Feliz año nuevo chicos!

Happy New Year everybody!

I rang it in on the flanks of Cerro Tronador (Spanish for "Thunderer", and it looks as badass as its name...sadly the clouds didn't part for me to take photos of it this time) in a hike-in mountain hut full of fun people where the booze flowed and the music played until the wee hours of morning.

Rather than describe in words, here is the story in photos. And some words, but mostly photos. We like photos, right?

Part I: The miserable, miserable (but beautiful) hike

Anneke and I hiked four hours in the driving rain up the side of Cerro Tronador, climbing up through dripping forest with occasional cloud breaks that afforded us some jaw-drapping views. Within the first half hour, we were soaked to the bone, our water-resistant ski gear not up to the deluge. 

It got colder and colder as we hiked, but we were determined. We had a party to go to. Photo: Anneke on the trail as water pours down the volcanic rock.

We did have some pretty sweet views through occasional breaks in the sky (the breaks were never above us, sadly).

Castaño Overa Glacier on Tronador as viewed from the trail.

Anneke slogging though slush as we approached (finally!!) the refugio, rainbow in the background signalling better times ahead.

The refugio! Wait, no, false alarm. A building, but not the refugio.

The refugio! We decided midway up to stay inside, not in tents, because we were so cold and it was raining so hard and staying inside a warm, dry refugio after all that seemed (and was) infinitely nicer.
(Photo taken the next morning as the drunken revelers departed)

Part II: Safe and warm inside Refugio Otto Meiling

Due to our late start, we were the last ones to arrive at the refugio. We were greeted by a hut full of friendly folks who gave us a warm round of applause when we walked in, dripping and shivering. Drinks were quickly poured.

First order of business (after changing into dry clothes): open the wine Anneke hauled up.

Next order of business: cook dinner.

Table neighbor enjoying a book and some mate (in case you doubted we were in Argentina)

One of many cool mosaic lamps decorating the refugio

Part III: We came to party

We killed the five hours between our arrival and midnight by...drinking. Everything. It was new year's eve, after all...

Anneke gleefully pops the cork off of the semi-expensive (expensive is always a relative term when it comes to grape-derived beverages in this part of the world, God Bless the South!) champagne I hauled up the mountain.

¡Diez! Nueve! Ocho! Siete! Seis! Cinco! Cuatro! Tres! Dos! Uno!  ¡¡Feliz año!!

And then the party started for real. First song of the night: Final Countdown. Then: Carrie. Why? Because the refugieros love me (nobody forgot my name that night).

We danced in our flip flops until 4am. You'd think we hadn't just hiked up a volcano. It was an awesome night. (some of the dancing shots by Anneke)

Part IV: January 1, 2014!

Revelers sleeping off the hangovers the next morning. Incredibly, I did not have one. I may have drank like a fish, but I also drank a lot of water and danced all of it off. My sleeping bag is the red one at the bottom, next to the snugglers. Anneke managed to get a photo of me sleep-drooling in my sleeping bag, but I'm saving myself the embarassment here.

Breakfast in the refugio, watching the snow fall and working up the courage to leave.

Anneke was the first brave soul to leave the refugio in the morning.

But it was fine,and fun. The snow was dry and perfect. Me, backpack on, making a total fail of a snowangel. Photo by Anneke.

The snow was, in fact, so perfect that we had to stop and make a little snowman (Australian Anneke's first!!). Harder than we thought it would be, the snow was too dry to use my normal roll-the-ball expert snowman-building technique. Photo by Anneke.

We hiked down as a big group, I used all my Spanish words. Photo by Anneke.

In good spirits despite the rain and hangovers.

Happy new year!!

Epilogue: Some reflections

This new year marked quite a milestone in the life of this chica: the first new year in quite some time where instead of thinking, "good riddance old year, pleasegod let this new one be better," I rang in 2014 in the coolest possible way, all while thinking, "hotdamn, 2013 rocked!! here's to another one like it!"

2010 was the year I struggled mightily with a hopeless experiment, came down with a bad case of pneumonia, and ended a six-year relationship after years of friendship and fighting.

2011 started off hopefully with an exciting new romance and a new direction in my work, but crashed and burned hard with three consecutive cancer scares, surgeries, and the beginning of my battle with major depression.

2012 was an exhausting roller coaster in which I got engaged, got more bad cancer news, got left by my fiancé and, my heart badly and bitterly broken, I sank into the deepest emotional hole I've ever visited, ending up in a hospital after depression had led me to so give up on life that I stopped eating and drinking; it slowly got better from there as my PhD thesis project started to come together and I deepened relationships with family and old and new friends, but it continued to be an emotional battle.

