I can't make the southern migration this year, so this goes out to all the monkey who have ventured south to chase big dreams in the world's worst weather...
Time Dilation
There’s a land at the end of the world that sleeps and wakes
in its own time. It lies alone in the vastness of the ocean, the only land
piercing otherwise unbroken sea. The wind whirls around the Antarctic vortex
with the force of a spinning planet and slams into this land with cold
indifference, a mere speedbump on its eternal journey around the pole. It is a
land of fire and ice, stone and sky, where the stoic icecap feeds torrential
rivers into broad sparkling lakes that spread out into the endless brown of the
pampas, and it all quivers and breathes beneath the incessant wind.
There’s a town in this land at the end of the world where
wanderers and athletes and dreamers collect every austral summer to sit at the
base of the mountains and wait for their chance to venture upward. They come from
every continent, represent every type of lifestyle and profession, and they
arrive laden with bulging duffels and potent dreams. They bring the newest
ropes and mountain boots and alloy crampons, they bring carbohydrate goo and
freeze-dried meals and US dollars and empty memory sticks for their cameras and
hope, hope, hope.
People bring their stories. Some leave whole narratives at
home, some have no home except the pages they are continually scripting. They
all come to this town at the land at the end of the world to write new chapters
to their stories. They come to observe, to taste, to experience…but once they
stay long enough they realize that regardless of the success or failure of
their personal efforts, they have become characters in the story of this place.
Some came and suffered and returned to their homes. Some saw
their dreams crushed and left in frustration, never to return. Some fell in
love and set a new course for their lives so they could come back. Some bought
houses there, some got famous, some left in leg casts, some left in worse. Some
did not return, and their absence haunts us with more questions. Some removed
the scars of ugly history and ignited worldwide debate, some forged new
history, some pushed beyond their own limits, some suffered cold nights and
watched the sun rise more beautiful than they’d ever seen before.
Just as the wind blasts incessantly over the icecap towards
the plains only to spin around the planet and come back, people come and go
from this land, but their stories keep returning.
Wind
One AM, stagger through the headwind across the lawn into
the campground bathroom and the door slams shut behind you. Inside, there’s no
escaping it, the old structure is alive with it, the old slats whistle and
creak and the roof stutters beneath the gusts, and there’s a man in the stall,
squatting on the shitter with a shirt wrapped around his head, smoking inside
it. He looks up, the cigarette coal crackles and smoke seeps from the collar
below his chin and out his mess of hair, his shoulders begin a shrug and give
up the effort. “The wind,” he says, “the wind,”
and his eyes stare past you though the wrinkled shirt, into the dark beyond the
door that shudders on its hinges.
Morning, the windswept streets lie empty in bright sunlight
and droplets of water fall in a light spatter on the cobbled sidewalks; they
will fall all day despite the warm sun, borne by the wind from the white miasma
of cloud hanging over the mountains. An elderly man takes his morning walk, in
leather shoes and well-worn corduroys and a high-collared jacket. He steps with
his cane past a sleeping dog, leaning at a hefty angle into the side-long wind,
free hand clutching his beret to his head.
Try
Despite the pre-dawn chill we are stripped down to thermal
tops while booting up stiff snow towards the col. The path turns to loose talus
and our pace slows, and as the gulley tightens the wind increases and forces us
to don our shell jackets; we carry on. The terrain steepens and we climb
upwards with hands and feet, seeking dry grips amongst smears of slick verglass
as the wind harries our bodies. At times the gusts rush down from the col with
such force that it’s all we can do to hold our place, clutching the rock and
closing our eyes against assailing spindrift.
Thus scrambling in bursts between gusts we gain the col, strap on crampons
and start up the steep glacier as the eastern sky begins to lighten. Above the
bergshrund the snow glows pink as the sun rises over the broad expanse of the
pampas. We swing axes into the crisp neve and front-point upwards, light
spreads across the world and in the protection of our chimney we enjoy the
illusion, for thirty minutes, that the wind has stopped.
Gaucho
The gaucho draws his long facón blade from its sheath on his
belt and carves even slices of steaming meat off the roasting flank. As we hold
out a platter he stacks it with slabs of grilled sheep until satisfied with the
harvest, then wipes the oily blade in a loaf of bread and sheathes it again,
where it will wait until the next asado. He carries the laden tray easily
against his paunch and sets it on the table with flourish, sizzling meat
glistens in the firelight and the whole barn glows with the aroma of night and
laughter: wine, smoke, and warm fat. The gaucho has lived here since 1983,
before the government decided that a town should exist, and rough-handled
instruments of his trade hang from the barn walls. These days the gringos come
in larger numbers, lured by grocery stores and insipid internet and magazine
photos, and he still pulls the facón from its sheath to carve meat around a
fire.
Calm
How do you descend from a 500 meter spire, moving safely
through vertical terrain and objective hazards? Inside, a voice called ego
pleads without reason to be out of the danger zone, to be safe on flat ground.
