Month: February 2004

Kaiyote, me, Chris, Margi, Marlene and Rod at one of our Antarctic barbecues. Photo courtesy of Joyce, and yes, I’m toasting with a half-eaten rib. Note that neither Kaiyote nor I realized we would be eating in a snowstorm, and shortly after this photo was taken there was a mad dash to get several more layers of clothing.

Decided not to go to the National Park today (I’ve still got a few more days left) so I’ve been hanging out and trying to get the site back in order. The internet connection from Ushuaia isn’t the fastest thing I’ve ever seen, so please bear with me as I try to convert the site over to the new domain name. The new URL for the journal will be http://www.mountaininterval.org/journal.html, although the old URL should still work for a while (please let me know if anything seems broken). For anyone wondering, Mountain Interval was the name of Robert Frost’s book of poetry that included “The Road Less Traveled”.

I’m most likely going to be in Ushuaia for the remainder of this trip, so provided the server again agrees to speak to the internet I should be a bit better about uploading the journal entries and answering email. Nothing too exciting to report for today, it was mostly just a travel day. Tonight will be the first time in ten days that I’ve eaten a decent meal — no idea how much weight I’ve lost, but I’m very much looking forward to gaining some of it back shortly.

There was a small part of me that was hoping for rain this morning so that I could stay in bed and rest, but luckily the weather is again perfect and I’m enjoying a clear view of Mt. Fitz Roy from the shore of Laguna Capri. The body is complaining, but I’m slowly moving along nonetheless. From here it’s a relatively easy eight mile loop past Cerro Torre and back to town, although once I return to town it will unfortunately be time to leave this amazing place.

Days are better when there’s time to watch the sun rise and to see the sun set. Having Mt. Fitz Roy and a herd of guanacos silhouetted in the light doesn’t hurt, either.

It rained in El Chalten for the five days prior to my arrival, but for the past four days the weather has been perfect — I fear that I may be burning up what good karma remains to me in this lifetime. Slept in until 7:45 this morning and then set off on a trail with unbelievably beautiful panoramas of Fitz Roy, Cerro Torre, and each of the surrounding mountains, lakes and glaciers. In addition to being scenic the trail was also a quiet one, and I saw less than ten other people all day.

While the body is close to meltdown, it hasn’t yet given up on me despite the long hike and 3200 feet of elevation change. It is even more unbelievable that the body and I are still on speaking terms when you consider that I missed a fork in the trail and had to retrace a mile uphill, and also took the scenic route for a half hour on the return trip before again finding the main trail. Tomorrow night I return to El Calafate, and hopefully the corresponding day or two of downtime will provide an opportunity to recover from the recent burst of activity.