Archive | May, 2013

My ‘Q’ (Part III of III)

3 May
We got up the next morning and knew this was the penultimate day, and while it was a crappy night with rain coming in through Pippa’s tent (thanks North Face!) and as a result all our stuff was soaked, we headed up in pretty high spirits knowing it was almost over.
We knew once we got through the ladders, we were not too far from Campamento Grey, so that was the carrot that kept us going (I think Dan, our unofficial team leader, learned the hard way that Pippa and I responded far better to carrot approaches than sticks!).
Having enjoyed the beauty of the Circuit, especially this back part, especially that the landscape and terrain were so diverse, meaning  each day had something new and interesting to walk through, to look at. 
The first ladder had been challenging with a 12k pack on, but again not that much of a big deal and scarier in our minds than in reality. But the second ladder was a somewhat different story.
As we approached, all very excited as it meant approaching the final stage, and we now knew what to expect, everyone felt a new burst of energy, but as we rounded the corner to the second ladder down, we saw the Brooklyn couple (who’d set off a fair bit earlier than us) and suddenly realised things were not that straightforward.
The girl (whose name is escaping me right now), who we’d seen practically blossom on a daily basis, having come away with zero trekking experience and be thrown by her boyfriend Dan into one of the most famed hikes in Patagonia, whenever we had a bit of a tough time, we kept saying we wondered how she was coping, and making jokes about how many make-up points she’d accumulated since heading off. “That’s one bigass piece of jewellery he owes her now…” etc) shouted back to us: “We have a big problem..”
“What’s up?” Pippa asked.
We all rounded towards the head of the ladder and looked down at the ravine, 15m or so beneath us. 
We gazed across and saw a group of others (Swedish? German?) looking anxiously over at us from the opposite side.
“We can’t get across. The rain in the night caused a landslide, and the ground isn’t stable. The Russian and English guy from this morning tried getting over. The Russian guy made it, but the English guy didn’t. He’s hurt, quite badly, we think…”
Sh1t. We panicked, where is he? Is he okay? What can we do? 
Pippa and Dan, being doctors, Bryan being of a naval search & rescue heli team and Brooklyn Dan being a paramedic suddenly formed this Lost-style cast of potential helpers and sprung into action. This is my belated contribution.
Realising he would be cold, hungry, scared, in shock and probably in a lot of pain, we tried shouting down to keep him comforted (as much as possible) and chucked some spare food at him, but he seemed pretty sensible and was keeping warm in his sleeping bag, but his arm was quite hurt.
Now, all this was found out afterwards, so apologies for the timeline of my account, but it seems as they crossed the ravine, as Matt followed Dimitri up the incline, having crossed, the ground collapsed under him, throwing Matt back into the water. Boulders and rocks then were falling alongside him, as he had to shield his head from the rocks – some of which were bigger than footballs. if he’d not done so, I don’t think this blog would take the tone it has, and his amazing cycling trip around the world to raise money for War Child would have been very sadly cut short. More on that later…
So, Dimitri ran off to get help. We kept Matt talking every 20 minutes or so, ensuring he kept consciousness, and eventually, an hour or two later, some guards arrived on the other side of the water. 
Again, putting this in context, if it had been decided that we were unable to cross, it would have meant turning around and heading back to the previous well-equipped campsite, which was Dickson – three campsites ago. That would have meant crossing John Gardner’s Pass AGAIN, all with limited food, limited fuel, very cold, wet and tired. It was simply not an option, but one we were dreading, having come so far.
Given this was Chilean Patagonia, and resources were somewhat inferior to those of the US Navy (I’m assuming), any of Bryan’s helicopter S&R experience would not be happening. We had to cross that ravine. 
Looking to the guys coming down to assess the situation, we could see that the ground had fallen away, undercutting the path they were standing on. We could only assume that our side looked in the same state, and therefore any movement was risky and any consequences uncertain.
Our hero (Miguel?) bounced down the ravine, crossed the water, unaided, to check things out. He established that Matt was stable, and that we six also needed to get across. 
In this time, new people had arrived on the opposite ledge. 
As he went back up, radioing in to someone, the Russian arrived back, along with another guy, who looked very agile, with blond hair, glasses, and a wiry frame, suggesting he was a climber of some sort and filled us with confidence. He ran down that hill testing out the route they were going to take to get us all back up the other side.
