Bright red in the morning, deep blue in the afternoon, black beans in the evening...
4:56pm, Poincenot Camp, relaxing in tent...
Our neighbors were eating and chatting loudly at 9pm last night as we were ready to sleep (can't blame them when sunset is 9:30pm). I was so exhausted that their talk of food, the cold, and hiking all becomes like peaceful AM talk radio, and I fall asleep quick (though still not before I hear Wendy's deep peaceful breaths first).
I sleep solid and wake up to the 6am alarm. There are stars through the tent window, and it's definitely time to get up for a sunrise hike to Laguna Tres. As I put on my pants in the tent, I notice the tag says "Womens size M". I do a double take to be sure they aren't Wendy's. Guess I've been wearing women's hiking pants the past 4 years. Can't complain though, as I love them. My parents got them for me on clearance and an EMS going out of business...
Our small day packs were readied last night by Wendy while I was journaling, so we get out and are ready to go. The stars are gorgeous, with the milky way easily visible above. I also notice a crescent moon just beginning to rise up above the trees. We don our head lamps and leave camp. We quickly run into a large group of people making the morning hike, 3 of 7 who don't have a head lamp, and they move slowly. After a descent to a small bridge (a sign says 1 person at a time), the trail leaving the rocky stream bed into the woods is hard to find. We follow the group the wrong way for awhile, then follow a different group (our noisy tent neighbors, from Canada), that find the right way. The trail begins its 1400' climb, first rising through woods, then ascending on dirt and rocks amidst small brush. It doesn't seem as steep as the Torres climb, but feels longer.
I stop often and take lots of pics of the morning sky as I find rocks on the turns to setup my tripod. My camera battery dies, but that's ok, since I brought another fresh one on this hike. Wendy continues on way ahead. About 3/4ths of the way up I see the tip of Fitzroy above the top of the hill, and it looks a bit pink already. I start to think I'll be late, but it's just my eyes playing tricks on me, as sunrise should be another 45 minutes away. The climb is long and slow going first thing in the morning. I try to hike quickly over the next 10-15 minutes, and almost catch up, but Wendy still beats me to the top.
With the use of my tripod, and a helpful camera tip from Victor to enable long shutter speeds, I was able to capture some previously unattainable pre-dawn pics. I was amazed how well they came out. Notice the star in the upper left corner, and at the edge of the light horizen...
Another pre-dawn look at bit further up the mountain. After reaching the first lip, there was another section of rock to climb...
My head breaks the horizen as I reach the top, in this pic from Wendy. The view of Laguna del los Tres and Fitzroy, still 30+ minutes til sunrise (the tripod helped in the low light)...
Me in action, taking a photo of the horizen from our vista point...
We arrive at ~7:45am, and the trail took us just over an hour from camp. I count 15 people already here waiting for sunrise. There's not a cloud in the ENTIRE sky! We walk out a bit to separate from the crowds, and start waiting the 30 minutes til sunrise, taking pre-dawn pics.
The tripod and timer worked well this trip. Sitting around waiting for the sun was cold, and I put on all my layers...
Finally ~8:20am, the tip of Fitzroy turns light pink. The color darkens a bit and starts sliding down the peak. The total lack of clouds prevents a truly magnificent deep red glow of the early light reflecting off the clouds, but still, the red spreading down the mountains is quite pretty, and we take plenty of pics.
The first signs of red on the tips of Fitzroy. Lots of pics would follow...
The pink spreads down the grey face...
A cropped pic of red spears...
Some zoomed in shots from Wendy's camera...
A bit repetitive perhaps with all these pics, but hard not to include them all...
Our elevation here is ~3,840', and Fitzroy is over 11,100'...
We heard avalanches, even before the sun was out...
Not a cloud in the sky this morning...
It's starting to turn orange-gold now, not much glow left...
And soon the sun creeps to the lake and lights us up...
When the sun is all the way out, we scamper down towards the lake, and up a rocky viewpoint on the left, which gives us views of a huge glacier hanging down a cliff to Laguna Sucia below on the left, as well as Laguna Tres on the right (and Fitzroy towering above). Surprisingly, we're the only ones that come to this lookout this morning. This is the prime view of the area, and apparently most people don't know to make the small extra hike.
A look at Laguna del los Tres, with the sun almost ready to reach it, as we move to our next lookout point...
The view from a short hike to the left shows Laguna Sucia below on the left, much lower than Laguna Tres...
A look at the streaming waterfalls pouring down the cliffs from the glacier...
No one but us from the ~30 people at the lookout this morning came to this spot...
We relax here for awhile, as we have all day to explore the areas around camp, and take our pics. After it's been ~90 minutes since we first reached the Laguna Tres, we start the return hike back to camp. Our legs are tired from the steep hike up, and we are slow coming down. We arrive back to camp ~11am, and cook a big breakfast. Wendy mixes sausage and powdered cheese into her oatmeal. I make a great blend of oats, sugar cereal, and the fruity pudding. We overhear our neighbor talk about how they only sell unflavored oatmeal here, and so he bought and carried a huge bag of sugar to use. My sugar ceral mix was a better solution. Two bowls for each of us today. Then I eat some more peanut butter, and Wendy makes a ham and cheese sandwich too, and we eat a snack bar. Big breakfast/lunch. Again we brought lots of food, so that we can pig out. :-)
I put on some sunscreen now that the sun is up and there are no clouds. Another pic of Wendy in front of Laguna Tres before we head back...