2013 got off to a rough start with another broken heart, but quickly got AWESOME as I fought off the remnants of the mental and physical health problems I had suffered under the previous year, spent a lot of time working on my favorite desert island in the Pacific, wrapped up my PhD research and wrote my thesis, and then, in an incredible burst of everything going right, got a call from my doctor saying "all clear!" from the latest round of biopsies the night before I successfully defended my PhD dissertation in front of a room stuffed with dear friends and my family. August 16th, 2013, the day I became Dr. Frantz, was the best day of my life. And it kept getting better from there as I drove up the Pacific Coast from L.A. to my parents' house in Oregon, put the finishing touches on my dissertation, then flew to Santiago on a $5 air miles ticket to begin this life-changing and grand adventure.

So, to any of my friends out there who suffered through a rough 2013, I lift my glass to you and hope that 2014 is the year that Everything Gets Better. I know that can ring empty when you are sitting in an emotional well in the emotional dark. To you, amigos, I hope you reach out, I'm only an email away and you have my empathy and love. As Allie over at Hyperbole and a Half so beautifully put it, them's some dead fish, and it sucks. Hang in there.

Proof that life gets better!

And to those of you who had a baller 2013, WOOO!! Keep on rocking, rockstars!

To everyone: wishing you joy, random acts of kindness that make you smile, rain in the desert (but get the hell out before the flash flood, k?), and sunny powder days.

With love,

Carie

On Week 2 of being a solo woman traveler

I am not new to travel, but I am new to traveling alone. When I told my plans to family and friends I met with a lot of concern and heard "be safe" a lot more than "have fun". Sadly, there's good reason for that. As a woman traveling alone, I am a target. I wish that wasn't the case, wish I could ignore that that is the case, but I can't.

Two weeks into my trip and there is already absolutely no doubt in my mind that traveling alone is way different than traveling as a group or a couple, and traveling alone as a woman amplifies and adds all kinds of problems. I knew that would be the case when I left, hence no small deal of anxiety about the trip as it approached.

When planning my trip, I read several blogs by women who travel solo, most notably a little adrift. One thing that struck me when looking at their packing lists were three items that appeared over and over: the DivaCup, a whistle, and a doorstop.

I'll probably talk about the DivaCup at some other point, but trust me ladies, it's awesome (once you convince yourself it isn't any grosser than what you already use...and for the record, my experience with it was significantly less Macbeth-ish than this Jezebel poster's...).

Then there's the whistle. I always carry a whistle when I backpack, but it's to protect myself from bears and help people find me if I'm lost in the woods. These women weren't backpacking in the woods though, they were traveling in urban environments. The whistle was for protection from other humans.

My doorstop

Finally there's the doorstop. The "put this behind your door at your hotel/ hostel/ guesthouse/ family stay so that nobody can come in and rape you" doorstop. Because that's an issue? Men breaking through flimsy hostel locks to rape women? Am I the only one who things, not, "oh, great idea, I'll get a doorstop," but "WHY THE FUCK IS THE WORLD SO MESSED UP THAT THIS IS NECESSARY??"

I got a doorstop.

And I was damned glad I had it last night.

Last night, when a 40-something year old man staying at the hostel latched onto me, standing close to me while I cooked and touching my arm and asking me questions, most of which I didn't understand, and when I communicated that I didn't understand, would get closer to me, stroke my arm, and slur his Spanish even more in what I'm sure he thought was a sexy voice but which I thought was creepy as shit. Then sitting right next to me at dinner and insisting that I drink with him (I drank from my own glass from my own bottle of wine, and stayed sober), smoke with him (heeeelll no), telling me repeatedly that I should go out dancing with him, asking the others at the table to tell me that he wanted me to dance, making kissing noises and following me when I went to wash my dishes. Afraid he would follow me to my room, I stayed at the table until he disappeared to use the restroom, then bolted to my room, locked the door, and stuffed the doorstop in. Sure enough, later that night he stopped by, knocked and said something, and I ignored. He tried the door, which was locked. He knocked more. Eventually he left, but I had that whistle ready and was glad for the extra level of security the doorstop added, since the lock would not be hard to pick and the door easy to bust open. Later that night I overheard two girls saying that "the creepy guy is asleep on the floor". Awesome.

I stayed in my room until late the next morning, hoping that if I came out late enough, he would be gone. Backfired. Just as I was eating breakfast, he arrived and sat with me. Pulling the same arm stroking (yanked away arm, he didn't stop, said "No!", he didn't stop) and one-way conversation shit as the night before. I stood up, and walked to my room. He followed me. I was glad I had left my room unlocked so that I could slip right inside and slam and lock the door before he got there behind me. He knocked, stayed at the door. When I ignored him I heard him walking back and forth down the hallway, probably pretending not to be standing at the door since the hostel proprietor was nearby.