Ropes were thrown down, and any newfound confidence evaporated immediately…. 
“Those ropes are not long enough. And they don’t really look like they really know what to do with them…”
Miguel (let’s go with that for now) directed us all how to get down the ladder, one at a time. Our packs were laid gently to the floor and would be following us up afterwards. As we crossed the riverbed, with him shouting at us (pigeon-Spanish-meets-pigeon-Mime with one or two English sounds, in crisis situation, simply adds to the nervousness, by the way) to follow precisely in his footsteps if we were to make it safely across.
As we stepped onto the boulders, some of them were loose. The solution? Kick them away, don’t try and protect them from falling. Some of these boulders were HUGE and seeing them drop away, the impact when they bounced around the ravine on the way down, causing other, smaller rocks to follow suit, was an unspoken reminder of what would happen if we got our footing wrong, had misjudged the ground, or indeed what might have happened to Matt if things had taken a turn for the worse. It was scary but there was not really any time to be scared or to not trust these people, who had our safety in their hands.
A rapid lesson in reverse abseiling later, on unstable ground, with a mere rope around our waists, we all made it up safely and soundly, many thanks indeed to the TdP crew. 
Hot tea and first aid was waiting for Matt, who was lucky enough to escape with a few cuts, bruises, scrapes and knocks to his arms and leg, a few knocks to his head, some torn clothing and one helluva a story to tell in his own blog, TheCycleDiaries, which is documenting his 25,000+ mile, 35 country RTW cycling tour in support of War Child.
http://www.justgiving.com/thecyclediaries if anyone wants to donate to his cause.
Arriving at Grey soundly, the boys had gone off to the Mirador to look at the glacier and ice field from a better angle. Pippa and I just wanted some comfort and headed straight back to camp, we considered even staying in the hostel as a reward to ourselves, but decided money would be better spent elsewhere and opted for a beer and a packet of M&Ms instead, before even pitching our tent.
We had survived, with only one night left! WE LEAVE TOMORROW! 
After a stunning walk to come face to face with glacier Grey and its resultant icebergs in a tiny lake outside the campsite, we had an emotional, fun, celebratory dinner of shared resources (Matt & Dimitri had fallen short of food by this point) and the best tasting rice and pasta dishes (using my aforementioned ‘appropriated’ chorizo!), accompanied by some cheap, boxed, overpriced wine. And well deserved at that.
So, this was our final morning, bound once more for Paine Grande, to catch the 12.30 catamaran that took us back home. 
Up before dawn, spurring each other with murmurs of very tired encouragement, we were due to be setting off around 7, in order to be there well in time for the cat. It was set to be around a 4 hour walk, but we’d heard some bright young things the night before saying they’d done it in just over 3. 
Either way, it was dark and we were tired, but keen to just get it over with.
As we were finishing breakfast, all thinking how dark it was outside, we then remembered something about daylight savings time, that fell somewhere around the 1st April. We were a few days after that, but apparently being out on the trail for as long as we had, time had kind of become irrelevant to anything other than our own frames of reference – ie time between camps, between rests, sunrises and sunsets. Basically, we were up an hour earlier than we needed to be, but we set off anyway, dark, cold and very, very rainy.
This was the hardest morning, for me anyway. It simply wasn’t fun anymore, and I just wanted it over with. Don’t get me wrong, it was still beautiful, very eerie actually, with the glacier in first light, the lake taking on a grey hue with only the odd very turquoise iceberg to see, and the forest bathed in grey as well. But my fingers were frozen to the point of pain in their wet-through gloves, my shoulders were starting to ache like hell, I was sick of carrying my backpack, and sick of not sleeping. The torrential rain didn’t help, especially as, following Rusty’s advice of not wearing waterproofs during the day, I’d worn my jacket but didn’t bother with the trousers, so my legs were soaked and freezing. I was losing my sense of humour, and was beyond taking pictures as my camera would have just got wet anyway. Luckily, I have realised that I have an immense capacity for holding back energy for when it is really required, and my spare tank was full. As pacemaker (and I apologise to Dan, Pippa and Bryan once again for my lack of conversation and nutty speed going down, but I still think it was the better option!) I pretty much steamed back to camp as quickly as possible, and once I also needed the loo, the stops became pretty non-existent (too wet and cold to enjoy the views) and it was a race to get back as soon as possible.
