approximately 5:00 a.m. Marconi Pass is back and to the right. The approach follows the glacier to the right of the smaller rock band. |
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| To our backs the sun continued to rise. |
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We traveled up the base of the glacier unroped -- figuring that any crevasses we encountered wouldn't be big enough to cause a serious fall -- and thus made good time in arriving at the Cambio de Pendiente. We weren't without incident, however. Early in the ascent Ale stepped onto seemingly solid ice that broke under his weight and caused him to dunk his left foot into a pool of ice water. (At this point I thought our ascent was over. I would have quit for sure.) We also fell through several snow bridges, often falling in up to our shoulders. But the weather still looked OK and so we held out hope and pressed on until we reached the base of the Cambio -- the crux of the ascent.
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| Approaching the Cambio (back right). |
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| Marconi glacier from the base of the Cambio de Pendiente. |
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| The Cambio de Pendiente. |
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The Cambio de Pendiente -- or "Change of Gradient" (I think) -- is a moderately steep rock wall in the middle of the glacier. While it doesn't require any technical climbing or rock protection, it does require half-decent weather. As climber in town told me, "You can do it in wind, and you can do it in rain, but you can't do it in both."
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Unfortunately, we got both -- and plenty of them. As we got to the base of the wall the rain picked up and water began pouring down the rock in a constant waterfall. Not only did this soak our hands in freezing cold water but it caused a thin coat of ice to form on the rock. The temperature dropped significantly and the epic Patagonian wind began to gust. Things did not look good.
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As we continued to climb I became increasingly worried about the descent given the ice build up. As they say, "Getting to the top is optional; getting down is mandatory." Barely audible over the wind I screamed, "I think it's time for a talk." Ale agreed and yelled, "Let's get behind a rock and out of the wind." So we moved for another couple of minutes before finding a rock to huddle behind. And then we had the three-question "talk" quoted above.
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Here is a video that attempts to capture the weather at the turn-around point (and sorry about the color swap; I'm not sure what happened). If we had continued we'd have exited onto the wind-swept glacier above our position.
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I don't have many pictures of the descent, figuring it was probably time to put away the camera and concentrate on what I was doing. After about 45 minutes we were back to reasonable weather and I felt fairly bitter about having to turn back. It wasn't anyone's fault; we set ourselves up to get lucky and it didn't happen. And all I had to do was look back at the clouds that enveloped the Cambio to confirm we'd made the right decision. But it was disappointing nonetheless.
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| The top of the Cambio de Pendiente. |
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| Exit would have been onto the glacier in the background. |
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| Descending the glacier back to camp. |
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| Same. |
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We got back to camp around 10:30 a.m. and decided to pack up and walk back to town rather than spend the rest of the day by the lake. By 3:30 p.m. -- approximately 28 hours after leaving town -- we were back where we started.
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