Desolation Chalten: The Cerro Torre Hike

Face to Face With Cerro Torre

I had never seen a picture of the Cerro Torre, so I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking for. I had never even heard of it until coming to El Chalten. But I assumed, like the Fitz Roy, that I’d know it when I saw it. The problem was there was nothing to see. Yesterday’s late start turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we found out late evening was the best time to catch a break in the weather, but in the morning hours, the distant peaks remained permanently buried in clouds. Not that we were foolish enough to expect the same luck to strike twice. As far as I was concerned, we had already accomplished what we had came here to do — to hike. Today was just gravy.

There was a new layer of snow over yesterday’s snow which had now turned into ice. Once again, we were grateful for the European’s taking the lead because there were some parts where the ground was so white that we depended on their footsteps to guide us through.

Without Alex, it was just the three of us now. At times, we wondered if we should wait for him but at the same time we didn’t want to break from the good time we were making. The girls chatted while I led, really starting to get into the mood now. It was too bad that I didn’t get a chance to visit the wilderness as often now as I did when I lived in California, where Yosemite National Park or the Grand Canyon was just a weekend road trip away. Add to it, age. The cliché rings true in that the older you get, the harder it gets to find time for indulgences such as hiking trips. So, I enjoyed today for what it was, a cloudy, viewless stroll in an Argentine national park and hiked in calm solitude. I imagined if I had another month, then I would really get a sense of these woods. These things weren’t possible on a two-day trip.

When Alex finally caught up, I asked him where he had been. He said he kept jumping off the trails to take photos and had already shot three rolls of film.

“Of what?” I asked, looking at the doom and gloom all around us.

“Look behind you,” he said.

Being so focused on the End Goal, I had completely neglected what stood behind us. In particular, a dome-like, silver-colored mountain that shown like a prism in the glistening sunlight.

“Wow,” I muttered out loud.

In any other national park, whatever that mountain was would be the centerpiece with an exotic Tolkien-esque name like “Misty Mountain.” Here, it was just part of the backdrop.

Eventually, we saw it. Or at least the tip of it. And then the clouds came and swallowed up the peak of Cerro Torre before we even had the chance to adjust our camera settings. But it was enough. It gave everything we needed and more. It gave us inspiration.

We moved on.

After a while I noticed a strange thing. That the big lumpy thing covered in snow straight ahead was a glacier. We were so focused on our search for Cerro Torre that it didn’t even occur to us that we might stumble into such an extraordinary thing. The glacier (we didn’t even know its name) was just hanging there as if it was snowboarding off the mountain and at the last moment changed its mind and came to a frozen stop. For the rest of the hike, I walked with the unbelievable realization that I was indeed walking towards a glacier, as if the glacier was my apartment on Humboldt Street or the supermarket where I bought eggs. What’s more, in an open plane — free from the obstruction of tall trees or other mountains — your perspective tends to get all jumbled up, so even though the glacier was miles and miles away, it appeared as if you could just reach out and grab it. But something didn’t sit right. The reality was, I wasn’t just walking home to my apartment or the grocery store; I was walking towards a 3,000 year old field of ice bigger than the entirity of Brooklyn, and the most incredible realization of it all — I was actually going to get there! It was hard to shake off the disbelief, so we did the only thing we could — put one foot in front of another and kept moving.

A couple of hours later, we reached the end of the trail and came upon the lake where the glacier spilled into — or rather, it would have if the lake wasn’t also frozen. (This must be what C. S. Lewis envisioned the White Witch’s frozen realm to be like in the Narnia books.)

Glacier spilling into a frozen lake. The bluest parts of the ice are the oldest.

And then, behind the glacier, soaring in the distance like a majestic flag on the moon, was the Cerro Torre itself, the highest tower in the four chain mountain.

We had originally planned on a picnic at this section but we already ate most of the food we brought with us from El Calafate and hadn’t been to a market in El Chalten. Besides, nothing would match the mother of all steaks that were consumed the night before. I might as well have retired my tastebuds right then and there! Add to it, the open lake made it extremely windy, so we took a few snapshots and quickly climbed down.

On the way back, we ran into Alex once again. He had caught up with the Dutch girls and was still going at it with his camera. We told him how much farther he still had to go and that we hadn’t eaten lunch yet.

“We’re gonna find somewhere to stop along the way,” Allison said.

“Where? McDonalds?” he said, smirking.

He held aspirations of catching up to us, but we knew it wasn’t going to happen. The clouds were showing promises of clearing up and we knew he would go to town with his camera as soon as that happened. Besides, our legs had been stretched. We were expert men and women of the mountains now, and we too had Eiger Dreams. The lake, the glacier, the Cerro Torre towers had lifted our spirits. Nothing was going to slow us down. Within moments, we were running through the snow-covered fields with a cold breeze burning through our eyelids.

I know New Zealand usually gets the cred’ for any “Lord of the Rings”-esque visions, but walking towards the Cerre Torre tower — eternally shrouded under a mist — did actually feel like approaching the evil tower of Mordor. The only thing missing was a pesky bald-headed creature following us around and a vagina-shaped burning fireball with a dark eyeball spinning in the middle.

And for a few moments, the clouds did part so we were treated to what we came for: views. And what views! The views were the only things that slowed us down. We’d be walking for several minutes, when all of a sudden we’d sense that someone wasn’t following and we’d turn around to find them with the jaws open, mumbling to themselves. “So amazing. This place is so amazing. Guh!”

• Photo Essay: Cerro Torre in Photographs
• Photo Essay: Fitz Roy in Photographs
• See all photographs from Cerro Torre on Flickr.
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