Eventually, the rain eased, the sun started to shine a little bit, we realised it had snowed since we were last in this section of the park, which made for some really beautiful mountains, and we saw the shimmering turquoise of Lago Pehoe at the site of Camp Paine Grande, our beacon of warmth, calm, civilisation, the pickup point for the catamaran and the end of our Q. 
“Baptism of fire, Patagonia style” – Rustyn Mesdag, Erratic RockImageImageImage.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

My ‘Q’ (Part II)

2 May

And it´s now the real fun starts, apparently!

This is where the campsites tend to start running into one another, and I´m not going to feel bad any more about wondering which bit was Torres, and which bit was Dickson, and whether Perros came before Paso or not. Because a) barely any of you reading this will either notice or care, and b) because it doesn´t really matter!
The point is, that we trekked on, and on, and on, and on, and ON and it was getting harder, I was getting rattier (I realised my very strong necessity for my basic needs being met. Something my darling Omar and I have discussed many a time) as I noted the annoyance of my metabolism and the efficiency of my bladder, and basically it was yes, lovely, but also fecking annoying. This was the long day, the annoying day, and the day that you tended to wonder why you were getting rattier rather than loving it as you felt you should, and of course, it was ´cause you had been up since 4.30am! Sorry for that stream of consciousness.
Now, not all is bad. We are half way through. This is both good for morale, and you´ve seen some pretty awesome stuff, and your ego is being appeased by the fact that you´re doing longer/better/faster than the ´competitive´ Australians, the group of ill-suited girls and the (probably Scandinavian) Hot Couple.
By this point is it well evidenced that I am the metaphorical lovechild of Dan and Pippa´s personalities. Pippa and I are both equally non-competitive, and modest, and very giving yet extremely competitive when it came to other girls who weren´t either of us. Go figure.
While Pippa is possibly one of the nicest (yet cool and nice, not nice and nice) people I´ve ever met,  Dan and I were both acerbic, direct, and judgmental. Whilst trying to still feign niceness.
Sorry, yet another digression there….
So we were en route, and going at a decent pace, Bryan in tow by this point, and we hit the first real evidence of The Patagonian Winds. We were sideways up a mountain, the wind was going schiz, still looking at the (now unknown) Lago next to us, and forcing ourselves into the hillside in order to not be blown off. We were heading for Serron (I think), and also, on this day, met The American Couple (later known as The Annoying American Couple in order to differentiate, before the other ones became known as either the Nice American Couple, or simply, Brooklyn), and made some pretty decent time in our hiking.
We began becoming very excited about our markers (this section was split, nicely, into quarters, with a clear wooden sign at each sub-point, and the time taken between markers meant we were either jumping for joy and high fiving or downbeat and evermore geared up for the next stage) and arrived at camp happy and morale high. We stayed the night there, Dan very kindly lent lent me his very warm coat to sleep in, the mozzies were going bananas, but we had our appropriated brownies to make us happy, and various folk, by this point Had To Dig. We were all very cozy by now, it would seem….
Chris (Keanu Reeves, not been mentioned for a while), saw a puma about 10ft away as his was trews-round-ankles at 7am, and I´d acquired the World´s Worst Farts, through not being able to Dig for the last few days… (Sorry, again, with the coziness…)
We hit the next campsite, Dickson, in record time. So much so, that Ajay (remember him?) made it clear he was impressed, but rather than making a complimentary observation, it came across as though he was either somehow annoyed or shocked that we had done okay. This came off the back of his earlier comment, upon hearing that Dan´s tummy was feeling a bit off, and therefore we might slow down that previous morning (´´Oh, I didn´t think it would be YOU that might have not coped and been ill? I assumed as much of one of the girls, you know, complaining they needed their chocolate fix, or something…?´´)
Dickson was a turning point for us all. Morale became HIGH.
We had not only kicked arse on our timings, our packs (yes, as Rusty had predicted) were lighter and therefore less of an issue, we were all feeling positive about the fact we´d already done an amazing thing, and therefore this was all now ´bonus´ time, and we hit the camp JUST as the first real daytime rain was coming in. We knew how lucky we had been, and were not expecting it could continue. 
