Tronador

(Note: It takes forever to load pictures but I’ll try to get as many as I can on here. I think if you double click on the small ones you can enlarge them.)

I had an awesome weekend hiking on a mountain close to Bariloche on the border between Argentina and Chile. Saturday began with a 2 hour bus ride, the majority of which was on a single lane dirt road. Only Ailynn scribbling on a map could have designed a road with more twists and turns. (Sorry Ailynn, but I’ve seen your artwork, and you need some practice.)

I arrived with 3 friends from my Spanish school and one local, Mario, to Pampa Linda, near the base of the mountain, around noon Saturday, and we began our ascent of the mountain. We followed a river up a narrow valley and the path quickly became very steep. The forest was filled with huge trees and it had a familiar look to it, but little things like the foreign sound of unknown birds and strange weeds reminded me I was far away from home.

Before we could even see the mountain we heard deep rumblings, almost exactly like thunder, but it was a beautiful cloudless day. As we got a little higher we caught our first glimpse of the sounds origin. Perched above a cliff was a glacier, slowly cracking and plummeting to the rocks below. The sound was incredible and the origin of the mountains name, Tronador, or ‘the thunderer’ in Spanish.




We finally punched through the tree line and continued our trek up the mountain. The views were truly spectacular. Behind us was the valley we had just climbed out of, to our left was a cliff dropping more than 1000 feet to the valley, and in front of us was Tronador, an extinct stratovalcano with 7 glaciers on its peak. We finally arrived to our destination, Refugio Otto Meiling, around 5 pm, after climbing 1200 vertical meters. The refugio looks pretty much like a tin shack with a large kitchen downstairs and small mattresses covering the floor upstairs. They claim it sleeps up to 100 people, but that is with 2 or three people per mattress.

It wasn’t that crowded at the refugio, but I elected to camp out among the glaciers and under the moon for the true trekking experience. But before sleep we enjoyed the late summer sun, explored the glaciers, took wayyy too many pictures. I got a chance to play around with my new camera and was able to take some interesting pictures of the tiny signs of life above the tree line. I’ll try to post as many as I can!

The moon was almost full and the glaciers looked spectacular in the moonlight. I fell asleep quickly, but was awoken multiple times by the wind, which began gusting and buffeting the tent. When I finally woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep, I got out of the tent for my first of two really lucky photo moments of the trip. The sun was just cresting the horizon, and the refugio and the glaciers were cast in the perfect light for photos. The temperature had plummeted overnight and the loose snow on the glaciers had frozen solid, as had the small still pools where water had collected during the day, but it didn’t take long for the summer sun to get the rocks above freezing and the melting continued.



When everyone was awake we did a little more exploring, packed up the tent, and headed back down the mountain. It was a little sad leaving the refugio because the environment was so unique and we had climbed so high to get there. If I ever go again I will plan on staying a couple days to go on an excursion across the glaciers to the Chilean side of the mountain.

We descended rapidly, and the mountain seemed even steeper going down than it did up with the weight on my back pushing me downhill. We took a small detour up the river when we reached the valley floor to see the waterfall descending from the melting glaciers above. It was here I had my second lucky photo opportunity when I was able to catch a section of ice mid-fall, smacking against the rocks and breaking into countless pieces. After seeing the glaciers from above it was great to get the view from just below them.

We returned to Pampa Linda and headed back to Bariloche via the crazy dirt road and gorged on steak and potatoes and beer after we had cleaned up a bit. It was a tiring weekend but such a spectacular experience. I’m sure it will stand out as a highlight of my time in Argentina. The glaciers on Tronador were small compared to others and I’ve seen higher mountains, but the novelty of being able to start a summer day in a hot valley, climb through forests and scramble over rocks and sleep among groaning glaciers high up in Patagonia made it really special.

I took too many pictures to count and have plenty of material for posts this week so I promise to try to keep things fresh. Ciao for now