Argentina: A Skier’s Journey EP3 [Season 2] from Jordan Manley Photography on Vimeo.

I’m digging this Argentina ski/travel video by Jordan Manley; I recognize quite a few places and sights from our recent adventures in the Andes: the Santiago subway, the trucks along the highway at Penitentes, hot springs, roadside shrines, Fernet, asado, empanadas, volcanoes, and of course, wind!

The wintery snow scenes remind me of the winter I spent with mis amigos in Las Leñas, Argentina way back in 2002. Good times! See my photos from Las Leñas here.

As I mentioned in my last post, the avalanche conditions are extremely tender right now in the San Juans. Our snow pits revealed 2-3 feet of recent snow clinging precariously to 2-3 feet of rotten sugar snow – the worst winter avalanche ingredients possible. There is widespread “whoomphing” and shooting cracks. We took a conservative descent route, practiced our best safety protocol on the way down, and managed to stay out of trouble.

Here’s a picture of a slab avalanche in the gully on our way out (it had already slid naturally before we got there). In conditions this bad, any steep slope, not matter how short, has the potential to bury a person. We skied out of there on pins and needles, feeling that perhaps it’s not the time to be out in the backcountry at all, no matter how fluffy and tempting that powder is.

The snowpack is so fundamentally screwed that I can’t imagine the conditions improving anytime soon. It may be months before we can ride steeper lines again – maybe not until spring. The good news is that I’ll get a lot of work done this winter!

Aimee getting some fresh tracks on her birthday on Wednesday. Earlier this week two feet of snow fell on top of an extremely thin and unstable snowpack, creating super sketchy avalanche conditions and numerous avy accidents across Colorado. So we’ve been sticking to the tamest routes of all, avoiding any avalanche terrain whatsoever. In any case, it feels great to get high in the San Juans again! Stay safe!

I just posted a gallery of all my favorite photos from our 15-week travels down the Andes! Enjoy! http://www.widerange.org/gallery/andes-adventure-2011/

Aerial view of Mt. Evans (14264 ft / 4348 m) - January. Note the road winding up to the summit.

After the most stressful and frustrating two days of flying that I’ve yet experienced, I’m finally back home in Colorado. In the grand scheme of things I suppose that two days, no matter how stressful, is a pretty quick time to travel from the tip of South America to the center of North America! But for a 21st century man it was just a pretty crappy series of delayed plane flights.

The nice thing, though, about living on Colorado’s western slope is the opportunity to fly directly over the Rockies whenever flying through the Denver hub. The half-hour flight yesterday from Denver to Montrose was one of the more scenic ones I’ve done, since we went right after the sun set, right after a snowstorm cleared. I was snapping away at the window with my camera most of the time, happy to have a nice consolation flight after such a long two sleepless days. See more shots below!

Square Top Mountain (13794 ft / 4204 m) - January 2012

I shot these with a wide open f/1.8 aperture in order to make sure that the little streams of de-icer fluid streaming across the window would be out-of-focus beyond recognition. ISO 400 ensured a quick enough shutter speed to prevent motion blur.

Aerial view of the Continental Divide in winter.  Landslide Peak (13,238 ft) is at the bottom. Grays Peak (14278 ft / 4352 m) is poking out of the clouds at the top center of the photo - January.

It’s always fun to pick out the various peaks and basins from the air, many of them places I’ve hiked, camped, and/or snowboarded before.

Aerial view of the ski resort and town of Copper Mountain.  The Gore Range is at the top - January. 

Here’s I-70 winding past Copper Mountain and through the Gore and Ten Mile Ranges. Glad I’m not driving down there!

Aerial view of the Elk Mountains near Aspen - January 2012.

Flying directly over the rugged Elk Mountains is always a highlight of the flight. In my experience the north side of the plane is usually the best side for viewing the Elks on this flight. The Black Canyon is the other highlight, but that was on the other side of the plane this time. It’s a bit harder to predict which side of the plane to be on to see the canyon, probably due to the close proximity of landing in Montrose.

Aerial view of the Elk Mountains near Aspen - January. The Maroon Bells are visible in the upper center of the photo.

I’m glad to be back home!

Ushuaia Blues : Prints Available

The city of Ushuaia, on the Beagle Channel at the southern tip of South America - January. 

Our seemingly endless 15 weeks of travel through Chile and Argentina have finally come to an end, and tomorrow we start our journeys back home. It’s a bittersweet departure; on one hand I’m tired of traveling and am excited to get back home to Ouray. On the other hand, Claudia has to go straight back to Germany for a few months, so we have to say goodbye for a while. It’s a bummer, but fortunately I have a ton of work to catch up on which should keep me busy and hopefully make time pass faster during her absence!

