Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Published: Alpine Club Gazette

We've resurrected our love of Cochamo in Chile in my article in the Winter 2012 issue ACC magazine with pictures by Jan. I am so wistful reading this again:
Gazette home page: http://www.alpineclubofcanada.ca/gazette/index.html

And here is the text:

Cochamó is how we spell Paradise

By Inga Petri


We had finally arrived at the beginning.

I remember in my bones what it felt like to hike to, be in and leave Cochamó Valley, a northern Patagonian gem we discovered during semana santa, the holy week between Christmas and New Year’s.

We learned about Cochamó from a guide we met while trekking in Torres del Paine National Park. His words: “If you want something different, go to Cochamó. The trekking there is an experience unlike any other.” We learned that the only way in was a 5-hour hike; we decided to go.

We had been trekking in Peru and Bolivia during October and November and were spending December in Chilean Patagonia to enjoy the southern hemisphere’s endless days of summer. To get to Cochamó we could simply have flown from Punta Arenas to Puerto Montt but instead opted for the slow way: We embarked on the Navimag ferry in Puerto Natales. This 4 nights/ 3 days excursion through Patagonian fjords and open Pacific is used by two kinds of people: backpackers and truckers ferrying livestock and other goods. We spent time resting, admiring glaciers, dolphins and ship wrecks and meeting backpackers undertaking all manner of journeys. It was worth the time.

We arrived in Puerto Montt on Christmas Eve just in time to stock up on food and wine before stores closed for the holiday. We got tickets for the local bus ($4 each) for the two-hour ride to Cochamó. Our bus driver’s and his assistant’s unbridled enthusiasm for our destination startled us. We had intended to find a local ride from the village of Cochamó to the trailhead. Instead our excited bus driver let us off several kilometres past the village at the beginning of the 6 km gravel road leading to the trailhead.


We got off the bus, which left in a plume of dust as it headed down the dirt road. This was it: an unremarkable, empty intersection in Northern Patagonia’s Lake District. We had a snack, drank some water and shouldered our 45-pound backpacks.

There was no traffic. We passed a few farm houses and beekeepers. The last house on the road was said to serve drink, food and have space for camping. We said Hola to the owner. Due to the holiday he was out of supplies but invited us to stay when we would return.

We hiked on. Now the trail began; part of the storied Gaucho Trail connecting Argentina’s Lake District across the Andes with the Pacific Ocean. It had been raining hard, so we encountered copious amounts of mud as we hiked deeper into the valley. The trenches, forged through cattle drives and some as deep as two metres, were filled with puddles of uncertain depth. River crossings featured logs with few man-made supports, if any. We were glad to wear gaiters and waterproof boots despite the summer’s heat.

As we progressed from sea level near the Reloncaví estuary, we hiked through dense native forests, with glimpses of the crystal Cochamó River. Huge bamboo shoots appeared as we proceeded through Patagonian rain forest. Suddenly, the vista opened toward La Junta, our destination, with its pampas grassland surrounded by sharply rising 1,000 m granite domes. We easily found camp with its central cook house, outhouses and an information board nearby. There were a handful of tents and roaming horses. We settled in ($4 pp/d).

Following the path to the rustic cable car crossing − powered by human effort alone, so it’s best to have a friend along especially because the return is slightly uphill − we introduced ourselves at Refugio Cochamó. Later, we met the other campers while preparing dinner. All were here to climb, hike or toboggan the waterfall slides. Without exception, they referred to Cochamó as paradise. Getting here takes effort; an effort worth making.

The next day, we hiked to the base of Trinidad Mountain through thick, steep rainforest. It was immediately clear that the trails had been cut as approach trails to big wall climbs. They are demanding, and at times spectacularly exposed. Fixed ropes are installed where necessary to ensure upward movement, not to provide comfort.

The following day, Arco Iris (1,668 m) was our objective. This trail was cut by machete as Cochamó’s first valley-to-peak trail in 2007. Native forest gives way to massive 3,000-year-old Alerce trees, rain forest and then the first magnificent views across the valley. The most unusual trail feature might well be the fixed rope leading steeply up a granite slab beneath massive tree roots. Or maybe it is the wild granite ridge above tree line. From the snow-capped summit hikers enjoy awesome views over the valley and surrounding mountains, the Reloncaví estuary and distant volcanoes.