A look back up the trail to where Laguna Tres sits beyond the crest. I stop for some great tasting water (better than the stream near camp) along the path...
Wendy crosses a small bridge near camp. The 1400' trail up to Laguna del los Tres can be seen etched up the hill in front of Fitzroy
Still clear blue skies out back at camp, and no wind (even at the top this morning). It was really cold overnight though, and this morning (I wore all my upper layers at the top), but is pleasant now...
After lunch I hang the food again. There are several plastice garbage bags ripped on the ground with garbage and food spread everywhere. Was it mice? Birds? There are large Chilean birds around, that walk funny... Our hung bags were safe last night.
A couple of these birds were marching along the outskirts of camp, bobbing their head very peculiarly. Our orange & red resuable shopping bags worked as excellent hanging food bags...
There are two day hikes I have planned: Laguna Sucia, which we saw from above this morning, and Piedres Blancas Glacier, the blue hanging ice that we could see from the hike in yesterday. We decide to head to the glacier now (12:30pm), since the sunlight will be better from the north. It looks like a 1 mile hike on my map, so we head down towards the stream and 1 person bridge again, and this time take a different trail once we enter the woods.
The trail heads down along the stream, and cuts back and forth between the edge of the forest and the rocky stream bed. The trail is mostly level, but with several ups and downs in some of the forest parts. We see only 2 other people on this trail (behind us), and they apparently turn back 30 minutes in. After 50+ minutes, I stop and consult the map, as I'm thinking we must have missed a turn off. I spend a good 15 minutes deliberating, and decide to go back, but then reconsider the map after a minute, and decide to continue further. In just a few minutes, we find a turn off around a bend leading to an obvious opening in the mountain. Guess we were just going super slow today with tired legs, and it seemed like we should have passed it already.
A look at the trail running along the edge of the forest and stream...
We hike in to the rocky opening, and soon see a magnificent glacier of the deepest, darkest blue we've see yet! It's a tricky path to follow, leading up the rocky gully to the glacier. There's plenty of builder hopping and searching for cairns, and a stream flowing down the center of the gully. It's unclear if we're supposed to cross the water or not, as there's a path on both sides. We scramble for quite a bit, and I tell wendy to make sure her camera is safe, cause boulder fields are notorious for eating up anything that falls out of your pocket. I've lost 2 knives and a water bottle into the cracks between boulders in CO before.
There was a large boulder field in the glacier opening that we had to scramble quite a ways over. Notice Wendy at the bottom of the 2nd pic...
Getting nearer to the glacier. Lots of big boulders to work around. The cairned trail was a bit hard to follow, and we often forge our own paths across. Wendy and I take pics of each other from our vantage points...
Eventually, and fairly swiftly, we reach a large pool in front of the glacier with small pieces of ice floating in it. The view is simply phenomenal, and entirely unexpected for this hardly ever mentioned about hike. Wendy declares it her favorite view of Patagonia so far, and it trumps Laguna Tres as the best view of the day for me too. More people should come here. We only see 2 people on the other side of the stream.
The Piedras Blancas Glacier! Clearly a worthwhile hike. The waterfall coming down the right of the glacier was huge...
Wendy finds a small piece of ice near the edge of the pond and pulls it out ("It's really heavy!"). She always wanted to try eating the blue ice, and now's her chance. She wastes no time giving it a lick once she has it on shore. I try afterwards. Good ice. We leave the mini iceberg on the rocks to melt away.
As soon as we reached the pool, I looked back and saw Wendy eagerly pulling out a piece of ice...
When I remembered how much she wanted to taste blue ice, it all made sense. I also gave it a lick...
We hang out for at least 45 minutes is this awesome locale. We see several avalanches, and gaze and the powerfully huge waterfall. I propose trying to cross the stream to see the view from the other side of the pool, so we go back and look for a crossing. There's lots of unsafe crossings, so we keep scrambling further back looking for a safe one, and finally give up. But we're not done admiring the glacier so we scramble back to the pool for more.
Wendy posing in front of her favorite Patagonia scene so far...
A group shot, and a good look at the waterfall on the right...
Check out these pics of an avalanche caught on film! It looks like a puffy waterfall...
Wendy relaxes and enjoys the view. I think she could have spent all day here...
Another avalanche caught on film, near the same spot as the first. Plenty of ice in the pool...
On the way back to the pool, I find a scenic rock to take a pic from. Wendy says she'll take a pic of me and the glacier, so I go to put my camera in my pocket, and some how MISS! My camera falls to the rock, the battery pops out and slides down the rock slab towards my feet while my camera cartwheels across the rock in an opposite direction, over the edge. I bend down to pick up the battery, and hear the camera hit a rock below, and see it continue to spin and bounce over and down another rock before it lands in the shadow of a rock about 15' below where I'm standing. Did that just happen? Is this real? My web journal flashes before my eyes, as the fate of the 1400 pics stored on the memory card in my camera could end up buried in a boulder field... Wendy looks at me from several rocks away, equally surprised at what just happened.