After I’m back I’ll be going through my photos from the trip and in about a week or so I’ll post a gallery of my favorites. I’ve posted many of my photos already on this blog, but there are a few goodies left that my laptop monitor couldn’t handle. I look forward to sharing those!

Last week Claudia and I and took a zodiac boat ride from Ushuaia to Isla Navarino, an island that is actually in Chile even though it’s right across the Beagle Channel from Ushuaia and Argentina. So, coming and going, four more stamps in our passports, which are nearly full of Chile and Argentina stamps after three months of border crossings between the two countries. By now, the amount of stamping and filling out of immigration forms has reached a certain level of inanity to us.

But I digress… our reason for heading to Isla Navarino was to trek around the Dientes de Navarino, a small but rugged mountain range on the island. We spent five days out there on this wild and adventurous route, enduring a full range of extreme weather and trekking through some spectacular scenery. See lots more photos from the trek below!

After clearing customs (again) in Puerto Williams on Isla Navarino, we registered with the police (in case we never returned), stopped at a market for some cheese and sausages (which we weren’t allowed to bring into Chile), and then we finally started our walk into the mountains!

We climbed up through the lenga forest and then crossed a high tundra plateau where we had an excellent view of the Dientes (see the first photo above). We were excited! Right from the start we could sense that this trek was much different from the other more famous Patagonian treks. This already felt much more wild and authentic compared to the Disneyland feel of Torres del Paine or Fitz Roy.

After camping the first night at Laguna del Salto, we headed up past Laguno del Paso and over towards Paso de los Dientes, seen on the right. Clouds were streaming up over the pass, portending foul weather on the other side.

From the pass we had a brief but awesome view of the clouds moving in through the rugged valley. This would be the last we’d see of the mountains for a while… soon we were totally socked in with rain and fog!

This trek doesn’t really have a real trail, but the route is marked with cairns and painted symbols. Nevertheless, it can be quite confusing at times, and route finding was often a puzzle – which I kind of like! In the fog we were grateful for the cairns; otherwise it would have been nearly impossible to know where to go.

These green shrubs glowed a fluorescent green color in the grey fog.

Laguna de los Dientes : Prints Available

Cerro Gabriel and Laguna de Los Dientes, Isla Navarino, Chile.

Along the way we got a bit lost on the wrong route for a short while, but finally made it to our next destination – Laguna de los Dientes. Our spirits were low, since we were soaked and chilly in the rain, the peaks were hidden in the fog, and the weather showed no sign of changing. Camp spots are extremely difficult to find in these mountains because the ground is almost everywhere bumpy, rocky, or wet, but after some searching we found a flat spot to put the tent. Later that day I was much happier when I opened the tent door and saw the peaks out!

At some point in the past, in a stroke of short-sighted brilliance, North American beavers were introduced here. They have since wreaked havoc on the native forests, leaving most of the areas around the lakes littered with dead tree carcasses. We saw a couple of these industrious critters during the trek.

Los Dientes : Prints Available

Mist rises off Laguna de los Dientes during a break in the rain on Isla Navarino, Chile.

The Dientes reminded me a bit of the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho, with the jagged peaks rising above broad lakes. We realized here how much we’ve missed camping near alpine lakes, a feature that seems rare in the Andes, I guess. Somehow having lakes around makes a landscape feel a bit more like paradise. And this place felt like a little mountain paradise indeed, except for the hellish weather!

The rain left that night and the next day was gorgeous! Well, gorgeous for Magellanic standards, anyways… Here’s Laguna Escondida, ringed by a rugged wall of mountains.

Although the sun was nice that day, as we neared the top of Paso Ventarron, we got a taste of the infamous Cape Horn winds. It was shockingly windy up here, sometimes sending us staggering backwards. And this, I think, was pretty tame wind compared to some of the stories I heard and read of people getting knocked over and even dragged around on the ground by ferocious winds. Apparently that’s fairly common around here.

Going down the other side of Paso Ventarron. It was so windy here, my eyebrows were blowing in the wrong direction! I don’t recall this ever happening before… but then again, they seem to be getting bushier as I get older… Anyhow, it was windy.

Laguna Martillo Sunset : Prints Available

Wild sunset light behind Cerro Clem at Laguna Martillo on Isla Navarino, Chile.

That evening we camped at Laguna Martillo, a spectacular setting with the spire of Cerro Clem towering above. When I saw that the sunset colors were lighting up, I let my dinner get cold while I ran off to take some photos!

Did I mention that the weather is crazy here? Here’s our tent Laguna Martillo the day we got there. At right is fresh snow in the morning. Quite a surprise to see that when I opened the tent!