The next afternoon we hiked out so we could make our way to the famed coastal city of Valparaíso for New Year’s celebrations. We had planned to camp at the trailhead and then catch the bus at our drop-off the next afternoon. When we arrived two locals told us that the owner had been taken to hospital. Reluctantly, we hiked out to the main dirt road, 6 km, and then started toward the village. A couple of kilometres in, a lovely woman in a pick-up truck offered us a ride. We gladly jumped on the back in our seventh hour of hiking. She didn’t want payment and instead dropped us off at her brother Ruben’s private camp ($5 each).

It had gorgeous views of the glaciated Yate Volcano across the estuary. We had the meadow to ourselves and enjoyed a perfect camp stove dinner while the sun set across the Pacific and dabbed the clouds overhead in shades of red. This would be the last camping meal of our three months South American trek. We left our fuel with Ruben.

For up-to-date information on climbing and hiking in Cochamó: www.cochamo.com.

  

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Desert riches

This is a cool place! And there are plenty of spots with shade; that's like a 10 degree difference at least! A few more impressions.
Native Americans adapted well to desert life.

Desert Botanical Gardens, Phoenix

Since I'm travelling alone I opted for the trails of this awesome garden with 1000s of cactii, desert trees and shrubs as well as a fine range of desert dwelling birds, cute rodents, rabbits and lizards. It's a hot day, feels like well above 30 C and more under the clear desert sun.

It's a day off and looking at the local flora and fauna is just the thing.

Hope you enjoy these few impressions.

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

The Prairies are flat

Highway 1
I'm on a business trip that had me driving from Winnipeg to Virden, Manitoba today. I was told at a meeting today that this is one of the flatest parts of the Prairies. I'm not certain how Saskatchewan compares, but these pictures affirm: it's really flat in these parts. Also pretty with the fall clouds and crisp air as the temp was about 4 Celsius. Tonight we'll see -8.

Wonder what hiking would feel like in such a flat place.
Highway 1 from Winnipeg to Virden

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Fredericton river trails

Work travel does allow sometimes for at least a decent walk about. Downtown Fredericton proved particularly rewarding: the mighty Saint John River runs through it, historic military buildings turned museums, galleries and art studios are situated between river and a surprising selection of good restaurants. And best of all, there are many excellent, wide pathways for walkers, cyclists or skaters.

A retired train bridge has been turned into a gorgeous trail connecting both parts of the city, and a number of waterfront and city trails. While these images don't show people be assured that took effort. The locals and visitors both enjoyed their Sunday strolls or training runs on these beautiful paths. These few impressions present the pervasive nature that makes the New Brunswick capital such a pleasant place.

 

Monday, August 27, 2012

Day 4 - riding out


Jan and horse on meadow.


The riding on day 4 was easy - the same way out, without any new blow down. The ride took only about 3 hours and was largely uneventful.

By now I was used to Jordi not liking bridges, so we simply found ways around them through the rivers and creeks.

Here are a few more impressions from horse camping in the Yoho back-country.
Afternoon sun and cloud spectacle.

Inga looking pretty comfortable in a saddle even on
 the fourth day. Jordi's a great trail horse.

The warden's cabin on the small meadow.



































The awesome river right below the cabin.
Goodsirs in background.
















At the end of the trail, we find the trucks and horse trailers.
Here's Jan helping with the saddles and getting the horses
into the trailers for the ride home.









Sunday, August 26, 2012

Day 3 - Bushwhack!

After a couple of days of camping at Ottertail camp it was clear that there's not enough grazing for the horses for 3 days. It was also clear that the last 2 days of riding had been tiring and most of us were ready for an easier day.
Jan's happy taking care of the horses. She's also good at it.

Big Al and Dave in the kitchen.

Us at the edge of Ottertail Falls

Bushwhacking on horseback was a new kind of experience.
Wow!