In a glance we see this silent plea in each other’s eyes; we don’t dare voice
it. In this austere world of rock, wind, and vertical sky, where a single
mistake can kill you, when the child inside you yearns for nothing but safety,
how do you make it down? With patience. Without ego, without panic. Without
fear? A little much to ask for this guy, for us mere mortals. At moments of
doubt, staring down unfathomable distances of rough terrain, I feel a swell of
terror rising in my chest. But the wave must not break. As alpinists, we make
that commitment before we leave the ground. I acknowledge the wave, relax into
its motion and let it pass. “If it weren’t for climbing we’d all be surfers,”
the sage said. Maybe we still are.
So how do you descend from a 500 meter spire? Calmly, a
compilation of small steps, executed with precision. One. Two. Ten Thousand.
Talk
We wait, we hope, we pack and re-pack and eventually
un-pack, AGAIN. We cook. We forego cooking to eat what someone else cooked. We
go on dessert binges around town, we eat ice cream at Domo Blanco the second
time…that day. We stare at the meteogram. We talk. Mostly we talk shit. We make
plans, we talk about going bouldering, yeah bouldering! We talk about it and
finish our meals and talk and fill a water bottle and talk and run back to the
hostel to grab the shoe/chalk bag/speaker system/beer that we forgot and we
stand outside the Centro Alpino apartments talking with the residents as two
members of our delegation try to track down four of the eight bouldering pads
in El Chaltén and in the meantime I need to go find Joel and in the process
give a kiss and hello to all the members of Teresa’s family in La Lucinda and
might as well say high to Jason and Kevin who are sipping tea at their
computers and talk to Neal and Carlos hanging out inside and eventually I get
back and we’re still all hanging out talking shit outside Centro Alpino and
finally one pad plus one pad plus the promise of two more in half an hour
equals enough critical mass to start walking and we FINALLY start walking out
of town to go bouldering, talking all the way.
Drifting
7 PM, wandering. I’m hungry but the sun still hangs high
enough above the horizon that my body doesn’t see the day winding down. Another
day in limbo. I could mend gear, I could read, I could eat empanadas, but the
sun says the day is still happening, so I walk the streets of El Chaltén trying
to not spend pesos, but with a wad of them in my pocket nonetheless. At La
Lucinda, Ben and Joel are poring over a map between sips of tea. The creased
paper covered in squiggles hints at the tortured coastline and desolate ranges
that make up Patagonia: the topography of chaos. We discuss distances in days,
the weight of packrafts and how to chop a bike frame into packable parts, and
dream of the adventures that lie within those blotches of primary color. The
tea is hot and outside a sign beats upon a wall in the wind.
Jenga
For two hours, every rock we’ve stepped on has moved; I look
up-valley and the same interminable scree continues beyond the edge of sight.
Contemplating the distance is so demoralizing that I pull my gaze back to my
immediate vicinity: the next 20 feet, the next six feet, even the next two feet
require thought. Each rock is its own puzzle, with its own angles and texture
and its unique position of the infinite game of Jenga we’ve inadvertently
stumbled into. Will the rock shift when I weight it? Can I bridge my foot over
two rocks together? Will it drop the rock above it onto my ankle? Could I walk
back with a bum ankle? With a fractured tibia? Each rock…each motherf*!#ing rock,
for two hours, three hours…tiny rock crystals work their way into our socks and
my heavily laden pack slowly abrades the skin off my hip bones. We’re playing a
game with one rule: don’t topple the blocks. Five hours later we step off the
lateral moraine onto the rubble-strewn Torre Glacier, where we can almost walk
naturally without scrutinizing our next step. We stop to rest in silence and I
fill my canteen from a trickle of cold, pure meltwater. Looking up-valley we
can see the Mocho shrouded in snow and imagine base camp nestled at its base,
with an empty tent-site sheltered by boulders. “Well, maybe people go the other
way around the lake.” “Yeah. Maybe.”
Movement
At the col that morning we’d scoped the route, trying to
keep our balance on straddled legs braced against assailing gusts of wind. The
terrain looked casual but the conditions…we could see snow on ledges all over
the face, and it was hard enough to stand down there. But we came all the way
here to the tip of the end of the world, and I have a flight in 3 days, so I
took the rack and begin climbing in gloves, hood zipped tight.
Now we’re getting what we came here for, movement in the
mountains, under a blue sky and above a jagged world of rock and ice. Handholds
lead to sequences, sequences surmount features, features begin connecting into
the totality of the mountain and the details cease to matter. We move upwards,
reading the braille cyphers of the mountain with our fingers and feet. The
mountain presents mixed media: in a windy notch Dave dons rock shoes and weaves
between jagged gendarmes; I lead out across a hanging snowfield and sheath my
axe on a gravel perch beneath a stone wall dripping with meltwater. High above
my gear, I clear snow from a granite gutter and jam a gloved fist in the icy
sludge. My approach shoes smear on clean rock running with sparking rivulets of
water. This is not terrain one should fall in, but the sunlight and the
widening expanse of space buoy us upward; we move through each nuance in rhythm
towards the next, more focusing on the flow of the song and letting each note
pass in its own time. Alpinism is jazz, an improvisation of formal methods to
flow with a constantly changing rhythm; it is the art of dynamic harmony.
