So this is how it goes.
The PowderQuest ski guiding season ends. What to do. We both, Pierre and I have three weeks off before our next commitment. Scratch, scratch, scratch...our heads are itching and we are chomping at the bit for some action. There is only so much you can get out of the Santiago disco scene not to mention that at every rave where we end up seems to have the same hombre loving types that gravitates around us even thought we are obviously grinding with the latin lovelies.
We take to the sky and fly to Punta Arenas for some more disco and cultural exploration... this time we got chased by this dude and his swinging hammer, a fucking hammer (when I write "we", I mean me). Enough of that, we pick up our third recovering partner at the airport in our pimping Diesel SUV. Lovely machine but comes from the time before the turbo. We top out at 100km/h and maybe 120km/h downhill with a tail wind. All the way to Puerto Natales we cruise, just in time for the end of the sea kayak guiding course my buddies are on and join them for the ultimo asado fiesta thing. People meet people from all corners of the world and figure out there seven degrees of separation. A good exercise when fueled with vino.
The weather is looking like it is going to break for us ( no use to repeat the known but … in Patagonia, weather kicks asses and smacks you sideways, you do what it wants you to do and when it wants you to do it, if it lets you do it at all, just like a… humm ). So we move in fast forward, sprinting our way across the argentine boarder in our put-put car. The weather is still looking good, so good in fact and so on time we can't really grasp why... A perfect alignment of the stars, the moon and the winds are on vacation! A few hours of sleep after last minute packing in El Chalten are just enough to send us on our way down the Electrico Valley.

Day 1

River crossings, getting lost on the marked trail, charging wild cows, 5th class climbing with 7days ski expedition packs (5th class means you have to use your hands as well as your feet), and a bizarre toll half way and absolutely stunning views are a convincing start. The amphitheater is simply stunning; I'm on my ass and can't stop taking pictures. And we are not even in the mountains yet ! Oh boy, oh boy ! Paparazzi attaka! We camp at the Playita.

Day 2

Early wake, dreams still caked on faces and eyes partly focusing we follow our outdated map up the wrong side of the valley for some rocky route finding through broken snow dusted moraine (loose rock deposits formed at the edges and ends of glaciers). Finally after some more rock climbing on our trekking trip we can take the rope off my shoulders and tie in with crampons on the beaten touring boots. The glacier is still sleeping, so we try to wake it up stabbing it with our metal prong. Not a single budge, a solid sleeper we cruise on its back for 500m until we can switch the brutal teeth for smooth caressing skins. It is such a relief to take this hide off our backs and onto our boards. Slide our way up the Marconi Pass with the Mr. Fitz Roy’s omnious eye swooping above us wondering what these little people are doing tickling its basal glacier this way. "What are they up to?" he wonders. Oh boy, it is beautiful this ocean of white. As we top out of the Marconi Pass we are silenced by the immensity of the only slowly appearing Southern Ice Cap (3rd largest land based ice mass after Antarctica and Greenland). We stop, silent, staring, brains processing this alien land until we spot the abandoned Chilean Military Refugio on the shoulder of Mme Gorra Blanca (the mountain with the white baseball cap, that we will climb tomorrow) and we are back to a human world. A few Argentine mountain guides are warming the place and a loud mouthed, old English dude kind of wrecks the serenity of the place. A soup with butter and a sunset later the serenity is back. This isn't just any sunset. We revel in the spectacle of two seemingly different worlds going to sleep like friendly neighbors. We are stunned to be part of this moment, without any proper words only stupidities. On one side, the glacially sharpened granite claws and teeth of the Fitz Roy massif are a sparkling grin slowly fading into the night and on the other the seemingly calms and benign icy vastness of the Southern Icecap is blanketed in a pink light. Impossible to grasp the whole show with one eye full, it is full 360° of booyakasha.

