Rainy day in Cochamó

Fogón with La Paloma in background

 I didn´t sleep all that well owing to warmer temps and the sound of rain on my tent.  i finally got out of bed around 10:30 and walked over to the fogón to cook breakfast.  There I met all the other campers.  Most were either Chilean on vacation or rock climbers.  there were several parties from the US.  I had an extremely social day and don´t think I left the fogón.

I did, however, commit 2 embarassing faux pas.  Let´s just say I learned the difference between ´caliente´and ´calor´.  I was trying to say that I didn´t sleep well because I was too hot (calor), but instead I said that i didn´t sleep well because I was too ´caliente´.  I let the readership discern the difference.  Combine that with another mishap, I changed my clothes and a pair of my undies must have goten stuck on the inside of my pant leg and reached a final destination on the fogón floor.  oops!  I can only imagine what the Chileanos thought of me; they were far too polite to say anything.

Campamento La Junta in the morning mist

clouds clear over Cerro Trinidad

1-Mar Arco Iris 1300m elevation gain, 8 hours

Negotiating the hand tram across the Río Cochamó

I got up early and headed to the refugio across the river to ge some recommendations for a day hike.  I knew that is was highly likely that it would be our only good day of weather and wanted to capitalize on it.  To get to the refugio, we needed to take a hand tram which was fun the first time.  The refugio staff recommended Arco Iris which is a 1630 meter peak that has a trailhead directly above camp.
Like most other trails I have hiked down here, the trail went straight up with minimal switchbacks.  The first part of the trail was dirt and roots through thick lenga forest dotted with fuscias and other flowers and the occasional Alerce tree.  It was beautiful, thick, humid temperate rainforest.  After an hour and a half or so, we came to rock slab where there were ropes of questional quality that we needed to batman up.  The bolts the ropes were affixed to were also of questionale quality.  After surmounting the series of ropes across wet rock slab, it was about an hour more of steep trail up to a mirador.

View from the Arco Iris mirador showing the Cerro Trinidad big wall; move over Yosemite!

The mirador made an excellent lunch stop and I did some back stretches as I was feeling out of alignment.  We decided to try for the summit which was reportedly only 1.5 hours more.  The only water source was reportedly above too and I desperately needed a resupply.  The ¨trail¨was mainly a scramble on slabby, steep rock.

I was thankful after 50 minutes of hiking to encounter some snow;  late season snow always mean water!  The top out on the flase summit wasn´t far away.  The panoramic views were incredible.

View from the false summit.  Volcan Osorno is perched in the distance over the lake. 

Volcan Osorno, which I climbed previously in early January

Alexis on pseudo -rappel (sans harness) on the steep slab

One hour down to the mirador and another hour and fifteen minutes at a quick pace brought us back to camp.  Unfortunately, clouds had moved in which thwarted my notion of a swim in the Río Cochamó.  I settled for a sponge bath and gotten eaten alive by no see úms.  We enjoyed a dinner of wheat free pasta and soup.  I have finally learned that I´m not quite ready to be eating wheat again all the time.  I slept much, much better with the wheat alternative.

Cochamó: Home of the BIG WALL

28-Feb: 12 km, 3:15 hour backpack in to Campamento La Junta.
a.k.a. ¿Dondé está el queso?

To get to Cochamó, one must first get to Puerto Varas, take a bus to the town of Cochamó, and a taxi (or walk) the 15 km from the town to the trailhead.  The trail is insanely muddy.  From the high volume of horseback traffic into the Cochamó river valley, there are deep ruts in the trail that become rivulets after any rainfall.  Because the forest is so dense, the rivulets do not dry up.  SOme of these ruts are more than 8 feet deep from the horses!  Hikers wanting to keep their feet dry have created a multitude of trails skirting the muddier and wetter of these horse ruts creating a high impact on the local environment.  There were so many of these deep, rutted trails to choose from that I felt like a rat in a maze which prompted me to ask ¿Dondé está el queso?  We arrived in camp after a mere 3 hours and 15 min of walking.

Alexis negotiating one of the ruts created by the horses.

 Camp was a wide, grassy spot in the river valley with amazing views of the sheer granite faces above.  As one American put it, it is like Yosemite, but without the people and without the bears to break into your car.


Granite walls reflected in the Río Cochamó

28 Feb Off to Valle de Cochamo

I am now going to correct theone regret that I had when I was last in Puerto Varas' visiting Valle Cochamo.  It has been described to me as 10 Yosemites put together and offers Chile´s best rock climbing.  I will be out of touch for 4 or 5 days, but you can read a little bit about Cochamo hereÑ

http://www.cochamo.com/cochamo/