Time pulses with the rhythm, stretching across fluid pitches
and compressing into finite moments—weighting a tenuous off-finger lock,
checking an Alien’s lobes in a flared crack—and expanding again. Like
musicians, the more we feel the beat the less we remember ourselves, only immediate
facts: I have twenty more meters of rope, I have three cams left, my left shoe
is wet. I am hungry, I am cold, I am alive. I sip water from a crevice and
stare across to the knife-edge ridge of Cerro Pollone, trying to comprehend the
expanse of the icecap beyond.
At the crux things are getting real; the gloves come off and
I jam bare skin in rough granite, fighting for purchase, trying to read the
sequence above. Time contracts; the details matter again. A widening crack
choked with intermittent snow guards overhanging terrain. A chockstone seems to
be the key to the puzzle, but it is covered in ice. In the mountains there is no room for hesitation,
we must keep moving; I know what I have to do. I stem up the clean corner armed
with the nut tool and press my feet hard against the walls while I hack ice off
the chockstone, enough so I can pull on it securely. I stem a foot higher and I
can clean snow out of the next jam, then step down to rest. Above, the way is
now clear. Three breaths, and execute: the rhythm collapses into total focus. The
crux is perfect, just enough features to let me through, nothing more.
Fatigue
The LCD display on my wrist slowly drifts into focus: 3:05. I collapse against a boulder and
stare back across the moonlit glacier, waiting for Seth and Neale’s lamps to
emerge over the swell of glacial ice. Since our brew stop at 6 PM it was eight
rappels down the ramp, a tenuous traverse over soft snow across the bergschrund,
and an hour of careful travel on the steep crevassed glacier until it leveled
out and we could finally just walk. A long walk, below the hulking mass of Fitz
Roy bathed in moonlight and not a calorie left between the three of us. Why did
I pack food as if I was climbing some classic in the Black Canyon? Some things
I’m still learning the hard way.
The headlamps arrive and we slouch in a windbreak at the
col, exhausted. Someone mentions bivying here; of course we’re all thinking
about it. But I’m already shivering in my belay parka; our bodies are out of
fuel and we have to keep moving to stay warm. We grunt, shoulder packs again,
and contemplate the dark opening of the gulley. Can’t relax yet: below lies a
thousand-meter drop of rock, snow, and loose talus, and the gulley walls are
sporadically covered in a veneer of slick verglass. It’s the last thing in the
world I want to do right now, but our food waits at the other end. After a long
silence, I step out with one foot, then another. Descending is simple
arithmetic: the sum of tiny parts, so small each seems futile on its own, ends
up adding up to something tangible. An hour later we stumble into camp as the
sun rises above the land at the end of the world, our second sunrise that day. We
crumble sausage and cheese into a freeze-dried meal and barely finish it before
passing out in out gravel tent site, a long walk still awaiting us before foul
weather comes in.
Canción y Vino (song and wine)
Wine and song flow all evening in the small café. The
musicians play old gaucho ballads and their voices meld in the warm light as heads
nod and feet tap to the galloping rhythms; soon tables and chairs are cleared to
the walls and people are dancing, in circles and pairs. I join in as they clap
to the chorus. I’m the last gringo in the café, but I have no desire to leave:
tonight, this is the heart of El Chaltén. The rhythm swells and bodies twirl
and the hand of an Argentine woman pulls me from the wall; we dance through the
café, song after song. I don’t know the steps; I fake it with a questionable
salsa form I learned in Ecuador years ago. I stumble as the rhythm changes and
she floats through the transition, guiding me to the next beat with tinkling
laughter. She is beautiful and doesn’t care and I don’t either. These people
are all beautiful, they blossom with a blend of heritage and inspiration as
they gracefully carve out a living at this margin of rich culture and savage
wilderness. In this town at the end of the world, nothing tomorrow is so
important that they cannot dance tonight. Another man takes the guitar and sings
song after song and everyone knows all the words. The dancers consume the whole
floor and Juan and Teresa take turns dancing and opening bottles at the bar.
The night grows late and eventually only a small core of us
remain. More instruments emerge and I am invited to play; I squat atop the
cajón and feed rhythms to the guitarist, who keeps singing folk songs. People
gather around the microphone and sing at the top of their lungs with their eyes
closed, mouths gaping in joyful smiles. Someone opens another bottle, someone
finds a tambourine, and the music seems to flow forever. Eventually I will
stagger back to my hostel watching the sun rise above the pampas, I will pass
out for a few hours and gather my bags to travel back across the planet, back
to a world of clocks and schedules and my hemorrhaging bank account. But right
now the people are singing, the skin of the cajón sits potent beneath my
fingertips, and in this town at the end of the world, there is no time but
right now.
Much thanks to Seth Adams, Neil Kauffman, Dave Brown, Mike Finkowski, the Troutman, Ben Erdman, la familia at La Lucinda, and others for sharing photos, stories, and the journey. This piece is published alongside fine writing and photos in the Climbing Zine, a grass-roots publication sprouting from the Colorado western slope. Check out climbingzine.com for more goods from amateur writers doing their thing.
