Straight south of Piedra del Fraile is Col. Electrico (1880m). Just a baby. However, it’s a 1000m four hour slog straight up a somewhat maintained trail to the base camp @1500m (with another hundred or so to the viewpoint at Paso del Cuadrado). This last trek in Patagonia is a good example of why it […]
C.B. Poincenot is one of those conveniently located trekking camps that accommodates early morning hikes to strategically located vistas (all without the nuisance of carrying along your gear). Lago Los Tres is about 40 steep minutes from C.B Poincenot and certainly worth the time. It’s also where I left my nice pair of wool gloves. […]
Argentina is crammed full of cool little towns, especially near the mountains. El Chalten is one such location. Cool and rustic with an edge of unfulfilled promises, El Chalten was developed from the ground up (a planner’s dream case-study, by the way) in 1985 as a deterrent toward Chile with a side consideration as a […]
From Puerto Natales it is a quick hop to the Argentinian border where one is immediately reminded that the Falkland Islands (if you didn’t know) do indeed belong to Argentina (best to ignore that they were decisively defeated by the UK in 1982). The 30th anniversary of that conflict was being ‘celebrated’ while I was […]
One of three navigable channels linking the South Pacific to the South Atlantic, the Beagle Channel earned it’s name from the passing of the HMS Beagle in 1833, carrying a relatively unknown naturalist named Charles Darwin. Given it’s relatively narrow attributes, most of the large ship traffic chooses the more southerly Drake Passage or northerly […]
Bragging rights to the “World’s most…” is often a semantic debate, especially when discussing geographic locations or points of interest. Reaching for the most southern settlement is no different. Ushuaia claims itself as the most southern city in the world (pop. 57,000). The permanent Amundsen-Scott Station is the most southern inhabited location on earth, at […]
Day three begins with an ascent toward Laguna Azul from the previous nights camp at the base of the waterfall (this river probably has a name, but I can’t remember it…a side loss from waiting several months to write a blog post). Fire damage continues to be quite extensive during this ascent, making the path […]
Like most (probably all) mountain climates, the weather along and within the circuit is extremely temperamental. Sight lines within in the valleys are short and massive systems can jump in unexpectedly. That said, the weather during our four days was generally fantastic. This is contrast to other online accounts of the trek and of Tierra […]
When I was planning my journey to Argentina I opted out of purchasing the full country Lonely Planet. Full-country LP’s are generally very weak in the trekking & wilderness department as they are keen on one purchasing their trekking guides (they have also moved that direction with urban travelling as well, gently reminding readers that […]
It’s been ages since I hammered something out on this website, yet with a journey to the end of the world under my belt, It seems right that that it be documented in a more permanent fashion that a bunch of photos and lame status updates posted on Facebook. Patagonia has always been high on […]