So we rode up to Ottertail Falls and then attempted to access the river near camp via an old telephone route to the Cabin. The bushwhack was just that. Both horse and rider had to handle all manner of jumbled trees and the footing was progressively softer. In the end, we decided that this old route was not going to be feasible and turned around to head back to camp. It ended up being a shorter then hoped for riding day (just under 2 hours), but such is the nature of exploration.

You can lead a horse to water but ...
Jan and Al taking a couple of horses down to make sure they
are well hydrated.
Enjoying the afternoon at our private river hideaway!
Al and Dave brought the horses to a grazing spot across the river from the Warden's cabin so they'd be well fed and watered for our ride out the next day.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Day 2 - Heading to Good Sir Pass

From our camp to Goodsir Pass, part of the famous Rockwall Trail, was just over 9 km one way. Today, would be a big day for us city gals.

Jan's happy and looking good on Bo.

Single track. Our guides were dealing with
trail clearing quite adaptly. Pays to have retired
Park Wardens as guides.
Leaving the fire road we were now riding on single track. It's obviously not a much travelled area, Al and Dave did lots of trail clearing of blow down. Some small and a quick axe job sufficed. Others sizable B.C. trees requiring knowledgeable saw work. Al and Dave handled all with aplomb.

We got to be tourists and wait from them on our horses. The horses, of course, took any opportunity to eat grass and some leaves during these frequent breaks. We reached the Pass after about 3.5 hours; after some steep climbing our horses had to do. We supported them as best we could, making our riding lessons count.

While there was plenty of grazing for the horses, there was no water for them. So we had a well earned rest, some lunch and got on our way back down.

Upon our return we got to a river we had crossed in the morning. Now, Al said, let your horses drink! And they did. We got back to camp after an awesome and exhausting riding day with about 6 hours logged!

Jan at our lunch spot with awesome mountain views.
While it's definitely easier to ride a horse up here than hike
with backcountry gear, it's still a great workout! 

Our horses get a break and graze to their heart's content.

Awesome views over the glaciated Goodsirs. They are
impressive at up to 3,500 m high.


Friday, August 24, 2012

Horses! Day 1

We'd already posted about heading to Bear Corner Breakfast and Bale. Now here are day-by-day posts on the 4 days riding in Yoho National Park. We quickly learned that this was an "exploratory trip." With the rain this spring and summer in B.C. Al's normal trail for a multi-day excursion was washed out; only the first 17 km are passable by car leaving us 33 km short of the trail head. Al needed another option for us.
Inga on ride in - took about 4 hours total due to all the
trail clearning required. I was on Jordi (Jordan), a great
horse for me.

Jan's riding in on Peach. The other days
she was on Bo. All fine horses with  varying
degrees of liking / dis-liking mad-made
structures like bridges.

Being a former warden, he made some calls and got a backcountry permit for our whole team, 4 people, 6 horses, including grazing permits in Yoho National Park. Having already hiked to Lake O'Hara in Yoho we were excited to experience some of the less trodden paths.
The horses were tied to trees for saddling/ un-saddling.
Other than that they had free reign in the meadow.

Our excursion was a little inauspicious as we drove in thunder and rain to our trailhead at Ottertail Trail,  located a few kilometres before Field, B.C., and the Lake O'Hara trailhead/road. By the time the 6 horses were saddled and packed and we got going, the rain had subsided and the weather began to clear.

At camp. Make-shift saddle storage.
We rode in 15 km. Al and Dave, our guides, smartly brougth both an axe and a Stihl saw. There was quite a bit of blow down to clear. This trail is an old fire road. We learned that the National Park Service was initially focussed on fire fighting and prevention, hence this infrastructure. Today they use helicopters to fight fires, making fire roads obsolete.

Even though the fire road is being reclaimed by nature, it still made for a relatively easy horse trail. This being the first day in the saddle and just getting to know the horses that was great.

Our team on the meadow. Al actually built the coral you
can see in the background back in his warden days.
To keep the horses close, all we needed
to do was to put 2 of them into the coral. The
others would stick close by. A rope across the path
did the rest.
We set up camp in the designated backcountry camping area near the Park Warden cabin. Around the cabin is a small meadow where the horses would graze and the camping and cooking/food storage areas were well divided for bear safety reasons.