Day 3

Oh yeah. Pink in the morn sailors warn, is that how the old saying goes? Our third is feeling low, an Argentine local guide Pedro wants in and are like: "Euh...ok, can you ski?" "Si, si, no problem". Ok, Pedro lets get it on. Well the lady she is pink and we are up for the first licks. Let’s do the right side, I like the right side, you could probably skin all the way to the top! "Ah yes, you could probably..."says the Eye, "I'll be watching". We have no idea he is watching, maybe there is some relationship between Mr. Roy and Mme Blanca that we do not know about. We wouldn't want to knowingly mess with an others man's gal, that's just not good for Karma, someone might get hurt real bad; someone always does. We tip toe our way up the long-ass flat glacial approach and one boot rivet fix later we are looking straight up at her curves and cracks. “She's a chunky biatch”; don't tell Mr. Roy I said that. A few puckery crevasse crossings and some getthepickleout-under-seracs crossings later we find a mushroom cave on the summit ridge to ditch the skis and pull out the spikes and picks. No wind, not a breath, not a cloud either, are we in Patagonia? What have we done right in a previous life, why is Mr. Roy so nice to us letting us up his woman like that? A few pitches of easy alpine climbing and we on top of the cap. The 360° is out of this world. To the west, the Southern Ice cap and further we can even see the deep green snow-caped pacific fjords of Chile. To the North, the white infinity of the Ice cap and its lateral turquoise Argentina lakes. To the East, the foothills of the Andes and the golden argentine pampa shine (rolling planes). Due South, grrr, the grayish brown gnarr of Mr. Fitz Roy and Sir Cerro Torre are lined with eternal ice blue jagged glaciers. I'm tired just writing about it, so much emotion so much synapses firing off; they are wondering without answers. So small you feel, so lucky you know you are, so confused with no explanation of why? The only thing left is to just let go and accept the moment for what it is. It just is, nothing more, nothing less a moment like every other. It felt like we were in the clouds but there was absolutely no humidity in the air. High on life, it was the best ski touring day I’ve ever experienced, toped only by the warmth of a loving woman. A feeling, not rationally explainable a simple deep joy, que pasa? The ski down, ouff, still send shivers down the spine. Something living in the raw brutal birth place of mountains humbles one deeply. You like that sappy juice? I don't mind it actually.

Day 4

Let's roll! Still pink lined are the mountain tops in the early hours. Still there is no sign of terrible weather. We've got a 30km day over the icecap and those super fun moraine treks if we do not want to risk spending the night in the white to get licked by the Patagonian fury. We are especially concerned about the absence of contours on our map in the area we are supposed to find an exit off the icecap and climb to a col for our escape route to El Chalten. This map is contrary to all the local knowledge we gathered in our 4hrs in town before leaving to the mountains. The consequence of missing the exit point is a broken glacial tongue that ends in a lake or an endless trek around a massif that would add at least two days to our exit. Horses to the barn we charge at the icecap. Another "why" with no answer! The wind picks up and is conveniently right at our backs and we do the 23km icecap crossing without skins and in 4hrs, stopping once for a moment in front of the Circo de los Altares. So big, so sharp, so imposingly magnificent these natural shapes rise out of ice. Constantly dwarfed by our surrounding, you can't be Grumpy and even if you were Sleepy you are Happy. A last push and we are off the icecap to the place where glaciers are dying, lakes are birthing and rocks are annoyingly pilled up in morainal waves. We walk skis on the back until the 12hr of our day to a tin can cozy shelter used by the Argentine ministry of education for studies on the icecap (impressive budget, not). Nice place by a river and a lake though, no view but protected from the rising wind.

Day 5

A climb to the Paso de Viento and we see what remains of our trek (boy that pass lives up to its name talk about your: “shit-I-hope-I-don’t-get-thrown-of-the-ridge”). We will no longer have our skis on our feet. Our mule like backs want nothing to do with even the concept but it has to be done and so for the rest of the trip. At least it is a gorgeous hidden valley with glacial tongues and out of the sight of Mr. Roy and Sir Torre. Maybe they will hold the weather back just a little while longer. Interesting route finding, twisting loose and steep moraines and a tirolean traverse take us to a wooded camp. So warm we sleep 12hrs.
Day 6
We so out, a trail takes us around the last ridge back into the sights of the giants and to town. Just in time for the 22nd anniversary of El Chalten. Folk music and a large asado are two tempting joys but we can’t keep our eyes open and are forced to retreat to our beds after the local ladies dance and the first band finished playing. We couldn’t miss the local ladies dancing that sweet tango. Mr. Roy would not have been proud.

Day 7

The wind if ripping through town and we are comfortably watching England grind at France in the rugby world cup semi-finals. Still we can’t make sense of how lucky we were. If it is like a box of chocolates…I ask: “why did we get such a good batch?”

Full slideshow at www.heli-skiing.ca
Movie on the way !