Since we had no layover days on this trek, we had no choice but to pack up the wet tent and start trekking through the snowstorm. This was another adventurous day when we were totally reliant on the cairns and markings to show us the route ahead. We were worried that it would snow enough to cover up all the route markings and cairns, in which case we would be screwed and would have to stay put. Luckily the snow didn’t accumulate enough for that.

Antarctic conditions on Paso Virginia. Again, we were very thankful for the cairns; otherwise this route would be quite a compass challenge on this broad featureless plateau. This pass is notorious for hellacious winds, so our little snowstorm actually wasn’t so bad as it could have been…

Nevertheless, we were both relieved to have made it safely over the last pass of the trek. As if mirroring our emotions, a rainbow appeared down valley where we’d soon be camping for our final night of the trip! Below is Laguna Guanaco.

The last day was a glorious calm sunny day, and an uneventful hike took us out of the mountains, back to Puerto Williams.

We both agreed that this was one of our two favorite treks we’ve done during our three months in the Andes (the other being the Valle de Aguas Calientes near Chillan). It was a perfect grand finale adventure for our trip! Now we’re just chilling out in Ushuaia for our last couple days here before catching our flight back to Buenos Aires then home. It’s been an epic trip, but three months is enough, and I’m super excited to get back home to Ouray!

Glaciar Perito Moreno : Prints Available

Blue ice of the spectacular Perito Moreno Glacier near El Calafate, Argentina. 

Happy new year!!! Here’s a couple shots from the Perito Moreno Glacier near El Calafate in Argentine Patagonia. This is one of about seven or eight glaciers on the Argentina side that flow out from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field into large turquoise lakes.

Glaciar Perito Moreno Panorama : Prints Available

The Perito Moreno Glacier panorama, Argentina

The Perito Moreno glacier is unique because as it flows out from the mountains into Lago Argentino, it smashes directly into a peninsula of land. So, from this peninsula you get this incredible front-and-center view of the snout of the glacier, and you can watch chunks and columns of the glacier crashing into the lake. It’s a huge tourist destination, for good reason!

We’re now in Ushuaia, on Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. Tomorrow we head out on a six day trek on Isla Navarino – our final adventure of our three month trip!

Fitz Roy Range, El Chaltén, Argentina

We’ve just returned to civilization after 8 days camped out in the mighty Fitz Roy range near El Chaltén in Argentine Patagonia. One of my main goals of this return trip to El Chaltén was to capture a photo that I have been dreaming about since my last trip to Patagonia four years ago. I was prepared to spend a week or more waiting for the perfect opportunity to accomplish this photo, and to repeat the efforts with stubborn determination until I did it. I want to talk a bit more about my experience behind this “dream shot” since it epitomizes everything I love about mountain photography!

Back in 2007, I spent two weeks in the Fitz Roy range with my 4×5 camera, hiking around to all kinds of obscure viewpoints every morning like a madman. One morning, I hiked up to the still-partially-frozen Laguna de los Tres for sunrise, and scored one of my favorite Patagonian photos. I was stoked. After the sunrise it was still early, with very calm weather, so I decided to go for the summit of nearby Cerro Madsen. I had no info whatsoever about any route up Madsen, or if it was even possible without climbing gear, but I had scoped it out from different perspectives the previous days and thought that I had figured out a route that would go. The route turned out to be a very fun and challenging scramble, with numerous little obstacles and puzzles along the way, even including a pretty long knife-edge section with gaping abysses on both sides. I made it to the summit, took a photo, and got back down just in time before the Patagonian winds started howling again. It felt great to climb this mountain using only my own reconnaissance and instincts – for all I knew I was the first person to ever climb it… Of course that’s not true, but it felt that way to me!

I wondered about how amazing it would be to get up on that summit for a sunrise, but at the time it seemed like quite an accomplishment for me to have gotten there at all – getting up there for sunrise would be a bit much. But the seed was planted in my head. In the run up to our trip to Patagonia this year the idea starting growing again. My memories of the climb had faded a bit, and now it didn’t seem to me like it would be so impossible. It would be my holy grail grand finale photo of our three month trip down the Andes. So I decided to give it a serious effort. I had my challenge. The hike itself is not what concerned me since that was the only part squarely in my control. Given enough time, along with the long period of dawn light in the summer here, the hike would be strenuous but straightforward. What worried me was the unlikeliness of the convergence of good light, decent clouds but not so much to cover the peak of Fitz Roy (as is very often the case), and most importantly not having the usual ferocious winds that could fling me off that knife edge scramble. We were stocked up with enough food for a week at the base camp area, and as I mentioned before, I was prepared to stubbornly repeat my efforts every morning until I hopefully scored the perfect conditions.

Fitz Roy Sunrise : Prints Available

Sunrise light on Monte Fitz Roy - December.

