Patagonia dreaming Part III

El Chalten Patagonia

Being shut down by the weather and forced to spend time in El Chalten wasn’t so bad.

There were half a dozen bakeries, several small grocery stores, heaps of out door shops and  lots of dogs to pat. All at the base of the valley with the peaks of Cerro Torre and Fitzroy in view at every turn.

Beautifully cooked Beef Steaks served at dinning tables, luxury! Dave and Vanessa got into the Salmon and Trout compromising from being vegetarian. Dave, still not feeling pressure of civilisation and dressing up. A pair of skin tight black thermal tights are fine dining attire for any well pastured climber. Silly Australian’s. Americans. Gringos!

There was sport climbing, Multi pitch sport climbing, trad climbing, high class bouldering all with a short walk from our rented Apartment. And not too far away from chocolate shops as well.

You can see the town in the background of this photo. With a convenient road at bottom of cliff.

No Scree in sight.

Why does the weather look so good when we’re in town but if you look up at the hills you should see mountains but they covered by wild weather.

Even shopping. I tried some herbal cordial. That I expected to taste like Ribena Berry Juice. But tasted Argentinean instead..

Maybe I mixed it too strong. A least I know what  foreigners (to Australia) experience of when trying Vegemite. Life is Experience.

For non climbing and non eating activities there were mountain biking, hiking all around.

2 bouldering pads on my back just like I do at home. I still get funny looks by people even in different country’s???!

They are Bouldering Pads. Google it.

Condor wall was about 5 minutes walk from our apartment. A least 180m high. Its looks at first hand 2 to 3 rope lengths high. perspective is interesting. We did see some other people on the route so we new there was a climb there to be climbed. And gave us perspective, a person body height.

There are two people in the photo below one of there names is Wolly.

Condoor Wall.

With good weather forecasting facilities from cyber space. we were able to not be in the mountains in bad weather. If the sun was out, bad weather was a relative concept. This 5 pitch sport climb was lucky to be our windiest adventure. About 180m in height. Not knowing the grade or gear needed we took the rack up as well. Even the trusty #6 camelot. The weight of the rack helped the lead climber not get blown away. The 2nders and 3rders had to toughen up. Dehydrated concrete on back order.

Its was a nice climb that took the 3 of us about 3hrs. At each belay ledge we could see our apartment a new there was a hot shower underneath that roof.

The Bouldering in El Chalten is Awesome as well. I wish I had spent more of my rest days checking them out. Bu.B.But that wouldn’t be resting??!

The steepness of some of them let me still climb/ Boulder while it was windy and raining outside. Solid rock, hard problems. Just wish I had a guide so to direct my attention to realistic problems instead of superman Patagonian style problems.

There are other tourist oriented activities like Canoeing, Puncho buying, Mate drinking and Glacier walks. One Glacier I checked out from El Calafarte was the Perito Mereno Glacier.

Awesome Gives us a little more perspective.

WOW!

That’s what I said.

Always keeping a eye on how the weather is up in the mountains. When the time is right to shoot up the valley of scree.

We were lucky and the weather report gave us a big weather window to let us play up in the mountains. 8 to 9 days.

 Here We go back up into the Valley of dreams.

Stay tuned for part 4.