A Trek

Francisco Moreno

This is steep!!

Simply beyond the beyond in all respects. Considered by many, as one of the world's great hikes and no wonder, the scenery, the wildness, the multiple summits and passes, seven and nine hour days of steep magnificent terrain,the weather which was all things; torrential rain and horizontal snow for a whole day, wind to rip you off a mountain face, beautiful calm sunshine and alpine meadows where glacial streams run amidst still flowering plants. It is the fall here.

Then to scale 1500 feet of near vertical, no ropes, ice on the rocks (each and every hand and foothold had to be inspected carefully or it would have become a sky-diving event, with no-one to watch) and me doing that part alone, praying every inch of the way..........I did it, I lived and that is exactly how I felt, when I went to sleep that night. I met an experienced Swiss couple - climbers and trekkers - and asked them how they rated the hike. 'World class,' they said, and for a Swiss that is a bigger than big statement to make -they are proud of their Alps. Another Swiss told me that the rock climbing bit for him was, "just okay," which he explained, was just that and if any more he couldn't have done it. So with thirty pounds or so on my back, I feel I have sort of joined a different group of hikers/trekkers or at least in humble part.

A young couple from Colorado, both soaked and one of whom was becoming hypothermic and panicky, scrambled down a long steep slope with me to a Lenga woodland that, in its dripping moss covered mountain fastness, could have been part of the 'Lord of the Rings' set. I cooked them-up hot soup and gave them a pep talk and they walked on for the next three hours over a pass with driving snow to the 'Refugio,' which lay like a welcoming beacon by a beautiful lake in a deep valley floor.

That before the big climb, which most people avoided and walked out down a long valley, doing a three day instead of a five day hike. I went prepared to live out if necessary but mainly stayed in mountain huts (a luxury) that are strategically placed a day apart and all in stunning locations. It is essential to go prepared and I was not cold, or wet on the mountain but several were 'shook' quite literally by the weather and ruggedness of the terrain.

Altitude was not a problem with this trek, as it stays under 9000 feet which was just fine. Navigation was difficult and cost three part-time travelling companions and me - two of them very experienced mountaineers - about two hours in extra trekking time and most of that costly, steep mistakes that required tiring hikes back-up scree covered slopes. One of those companions badly sprained an ankle on the fourth day. She was leading and slipped on an ice glazed boulder trekking down a steep incline. The ice was invisible to the eye and the rocks misted by cloud vapour the night before. Strapped and drugged to stop the pain, she had to hobble back with her companion, to the hut we had left two hours previously. I trekked on in the company of a woman who had summited Mt. Blanc, Mt. Rosa and many others. She pointed out, after the fact, one very dangerous part of the hike at which I had been very nervous. We crossed a small slippery stream, just above a waterfall that dropped about twenty-five meters. The trail vanished into a wet rock wall with no real hand-holds and perhaps a half an inch of crumbling rock projecting out along its face for about three meters, onto which one had to find a foothold. It took a long time for me to make that three meters and then only by taking my pack off and lowering it down first.

Mountains are other world places and I can feel their attraction, even though they induce a sort of out of body feeling in me part of the time. One is reduced to a nothingness and all along being subjected to forces visual and physical that take us out and beyond our imaginations. Slow and steady, well prepared physically and mentally, with the right equipment, brings a certain level of confidence but it is the sheer scale of mountains that haul one into a world that is out of the ordinary and into the downright extraordinary.

Gods come from mountains in much of mythology and no wonder. It would be a hardened intellect that did not feel a spirituality that surrounds one in the deep recesses of these magic places. It was a human god quite literally, who gave this portion of the planet into perpetual safe-keeping. Francisco Moreno the man who spent his life surveying the Western borders of Argentina in the late 1800's, was given as a gift for his services, eighteen thousand hectares. He donated it back to the nation on condition that it, along with millions of other hectares, be turned into the world's third oldest national park, Nahuel Huapi. We enjoyed our trek in the shadow and knowledge of a visionary who had the humility to recognise what it is to have such places protected permanently, from our own greed.

I owe much to Helen Murray for my ability to have handled this trek and for the knowledge that I gained from it. She taught me such a lot in three weeks of hiking in La Gomera, this past winter. I know now Helen, at least in part, why you do it.