Third Ration

Our third ration period was 12 days long.  During that time we had a few notable highlights.  We did some vertical bushwacking up a very steep hill where most of the time all we had to hold on to was a plant called 'calafate'--a very thorny plant.  I was still picking thorns out of my hands and thighs 10 days later.

We also had a very memorable storm during this ration.  We had decided to take a layover day in order to do some of the preliminary classes for crevasse rescue and to go for a peak attempt on Cerro Calvo.  Around mid-day the wind began picking up a little.  About that time eight of us also set off to try to climb the mountian.  We had to cross a small glacier, so we roped up and started going for it.  Then the wind really increased and as we moved up and became more and more exposed to the prevailing winds we felt the full force of the storm.  It was blowing little ice pellets and we had to stop and hold position periodically when some of the stronger gusts came or else get blown over.  It was quite exciting and a great show of force by Mother Nature.  We eventually aborted our attempt at climbing Cerro Calvo due to the tempestuous weather and some steep loose rock we encountered... and it's a good thing we did because the wind didn't abate for quite some time.  When we got back to camp things were really blowing there too... so we spent the next few hours reinforcing our tents to withstand the wind through the night.  Some student groups built wind-walls with snow blocks, and everyone used all the cordage available to tie the tents down and anchor them as best as possible.

During our attempt at Cerro Calvo.

Can you tell it's windy?

The wind howled into the night and shook our tents pretty well.  We had a little bit of protection from som rock outcroppings that we were on the lee side of (thankfully).  And it rained very hard for some time.  We got pretty soaked when we went out side to tighten our tent lines or check on the others.

Amazingly, though, while we were mentally prepared for the wind to blow all night, it tapered off and stopped at about midnight.  I had been praying that it would, since I had once been in a wind storm that lasted four days and forced us to abandon our tents and dig a snow cave.  We didn't have enough snow at our camp to dig in like that, so I was praying it would stop.  And it did.  About midnight it just calmed down and we had a great travel day the next day.

The other highlight from our third ration was the amount of time we got to spend up high above 1500 meters and the amount of glacier travel we got to do.  These days it can be hard to find places in Patagonia that are accessible and have enough snow to do glacier mountaineering.  Even for us there were a number of places we couldn't go because the glaciers were to exposed and too cracked up. 

This was the ridge we hiked for several kilometers during the last four days of our third ration.  The weather threatened to get nasty again and we watched the dark grey clouds loom to the west.  We got some snow flakes and snow pellets falling as we travelled but it wasn't too bad weather-wise.  It was cold though!  Some of us nearly had all our layers on as we slowly trudged across the glacier.

Ok, one selfie...