Around El Chalten (Argentina)

On January 17, 2006, the four of us rented a Volkswagen Polo and drove to El Chalten. El Chalten is approximately 215 kms from El Calafayte, however, due to the poor road conditions it takes about 4.5 hours to get there. Wade, having grown up in rural Saskatchewan, claimed that he is an expert at driving gravel roads and so he became our chauffeur for the trip...and he delivered! Wade got us there in 3.5 hours, although by that point we had grit in our teeth. One word to describe El Chalten is DUSTY! I think it must be the dustiest city on earth...although I have no official stats to back this up. Dust was literally billowing out of the air vents as we were driving. Once we got there, there was no reprieve as we were in the midst of dust bowl. Here is a picture of the typical buildings in El Chalten.

El Chalten is a town of approximately 400 people. The main draw for tourism is the entrance to the National Park - Los Glaciers. There are many hiking circuits around El Chalten and the hikes in Fitz Roy to see Mt. Fitz Roy are the most popular. Here is a picture of the backdrop to El Chalten.


On January 18, 2006 we started a 15 km hike including an hour detour to the best lookout point for Mt. Fitz Roy. Unfortunately, the weather did not co-operate with us. Around lunch time clouds were rolling in, wind was picking up and it was beginning to spit rain, but we are expert hikers by this point...so this doesn't stop us...yet. Plus, after making our painful deviation and getting lost in Torres del Paine, we now are the wiser (or so we think). When the path seems to run out, there are no footprints and it doesn't seem reasonably traversable...it probably isn't. Well once again, our path ran out and there were no footsteps, although it was traversable until Mother Nature intervened...thank goodness. We eventually got stuck between two streams with no way to pass, plus the weather turned nasty. We were wet, the rocks we were walking on were very slippery and so we finally conceded and turned around. On the way back we found the proper sign which had a path leading in a different direction! Although, by this time we were behind schedule and the weather was nasty so we decided to continue back to El Chalten. Here is a picture of us as close as we got to Mt. Fitz Roy.