I can see the camera located on some dirt next to a rock down below, so the worst possibilty didn't happen. I climb down to retrieve it, and know that at least I'll be able to keep my exisitng pics on the SD card. I pick up the camera, with the battery door hanging wide open (amazing it didn't break off), and slide the battery back in. The door closes ok, though it's got a minor dent on the corner. Ok, time to see what the damage is... I set it to playback mode, brace myself for disappointment, and turn it on. My last picture pops up on the LCD. Amazing that the LCD didn't crack! I've had a past camera's LCD crack when falling 30 inches onto a carpet. Ok, time to see if the lens mechanism works. I slide it to picture mode, and I hear the sweet mechanical buzz of the lens opening! The zoom works fine too. I try taking a pic looking up at the rock I was standing on when it fell, and it works! Man, this camera is built well! The body has several minor scratches and dents, but amazingly it seems to have been given a 2nd life. I can now get back to normalcy, and am very thankful.
The last pic I take before dropping my camera 15 feet into the rocks...
I test out my camera by taking a pic at Wendy. A look back up to the rock I had been standing on when I dropped it (the top rock)...
A stitched pic of me down low where I retrieved my camera, and me on the rock afterwards, where I dropped it (missing my legs). A look down where my camera landed, in the shadow of the rock to the left of Wendy's feet. Can you believe it didn't sustain any damage???
We hang out at the pool for another 20 minutes, and are disgusted to see an arriving hiker strip to his underwear and go in the pool for his friends to get a pic of him. We're all supposed to keep the water pure! Clouds are in the sky now, just little ones, but I'm wondering what the weather will be like tomorrow. It can't stay perfect here forever, can it?
As we head back across the boulders, I'm careful to keep my camera secure. We reach the trail along the stream and hike back to Camp Poincenot, looking forward to meet up with Victor and Christine in the evening. However at 4:30pm, when we arrive back at camp, we see no sign of them, though we don't know what their rented tent may look like. They're probably up at Laguna de los Tres for the afternoon. There's more clouds out now, and they cover some of Fitzroy, which makes the mighty peak look even more huge and impressive (Wendy hadn't fully appreciated it's enormosity until now).
A last look at Peidras Blancas (from the rock I dropped my camera), and then the boulder hopping commences as we make our return to camp...
The path across the boulders stayed close to the green stream, but needed to work up and around bigger boulders...
We found a calafate berry bush just past the boulders. I tried some, but they were a little bitter. I head back on the trail, following the stream...
There's people sun bathing around camp in the open area. I'm tired and head into the tent to rest and write my journal. I now listen to new campers arriving and setting up tents nearby. Wendy falls asleep instantly after laying down on her sleeping bag. A shadow from a cloud dims the orange tent walls once in a while. The temperature feels a bit cooler the last 20 minutes. Might be a change in the weather? We're ready to get dinner going with V & C when they are back in camp. Our plan for tomorrow is to watch sunrise from camp in the morning, then hike to Laguna Sucia before packing our big bags and hiking to Cerro Torre for our last night backpacking in Patagonia, followed by the glacier trek the next morning.
Back at camp Victor and Christine are nowhere to be seen, but likely up at Laguna Tres. The first clouds we've seen in the past 2 days appear in the sky, and huddle around Fitzroy...
We get back outside ~6pm, and there's still no signs of Christine and Victor. Clouds surround the top of Fitzroy now. I start getting dinner ready around 7pm, as we can't wait much longer for V & C. Wendy slices up chorizo (a tasty sausage), and I boil water to cook dehydrated refried beans and black beans. We add some parmesian cheese and the chorizo into the bean mix, and eat it with bread.
Victor and Christine show up as we finish eating. They got to camp at 2:30pm and spent 4 hours up at Laguna Tres enjoying the views. They bring their food over and cook some canned tomatos and beans into a soup with my stove. We talk about plans for the rest of the week. We'll meet up again on Wednesday night at the hostel in El Chalten, and again Thursday night in El Calafate.
Back outside from a rest in the tent (and journal update), the sun is getting ready to set behind Fitzroy again...
A black and white rendering of the sun getting pinched behind Fitzroy today. Later in the evening the skies cleared. Hoping for another sunrise opportunity tomorrow...
There's tons more campers at Poincenot today than yesterday for some reason. Must be Monday nights are more popular than Sunday nights. The open space near our tent site has 10 tents set up in it now (none yesterday), but none of the campers are noisy fortunately. There's just a soft mixture of foreign language chatter as I lie here in the tent writing this. It's decent white noise. Plenty of Britains here. Lucky Europeans with their high valued pounds and euros... Though the dollar is still respectible here somehow.
8:30am sunrise tomorrow. We'll watch it from camp this time. Clear skies as we go to bed. Getting chilly again...
Distance hiked: ~6 miles