Home Stretch -- Chulengo style

We had some good weather as we neared our ending point: the small town of Tortel.  As we got closer and closer to the Rio Baker the water got more and more fresh and more opaque -- it was the influence of all the glacial melt in the area.  Our last campsite before Tortel was a place called San Rio Marlin.  There is a small fisherman's shack there and the beach is only semi-protected.  Before arriving there we had amazingly calm conditions, but as we approached the beach the wind (again) began to pick up a little.  We landed and unloaded our boats and before we new it there were 2 foot seas and white caps just off shore.  Once again we were glad to be safely on land.  The plan was to spend two nights there and finish up all the course paperwork including student evaluations.  Each student gets a thorough evaluation of how they've performed as an expedition member.  Categories for the evaluation are: Leadership, Expedition Behavior, Outdoor Living Skills, Risk Management, Sea Kayaking Skills and Environmental Studies.  Some of these students are taking this course for credit and will be able to transfer the credit to their own university and put the credit toward their major.

Luke made us a birthday cake to celebrate the Marine Corps Birthday.

The Marine Corps birthday was November 10th, so I happily woke Luke up that morning with a fine solo performance of "The Marine's Hymn" ...  Luke was in the Marines for a year and a half before being honorable discharged due to an injury sustained in a vehicle crash while training.  The LAV he was riding in rolled over when the driver tried to take it up too steep of a hill.  After getting out he decided to get some replacement adventure and education on a NOLS course in Patagonia.  It's been fun to have a fellow Marine on the expedition.

Our last morning of kayaking was touch and go (like other days but with a little more pressure to make a move).  As I went to bed the night before I noticed the wind picking up and started hearing it in the trees.  As I lay there in my tent I thought, "Uh oh, I hope we didn't miss our window to paddle our last 5 miles."  The trouble was we had a pick up scheduled and if the weather didn't allow us to move the next day we might have to delay our pickup and it could mess up the schedule for the coming days. Needless to say I didn't sleep very well that night wondering what the next day would bring.

When I got out of the tent at 6:30 am the next morning the weather was gusty and unsettled as was the sea state.  The student leaders of the day made an appropriate call to make a few preperations to get ready but then sit and wait for a window of calm.  At 8 am the weather did settle down a little and we decided to load kayaks.  Then it picked up again.  Then it mellowed.  We decided to get a boat on the water and see what it felt like out there.  Then the weather picked up again and we landed that boat.  As soon as it was on land the wind and seas calmed...  So then we decided we were going to have this fickle weather regardless... and we also knew we had less than two miles to go before we were in protection.  So we launched all the kayaks even though the weather wasn't great and started paddling down wind toward our point of protection in the Rio Baker.  We made it safely, and the students did a fine job of handling their kayaks and staying together as a group.  All the skills we had taught them and that they had been applying up to this point were put to good use that last day.  Way to go Chulengos!

Once we were in the river mouth we had a nice semi-leasurely paddle up stream (with the help of a tail wind) against the current.  But within a couple of hours we were unloading our kayaks on shore in the same place we had started 25 days prior.  We had a good debrief that night and played a fun game then went to bed.  The next morning the bus picked us up and we began the drive to our next section in Valle Chacabuco:  Wilderness First Responder training.  As we travelled through the low mountains it began to snow!  Not unheard of for this time of year (early spring) but somewhat unusual.  Hopefully it will warm up a bit before we go backpacking in a few days!

Some snow on the road down to about 1000 ft.