Our hiking adventures have been above our expectations, but there were limits that needed to be pushed…
After a night of asado with our new climber friend (Ryan), he convinced us that Cerro Solo should be high priority on things to experience in El Chaltén. It didn’t take long and we had our guide Mathias ready and willing to show us the way. The technical level of this mountain included glacial traversing, something Allie has the skills for but I unfortunately have no experience.
Solo is the mountain behind us, covered in snow. The plan was a four hour approach hike and then make camp for the night. Our camp was hidden amongst the trees, a cliff and and a river.
The weather had been extremely warm for the past two weeks, so an early start was a must in order to have better snow conditions. An early start is 3:30 am!
Hiking in the dark is always interesting. Hiking in the dark when the only person that knows the trail has no batteries in their headlamp is a bit more then interesting. Mathias would stop every five minutes and ask Allie to shine her light in a few spots, then look at me, shrug and say we still looked good.
Once the sun woke up, we took a break to gear up.
We spent most of the morning watching the weather in the valley come closer and closer to us.
There was this bird, a fascinating bird, who decided to befriend us for about 15-20 minutes. He just followed, watching, probably asking what the heck are we doing up here?…
The scrambling was finished and we had a few areas Mathias wanted us to rope up for. It wasn’t very difficult climbing, but as I was alone at 1800 meters I realized this was my first time ever climbing a rock with a rope. I guess it was a Patagonia immersion course…
Two hundred meters from the summit the glacier started. The snow was soft and near impossible to cross. We sat there for a brief moment to decide if it would be worth the time to cross part of the glacier and view the other side of the mountain. Then the snow and wind came. It was an easy decision to climb back down and we both were extremely satisfied with what we had already accomplished.
Cerro Solo is an amazing mountain that I will always remember. I can’t wait until next year when we try it again…
chilean wanderings 