Dickson was a great campsite. Great. Andy, the guy who managed it, was lovely. Not quite as lovely as I think Pippa hoped I would think he was (!) but very sweet. He and his cronies soon helped us make a very easy decision as to whether to just have a hot chocolate or to splash out our one paid-for meal in their place as opposed to the last site.
I think it was the warm, comfortable setting, the wood surrounds, the showers, and general pride in what we had achieved so far that made us feel we deserved it. That, and the hand-rolled pastry we saw being made before us combined with delicious smells coming from the kitchen.
The fittest mussel and pea salad, vegetable soup and steak and vegetable pie, followed by a serving of fruit salad (a la Del Monte) felt like our Last Supper, it was that emotional and appreciated.
Sadly, after a week of very bland, predictable foods, this is where my digestive system started playing pranks on me, the swine…
Just as I’d dropped my guts inside the very small log cabin really badly and was saying to Dan (who was about to call over Andy the refugio host) ‘don’t get him over YET…’ he did exactly that. Poor Andy, but Dan and Pippa thought it was hilarious. As did I, eventually. This sadly was not a shortlived problem. We decided as a rule on the trek that ‘if you need to fart, you walk to the back of the group’. It worked, for the most part, and we even had Bryan relaxing into our toilet talk after a few days, after his first reaction to Pippa’s sprinting off to ‘dig’, shouting “sorry I can’t talk to you, I really need the toilet” was a simple, horrified-looking “you really didn’t need to share that!” As neither did I with you now, but bowel movement and digestion have been major conversation topics for the last few months, so consider yourselves involved.
We made our way to Campamento Perros, which Alejandro, one of Andy’s mates ran. We asked him how long it took him to get from one site to the other. “About two hours”. It was marked as due to take us between four and 4.5. It had been a relatively relaxed walk though, relatively speaking.
As we arrived, Alejandro had clearly been sitting there chilling for a while, grinning at us in his Benicio Del Toro kind of way. We quickly pitched our tents, hung up our food in the trees (lesson learned!) and headed down to the riverbed to have our tea and biscuits. Ajay may have actually partaken as well at this point. We had converted him! It soon became pretty freezing, so we ate our pasta pretty swiftly and headed back up to the camp. 
Alejandro was showing off his circus skills to some of the others, his tightrope act between two trees pretty well perfected. Sadly his encouragement wasn’t enough to have any of us manage more than even one step. I could stand still for a microsecond, but that was about it. So bedtime it was, all of us a little nervous about waking to the day of The Pass the next morning.
Paso John Gardner is the highest point of the circuit, which overlooks the top of Glacier Grey, which adjoins to the Patagonian ice field – the second largest in the world after Antarctica. Having been to the glacier Perito Moreno (mentioned in previous blog), how it was described by Rustyn was that if Perito Moreno was one of his fingers (and it looked pretty huge), then this ice field was his entire arm. That is what we were in for. 
However, in order to enjoy such a ridiculously beautiful sight, you have to earn it. And earning it, in this case, was getting over JGP. 
Now the trekking is not particularly arduous, compared to what we had already done, but my God, if we’d been very lucky thus far with the weather, and some members of the group starting to question what all the fuss was about with these infamous Patagonian winds, this was the day to prove itself to us all. 
We headed off as the four we usually were, assuming Chris and Ajay had done their usual earlier start, but Chris was still in his tent as we leaf the camp, so we assumed they were having a relaxed start to the day. About an hour or so in, crossing many a muddy log bridge, forested hill or whatnot, he caught us, sans Ajay. “I shouted him, he grunted and didn’t answer.”
We’d passed The Competitive Americans once or twice, with them clearly having pep talked into needing to up their pace today, all of a sudden very conscious that we might overtake them (ridiculous), and we’d not seen the nice Brooklyn couple since breakfast.
Anyway, was trekked with Chris for a while, and as the winds were picking up, we all became suddenly far more sympathetic towards Ajay, worried about whether he’d be okay on his own.
These winds were howling, and the speed was picking up as the temperature was dropping with each metre of raised altitude. 
