19-Feb Laguna Negra to Campamento Mallin

I said goodbye to my new friends and headed to the refugio for info on the next section of the route.  They had aerial photos with the route drawn in (pictured below).  So, I photographed these for reference.  This section of the trail isn´t as well-marked.

Photo description of the route and the fun things to come

Refugio Italia on Laguna Negra

The trip out of camp was more challenging than I would have liked.  The lake is hemmed in by slabby rock walls.  I wasn´t expecting to have to work so hard and move so carefully that early in the morning.  Yuck!  There was even a rope in one particulalry steep, wet section.  Nonetheless, we traversed the lake unscathed and made our way up to the next ridge on loose rock within an hour.  This was followed by a steep descent first on rock, then on ¨polvo¨or powdered dirt which is equally as unstable underfoot.  We crossed the creek and worked our way up the next slope surprised to find some good markers and cairns along the way.  The sun was hot as we plodded along.  Aside from some minor route-finding issues, we reached Laguna CAB in 4 hours.




View of our next stop: Laguna CAB

The hut warden gave us a great recommendation- he said rather than traversing through the bogs on the left side of the lake for 1.5 hours, we should go barefoot and walk around the right side of the lake in the water.  This is definitely in the ¨trip highlights¨category.  It felt so good on tired, hot, swollen feet!  The hut warden said it would take us 6 hours to reach this point, but since it only took us 4.5, we opted to continue on.

My favorite part of the trip: avoiding the bogs on the left side of the lake by walking barefoot through the lake.  It felt great on our tired feet!

The next section was also surprisingly well-marked.  This was especially good, because looking up, it was difficult to tell where the weakness in the rock would be to allow us passage.  We ascended another hot 400m before topping out on the ridge to another view of Tronador.  If you haven´t sensed the theme here, there is a better view of Tronador on each successive ridge as we move toward it.

Smiling on another windy summit.  No doubt it was before I looked over the edge and saw what we had to climb down on.  Also, note a theme here: there is a view of Tronador that improves on every successive ridge top.

The descent involved a long (1km) traverse across slabby rock.  It took us a while to even locate the descent route and more time to follow the cairns and sparse red markers painted on the rock.  Once we reached the perched valley floor which was the only flat spot we had seen in days, we decided to call it a day.  Afterall, it was after 8 hours of walking.  We spent an enjoyable evening in Campamento Mallin Mate Dulce and were the only ones there except for hoards of gnats.  It was a beautiful spot and I wish I had taken more pics.

View of Campamento Mallin Mate Dulce