I sat silently on my bed in my room for at least an hour and wept into my pillow, pretending to be invisible, doing the whole turtle thing I always do when in situations like these. I felt helpless, terrified, trapped.

But a little voice said, "This is BULLSHIT. Bullshit that I am locked in a room because of some sleazy creep. Bullshit that I am here, in Argentina, wanting to have an incredible time and enjoy some life after 6 years of grad school, and am afraid to leave my room. B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.

So I grabbed my whistle. And I left my room, locking it behind me so he couldn't surprise me inside when I returned. I walked to the hostel lobby, and with my translate app on my phone told the hostel proprieter that the guy wouldn't leave me alone, and asked when he was leaving.The proprieter looked concerned and assured me that the guy would be leaving later that day. And then I sat in the lobby and worked instead of hiding in my room like before. And that time when the guy walked in to bother me, the proprieter was there, so he didn't. And I felt just a little bit better, a little bit stronger, and a little bit proud of myself for not letting the creep confine me to my room. I actually did something, even if it was a small something, a huge departure from my usual curl up and cry and try to disappear until the perpetrator leaves the scene routine.

I've got a long way to go before I really feel good about the way I stand up in situations like these. There's a balance to strike between being paranoid, and being safe. Between provoking a physical conflict that I am not likely to win (I'm feisty and will scratch, claw, bite, kick, and scream if provoked, but mass simply isn't on my side) and responding in a way that makes me feel weak, small, and defeated. Between being rude and offending people who are simply used to different cultural standards of behavior, and accepting and encouraging behavior that I feel puts me at risk. Between being the warm, open, caring, and friendly human being I want to be, and being cold and rude and treating people like they are invisible to me in order to make my lack of sexual interest completely clear.

And that's the heart of the issue. It makes me angry that I have to, by default, treat every man I come across in my travels and my life as a potentially dangerous dick on a stick until I get to know him well enough to trust him. That I have to be wary, have to be mistrustful, have to be careful not to smile too often, not to make too much eye contact when I talk, not to ask too many questions or express too much interest in the person--another human being who I would like to get to know, learn from, understand--because too many men in my life have taken that friendliness and genuine interest and basic love for my fellow humans as sexual willingness.

So I'm just going to put this out there: No. Blanket no. I don't care who you are, how attractive you think you are, how much better you think you would be for me than anyone else I've ever dated, how awesome you think your dick is, how sexy your voice is, how well you dance, how well you cook, or how romantic are the sweet nothings you creepily whisper into my unwilling ear, the answer is N-O. I'm not on this trip to pick up your nasty STDs or even to pick up a perfectly wonderful boyfriend. I'm here to be alone, I know it's hard to believe, but I want to be alone. So if it's sex you want, stay the hell away from me, I don't want it. If you try anything I'm going to blast your fucking eardrums out, and god help you if you harass me again while I'm chopping vegetables, because you'll be eating your own Rocky Mountain Oysters. [insert threatening Carie face here]

With all that said, I am glad and very grateful to be here. In numbers I have had far more good experiences here with people (including men) than bad. Women face this shit wherever they are, not just while traveling, and I am seeing things I've always wanted to see, doing things I've always wanted to do.

Not going to let creeps stop me from enjoying this.

By throwing myself into a situation where I'm bound to face some of my greatest fears and be constantly made uncomfortable, I'm forcing myself to either become who I want to be or go home (and I'm no quitter!). I am, every day, becoming a little bit more confident and comfortable in my own skin. And that's one of the goals, isn't it?

Boarding Las Leñas Day 1: rain, sleet, and smiles

I came to Argentina for one reason: Las Leñas.

Woke up to this email of encouragement
from my Ph.D. advisor. 

My original plan to go to Nevados de Chillán, just a few hours from Santiago, to stay and snowboard with a group of mountain guides there, were thwarted by a big storm that was supposed to dump snow (see my post on arriving in Santiago), but turned to rain instead. So, I checked over the snow reports for all of South America, and Las Leñas was the one place that looked like it still had a good forecast. I packed my bags, hopped the bus, crossed the border at the top of the Andes, and a long bus trip later arrived at 1am in Malargüe, Argentina, where I checked into a hostel and slept a few hours before my 7am ski bus wakeup call.