The views were spectacular, as the autumn changes were taking place across the entire forest, now visible behind us for a lot further than we’d seen previously.
As we got higher, and the orange path markers got simultaneously harder to spot and more appreciated, the winds’ ferocity grew. I gave up on trying to get my camera out, and the poles were now not welcomed, but essential in order to stay upright. Rusty’s warnings over the wind and how it hit you were loud and clear in our heads, and we then began recognising the sound of those winds coming in from afar, and as Chris put it: “When you hear that wind approaching, you just get DOWN”, and the naturally safest position was anything with a lower centre of gravity, so it was poles in hard, bent over at waist, knees bent, and brace. Until it passed such that you could stand up and power on again. You got so that you were walking into the incline, fearful you might fall over backwards otherwise, and tumble down the hill if you got taken out by the wind. We all knew we were at a point in the circuit that we all had been looking forward to and fearing at the same time. It was laughable, and we all went to that slightly crazy place as each wind gust hit us. It was each to their own as we tried staying vertical, clambering up the hill. At one stage, Bryan needed to just get ahead. Pippa and Chris were behind me, and Dan was straight ahead. The plains are pretty open, so your only shelter is any rock you might see that is big enough to shield you. There were a couple, and they were pretty spaced out. At one stage I forced myself forward, laughing like a madwoman, whilst terrified I might lose my footing. The shards of gravel were spearing you in the face, and the winds were probably about 100kph. Dan shouts down “Are you okay?” just as a gust took me out, luckily, just in front of a huge boulder that was sitting to my rear. My legs went out and I instinctively put my arms out to protect myself, cheek and forearm making contact with the rock at full speed and having to grip the edge of it with my fingertips, but thank God! If that rock hadn’t been there, I think I’d have been down and seriously injured.
Laughing at the fact I wasn’t dead, shouted back to Dan, “That rock just saved my life!”
A few photos of those falling, suspended, into the wind shots, us screaming with how mad it was, overjoyed with having made it and then looking up and ahead and seeing the backdrop of the top view of Glacier Grey, was about as good as it gets.
We began the procession downwards, with the boys going all primal and Pippa and I just wanting to get down a level or two as quickly as possible to regain feeling in our hands (having bloody Raynaud’s phenomenon has been a killer on this trip!), and we knew we had overcome the hardest part, but still had a few major milestones to go. The steps (a series of downhill stairs that go on for over an hour – great for the knees) and tomorrow the ladders (a pair of 15m high aluminium ladders that you have to descend, cross a ravine, and then up the other side before you can carry on the final stage to Grey, our last campsite and the golden chalice we’d all been waiting for. 
We toyed with the idea of going straight through, as we hit Campamento Paso, as this was one option in order to reduce our 10 day trek to 9. Frankly, I was over it all, and losing morale frequently, and just wanted to get it over with.
Pippa was equally fed up. We talked about it, and Dan, the voice of reason, was showing us both sides of pros and cons (we’ve come all this way, do we want to rush through and only get to the nicest campsite in the dark when you can’t enjoy it, and have to trek all that way again on our sore, tired feet, etc). Chris wanted to power on, while Bryan was pretty clear he wanted to camp and enjoy the final day on a decent night’s sleep. It was opened to debate, but one look at Pippa’s feet made our decision for us. The poor girl had just hiked about 8km, up and down hills, with a full pack on, and her 6’1″ beautiful frame had been carrying all that on feet covered in about 30 blisters. There were blisters upon blisters. It made me want to cry just looking at them, and I still to this day have no idea how she managed it. Heroine. And I know she was gutted as in her heart, mind and the rest of her body she was keen to crack on, but her sorry feet held her back. So, we decided to call it a day and stop at the campsite which overlooked the glacier (amazing), with a full, clear, end to end rainbow in the backdrop (couldn’t have made it up), and our own private stream. 
Sadly, this day, the first we arrived at camp when it was actually daylight and we could have chilled out, was the day it decided to start raining, and not stop for several hours.
We were holed up in the shelter, chatting to our new friends from Brooklyn, and saying hello to two newbies who’d come from the other direction, Matt from England, and Dimitri from Russia, unbeknownst at this point that adversity would cement these new friendshipsImageImageImage…

Tags: , , , , , , ,