My ‘Q’ (Part III of III)

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 Rock.