We got an early start and were on the trail by 8:15 for what we thought would be a difficult climb to the next ridge. We actually spent considerable time in camp the night before trying to guess which way the route would go. We followed the cairns and red paint easily up 400 or so meters. On the ridge we were rewarded with a condor flying low overhead. I thought it was a good omen, but perhaps I was wrong.
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| Condor in flight over Filo Cristal; I thought this was a good sign, but then again, maybe not |
From Filo Cristal we could see our next destination (as always), Laguna Creton. The views of our destinations always seem so impossibly far away because there is always a steep descent then a steep ascent involved. There are supposedly cristals on Filo Cristal, but we could not find any.
We carefully began descending the steep, sand-covered slabby rocks. However, after a while, we lost the markers and were on some extremely steep, cliffy terrain. We were both stressed out. Alexis saw a cairn in one direction, but we were both concerned about reaching it safely. We tried various avenues for 10m or so with no luck. I was starting to get sweaty palms, but then I noticed a red marker 40m to my left. Hallejullah! This was reassuring, however, it wasn´t easy to get there. We agreed to try the traverse, but there were some exposed moves on semi-wet slabby rock. It would be a long way to fall. Alexis went first. I braced myself and held out a pole for him to hold onto because there were no handholds. Next he reahced for my hand as I eased my way across. Whew! We both breathed a sigh of relief when we reached the marker, but there was much, much more steep stuff to negotiate before the slope eased back.
We wound our way through the bogs below before ascending slabs to Laguna Creton for a well-deserved lunch break.
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| View of our lunch spot, Lago Creton. I wish they had a zip line down. |
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| View of the insanely challenging descent route over steep rock, wet slab, and crappy scree |
From Laguna Creton, we elected to continue on to Lago Ilon. This involved another, you guessed it, climb up slabby rock to a ridge. We had some nice views of the aptly named Laguna Azul. The trail dipped to some other lakes and had one more 150m rise to attain our final ridge and some outstanding views.
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| View of the stunning Laguna Azul |
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| After our final ridge we were rewarded with this stunning view of Mt Tronador! |
This ridge was easy to descend, at least easy by Bariloche standards. We were thrilled by the modest descent on scree and dirt through verdant meadows crawling with lizards. If you don´t know this about me, I love lizards and couldn´t resist stopping to check them out. But there were so many! It must be a healthy ecosystem to support so many. I joked with Alexis that it was like the birds were singing for the first time since we left town. I know it sounds like a cheesy Carpenter´s song.
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| There were lizards everywhere, so cool! |
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| Lago Ilon, our final camp |
We reached Laguna Ilon after 7.5 hours of walking. It was very mellow and very buggy.
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| During dinner in our final camp with Alexis´s timer. I don´t look so bad after 5 days trekking! |
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| at sunset |
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