We had a fine dinner, got the horses settled in and called it an early night.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Rest Day!

Kicking Horse is a fun skier's resort mountain.
Riding the gondola in summer is way different than in winter
when we have all the gear and warm clothes.
Rest day means we took the gondola up Kicking Horse Mountain Resort :)
Here are a few more pics from that day, just to complete our earlier Blackberry post.

Also, while the food at the GMC was exceptional in any context, it was fun to have the full service experience at Eagle's Eye Restaurant at the top of the resort.

Our waitress was both funny and unobtrusive. And Jan made the gondola and lunch a present for having come to this fine country back on August 6, 1988.


Black diamond hiking trail from top of the gondola. Priceless.

At Eagle's Eye:
Green tomato gaspacho with scallop ceviche was awesome.

Scallops with bacon proved a worthy main. Thanks for the
24th anniversary in Canada celebration, Jan!

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Lake O'Hara and Lake McArthur

Right after GMC we went to Lake O'Hara to spend that Sunday with friends from Toronto. The busses were full, so our only option was to hike in on the road. It's supposed to be 13.65 km or 11 km (we've been told both by authoritative sources - I'm going with 11km) and gain about 500m in elevation. Still, we managed it in two hours. The hike felt easy. We thought there were just a few steep sections.

Lake O'Hara. Jan's new Canon takes really nice pics.
Our friends had been told it would take us three hours so we had a bit of time to get a coffee and sit by Lake O'Hara awaiting their return from a short morning jaunt.

We decided to head up the short hike to Lake McArthur, which is really the postcard lake! It was a lovely hike up with plenty of catching up and storytelling along the way.

Lake McArthur. Even in the early afternoon it was calm,
allowing for those signature reflections of mountains.
Local wildlife boldly visited us at our rocky lunch spot.
We talked bears and mountain goats, mountains, lakes and icebergs.

We returned with a couple of hours to spare before the last bus at 6:30 pm would take us back to the road. We joined our friends for "happy hour" by the lake (so civilized) and then sadly had to get on our way.

Mountain goat. This was a mythical appearance on top
of the cliff near McArthur Valley.
When we boarded the bus, we were happy not to hike it out. Then a couple of kilometers into the ride, we suddenly looked at each other, realizing that the whole way so far had been downhill and quite steep.

We started laughing; amazed that we had interpreted the road as flat in the morning, when it so clearly isn't. I usually have great dislike for things like head winds and uphills (go figure!). This time, though, I think the training of a week at GMC set even me up to motor on this uphill like it's nothing!


Tuesday, August 21, 2012

GMC - Jan's Alpine Helicopter video

Flying by helicopter was a first for both of us. Jan got the front seat for the flight out to take this video. I've edited it for length and then created a lower resolution file out of this 1+gigabyte video. Check it out. (We have the full screen HD version; you can always come by our place for the full-on experience.)

GMC - Flying out August 4

Flight out and camp crew (Photo by Nataliya).
Chucky, Matt, Jen, Jeff (behind), Andrew, Ron and
 Julius (standing). Plus Jan and I at the helipad.
Packing up and flying out. That was sad.

The participants on this week worked very well together; lots of generosity and kindness, as well as skill, smarts and patience was on display all week.
Plants near the helipad.
Tea tent. Aptly named.

Where we did dishes. An ingenious set up.
We were on the second of nine flights, but still had plenty of opportunity to loiter about and take some extra pictures. (Just click on an image to see it large; then hit the back button in your browser.)

We came to the GMC to learn more skills and spend time with experienced mountaineers in this awesome landscape, as part of preparing ourselves for new objectives. We got that and more.

We are making plans now for our next big trip. I am sure they will be bold ones. Meanwhile, I am working on my mission (just like camp doc Ron's parting words implored) to get into great shape for these mountain pursuits.

It's time to apply the same vigour to the physical training as I have been applying to other aspects  such as learning Spanish (that's like a whole new language!) these past 2 years as part of trip prep.

Without doubt, details will be posted here as they unfold. I am quite certain that whatever the specifics, speaking Spanish will be a plus :)
Our last morning. Glorious weather greeted us along
with the moon over the Haworth glacier and Redan.