Well, very fortunately, I scored my “dream shot” on the very first morning! I timed it just right with the 2:00am start. The scramble was just as tricky and fun and challenging as I remembered it, and I arrived at the summit just in time to take some dawn shots and then wait for the real sunrise light. I was troubled by a thick cloud on the eastern horizon that I was sure was going to block the sunrise light; I was sure I would have to repeat the hike again for better light. But the cloud dispersed right before sunrise and when the tip of Fitz Roy started glowing faintly reddish pink with the very first rays of sunlight, I knew I was in for a good show! As the sun rose fully above the horizon, the light got more and more intense, finally descending onto the glaciers below the rock faces at the peak of pinkish-orange intensity. I was shooting the photos as if in a dream and I started to wonder if maybe it was actually one of those awful photography dreams where you always lose your photos once you wake up. But no, it was real and I was photographing perhaps the most amazing sunrise scene I’ve ever witnessed in my life. If my photos from that morning convey even one quarter of the glory of that scene, I will be a happy photographer.

Cerro Torre Reflection #4 : Prints Available

The piercing spire of Cerro Torre reflects in Lago Torre at sunrise - December. 

After spending three more days camped below Fitz Roy in poorer weather, we headed over to Lago Torre, below the jagged spire of Cerro Torre. Again, the first morning there I had good luck with gorgeous sunrise light and decently calm reflection conditions. In a stark contrast with my “dream shot” of Fitz Roy that I just described, getting to Lago Torre at sunrise involves merely a sleepy 5 or 10 minute stroll from the campsite to the lake.

The contrast between these two photo scenarios illustrates why I believe that the experiences behind the photos matter so much. With landscape photos like these, much of the creative spark lies within that experience behind the photo – the process of discovering unique locations and perspectives and photo ideas, and then the physical challenge of accomplishing the task. There are those who will look at the two photos objectively and may prefer one or the other for purely visual reasons, with no concept or care of the story behind them. But for me – and for those who can understand and appreciate the challenges behind the photos – the experience shines through bright and clear.

Meanwhile, Claudia got stuck in a tree.

Glaciar Grey, Torres del Paine, Chile

Last week we spent 10 days hiking the popular “W” Circuit in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. These spectacular mountains rise abruptly 3000 vertical meters (almost 10,000 feet) above a series of huge turquoise lakes. Although the finest views of the range are actually seen from further away across the lakes (like this), the W Circuit offers the opportunities to experience the three main valleys and highlights within the range: the Glaciar Grey, the Valle Frances, and Las Torres lake. Although most people hike this route in about 5 days or so, we took 10 days so that we could spend extra time in each valley along the way.

We started the trek by taking a ferry across Lago Grey to Refugio Grey, and hiking to Campamento Los Guardas, a campsite set in a beautiful lenga forest, with a spectacular mirador (lookout point) directly above the snout of Glaciar Grey, a huge glacier that flows out from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the second largest extrapolar extent of ice in the world.

We then hiked around the massive Cerro Paine Grande up to Valle Frances, the second destination of the trek. This is one of the most unique mountain cirques in the world – a broad basin ringed by sheer needle peaks. It’s the kind of place that no photo can do justice to; you just have to be there to tilt your head back and spin around to see all those teeth surrounding you. Awesome!

During the trek you must camp in the large designated campgrounds, usually situated in the beautiful but gloomy lenga forests which provide good shelter from the strong winds that whip around most of the time. Most of these campsites are thoroughly used and abused by the thousands of trekkers that pass through, and the forests around the camps are littered with toilet paper and associated organic matter. It’s a shame that the whopping $30 USD park entrance fee that each of the thousands upon thousands of visitors must pay is not quite enough to maintain a couple decent outhouses.

Hiking up Valle Ascencio

Photographing these huge peaks requires a bit of luck with the ever-changing weather and light conditions; unfortunately luck was not on my side for the entire first week of the trek, despite my most relentless efforts. Finally, during our stay in the third and final valley I got some sweet moonlight photos of the Torres spires reflecting in the lake during an unusually calm spell. I’ll post those photos after I’m back home, when I have more time and a real monitor to work with.

Tomorrow we take the bus to El Chaltén, where we’ll spend a week or so in the Fitz Roy range, the other famous Patagonian mountain range. I’ve always liked that place a lot, and am excited to return one more time!

UPDATE: December 31, 2011: Apparently we were lucky to do this trek when we did it… unfortunately this last week a careless camper (surprise, surprise – an Israeli, of course) tried to start a campfire (which is forbidden) and ended up starting a wildfire that has burned tens of thousands of acres on the front side of the range. All the trekkers have been evacuated, and hundreds of firefighters are fighting the blaze, which is not yet under control. Tragic… http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/317068