I groggily crawled out of bed, shoveled down a quick hostel breakfast (little portions of toast, butter, and jam), packed my day bag, and was about to leave to walk to the bus when Ramón, the hostel proprieter, stopped me, scolded me for being late, and drove me to the bus terminal (I returned with wine later that day to make up for it). The bus from Malargüe to Las Leñas leaves at 8:30 from the central bus terminal, takes about an hour and a half, and costs $50 Argentine pesos round trip (<$8USD if you use the official exchange rate). It's possible to stay at Las Leñas, but lodging at the village starts at ~$300/night and I obviously wasn't going to cough up that kind of money.

Las Leñas is like the Aspen of South America: big mountain, big snow, big price. The target clientele at Leñas, as with many of the other better mountains in Chile and Argentina, is wealthy foreigners, so the prices they charge are similar to the more expensive U.S. resorts. Bad news for me. The good news, and the reason I risked coming, was that Leñas is famous for powder and mind-blowing off-piste and backcountry terrain.

Mountains! With snow on them!
That's a good sign, right?

The bus ride up was spectacular. The plains gave way to hills and canyons, and I could see mountains in the distance. I was excited, especially when the roadside bumps turned from dry foothills into increasingly big and increasingly snowy mountains. When raindrops started to appear on the bus windows I took that as a good sign that it was snowing up on mountain.

Ooooh, optimism, how often you have broken my heart.

Rain. Rain rain rain. And rainy patches of slush over mud on the slopes. Apparently in the 48 some hours since the last time I had had internet access, the forecast had turned to Noah's Flood and all of the snow was washed right off the mountain. But the first bus back down the mountain wasn't until 5:30pm, and the restaurants were too expensive to spend the day drinking beer and eating, and I sure as hell wasn't going to sit outside in the rain and wait for a bus for 7 hours so off to the ticket counter I went. I closed my eyes, handed over the credit card, and cringed while they charged the $70USD for a lift ticket (for late-season skiing in the rain? the vultures!).

Oh yeah, let's DO this!!

So, I strapped on the board, pulled down the goggles, checked out the mountain map, found the lifts that would get me up to the highest possible elevation (snow? please? snow?), and up I went.

Again optimism -> heartbreak. The upper lifts were all closed.

Sad face.

Well, whatcha gonna do. In my case, laps on the dinky beginner slopes, which were more like ramps between mud patches. After about 20 some laps on one run, it was time for lunch (and late enough that I could finally call my bank about the lost ATM card from the previous post), so I slopped my way into the lodge, leaving trails of filthy mud and dripping water as I went. I tried hard to find a payphone (apparently they don't exist there? that is what customer relations informed me), and then attempted to weasel my way into some free internet access, but no dice, and had to pay another vulture $10USD for 2 hours of internet access (have these people no shame?) so that I could skype call my bank. Bank wouldn't do anything until I mailed them a handwritten letter, so I skype called my dad and got him to fax one over for me. I then paid another $50 to have a replacement card sent to me emergency express, and assured it should arrive in a few days. Relieved, got myself a cup of insta-noodles ($8USD! Blaaarrrgh!!) and wandered on back into the rain. Expensive rainy crummy day.

But then! I rode the lift up and at the top, the rain turned to sleet. Optimist re-awoke.

Sleet? Does that mean snow somewhere? HOORAAAY!!
(taking selfies and playing with the fancy new GoPro graduation present kept me entertained in the rain)

Determined now to find snow, I took the board off and started to hike. And hike and hike and hike. And, about an hour into the hike, the snow started to fall. About the same time, I saw what looked like halfway decent ski-able terrain. In the far distance I saw a group of black spots on top of a ridgeline, and as I hiked the started to drop one by one into a big ice cream bowl of untouched snow. And there was hope.

So I kept hiking. I spotted a line I wanted, down a steep couloir that ended in a cloud of mist, and did something not very smart (but it sure cheered me up) and bootpacked it, alone, wishing more than once that I hadn't left my crampons and ice axe in Oregon but using my board as an anchor when I could, made it up into the mist cloud, turned on the video camera, and down I went. And it was super fun. So I did it again, going up higher into the chute the second time by scrambling my way up an exposed rock spine and dropping over an into the couloir.

 And then it was time to go back to the bus. So despite the rain and the mud, I had a great first day at Las Leñas. Worth the lift ticket. Worth the trip.


And it kept getting better... Continued in the next post: Boarding Las Leñas Days 2-3: Hiking off the thesis belly and a day so exciting I almost pooped myself

GoPro video footage from the day (my first attempt at stitching together a video from GoPro footage!) is up on YouTube! Check it out. It was originally set to the end of "Rain Song" by Led Zeppelin, but YouTube wouldn't let me use it. In the comments here, give me suggestions for other songs to use and I'll see if they're available for copyright clearance!