Splitboarding the Refugios of Bariloche Part I: Frey

I spent my weekdays in Bariloche diligently attending an intensive Spanish course, doing my homework, doing my work-work (finishing up manuscripts from my Ph.D. work), and doing other responsible things like feeding myself and putting together job applications. The minute I was released from Spanish class on Fridays, however, I split for the hills, and spent my Bariloche weekends with my splitboard in the mountains.

Here are those stories.

Part I: Refugio Frey
Part II: Refugio San Martin (Jacob)
Part III: Refugio Italia (Laguna Negra)

Note: A "Refugio" (= refuge) is a mountain cabin, [sometimes] manned by mountain folk (refugieros/as) to provide food (or a kitchen), water, and shelter in remote places to people playing in the mountains. In most of Argentina, they are run by the Club Andino mountaineering club, and usually involve a dining hall and kitchen on the main level, a large attic stuffed with bunks or mattresses for housing sleeping guests, and an attached or nearby toilet facility.

Refugio Frey

The most famous and popular of the refugios around Bariloche, people who have never been to the area have heard of Frey. Refugio Frey sits at the end of Laguna Toncek which fills the bowl at the bottom of a hanging valley surrounded by insanely toothy granite spires. I saw it poetically (and perfectly) described in one blog post by snow writer and Utah Outside owner Jared Hargrave as "the palm of a god hand below fingers curving skyward". It is a mecca for rock climbers, unsurprisingly, since my first thought when I saw the spires around Frey was, "hot damn, bet those would be awesome to climb." It is also a favorite of ski mountaineers due to its easy access from the backside the Cathedral Alta Patagonia ski resort, and also because the steep chutes, narrow couloirs, and broad bowls surrounded by the granite towers poking like claws out of the snow make for quite a winter playground.

Refugio Frey at dusk (graininess = high ISO setting because it was dark, but check out those spires!!)

So it was an obvious first stop upon arriving in Bariloche.

I was a little nervous, this being my first solo splitboard tour as will as my first time out with a bivvy sack in non-summer conditions. I spent the nights before going reading an avalanche safety book to brush up on long-forgotten tests and details, and agonized over what to pack.

But Friday afternoon rolled around and I packed my sandwiches, packed my backpack, waited 40 mins for the bus to the trailhead to show up, and arrived at the trailhead only to realize that I had lost my sunglasses at the bus stop back in Bariloche (my first of many lost pairs of sunglasses on my South America trip). So I did some quick shopping at the little shops at the base of the ski resort--which had closed for the winter but was still hosting tour groups and was thus not completely shut down--and finally found some affordable cotton candy pink hipster shades at a pharmacy.

Me with my awesome new pink sunglasses.

Finally I was off. The ski area had shut down for the season the Monday prior to my arrival in Bariloche, and no wonder. Temperatures were balmy, the hills were starting to brown, and there was no snow on the bottom of the slopes. So there I was, hiking in a t-shirt and capris, through miles and miles of dry, dusty trail, all while carrying a snowboard on my back. I looked--and felt--insane. Some two hours later of climbing slowly up and around the side of a hill while listening to learn Spanish podcasts to keep myself entertained, I still hadn't seen any sign of snow, and was beginning to wonder if I had made a terrible mistake, or if Fernando at the Club Andino was home laughing, having sent me on a wild goose chase.

But then I turned a corner and suddenly saw a snow-draped spire framed between the trees and I gasped. Ooooooooohhhhhhh!! My pace doubled. Soon afterwards I met two hikers coming in the opposite direction carrying their skis, and they said something which I thought was "it was good!" and then "only another 40 minutes!" which gave me another burst of energy just as the trail started to get steep.

Why, hello, pretty.

I felt every gram of my 60-pound pack and my legs were burning and blisters were screaming with every step. The promised 40 minutes came and went with no sign of an end to the climb or anything that looked even remotely like where I thought I was going. It eventually dawned on me that 40 minutes for them--going downhill--would not be 40 minutes for me going up. It was over an hour later as the sky was turning pink before I finally spotted the ridgeline, and then the antenna of the hut. I climbed and climbed and finally staggered up to the door looking confused (I had never been to a refugio before and had only a vague idea of what they were and no idea what refugio protocol was...do I need to check in? are there hours? are people going to be asleep in there? will they hear me if I knock?) just as the sky went dark. Someone saw me and the refugiero, I'm going to call him Gordi because I don't remember his name but know it sounded similar to Gordo, but wasn't (Gordo means "fatty" in Spanish, which would have been an ironic nickname for the wirey refugiero) came outside, helped me with my pack, welcomed me, made me a hot meal, and gave me a beer.

God bless you, Gordi.

Beer and soup at the Refugio Frey, Night 1

I slept that night on a wooden platform under a sky bright from a full moon and reflections on the iced-over lake. I had to burrow into my sleeping bag to sleep. Despite the light, I didn't wake until hours after sunrise. I quickly ate one of my sandwiches for breakfast, divided my things into "snowboard' and "not snowboard" piles, packed for the day, and then set off. Gordi joined me, glad for an excuse to get out of the hut.

Woke up to this view from the bivvy sack

Picking my way around the lake was another example of my inability to traverse on my splitboard. It wasn't long before I ditched the skins, put on crampons, and started to hike up the slope, first to a little lake (Laguna Schmoll), and then up the final ridge of the Cathedral. Gordi stopped near the top, put on his skis, and headed down, after asking me what I wanted to do and I pointed in a general direction and asked him what he thought and he replied, "for me, it's all scary". He handed me his radio before he left and told me to be careful. It was sweet, and reassuring knowing that I'd be missed if I didn't come back that evening. I watched him, then finished hiking to the top to enjoy the views while eating another sandwich.

Enjoying the views from the top of Cathedral

I strapped my board on, took a deep breath, and pushed off. The snow was crusty, but good, fast and manageable. I rocketed by Schmoll and down the second ridge, decided my run was way too short, and hiked up another ridge for another go. This one was steeper, and even more fun, and since I still had plenty of time before evening, hiked up a third side of the valley.

One of the chutes I boarded. It was sweet.

By this point the temperatures had really climbed, the snow was very wet, and my skins stopped sticking to my board. After a few frustrating attempts to re-apply them so I could climb, I gave up, tore them off, threw the board on my back, and started post-holing. I soon had to stop again to put on crampons when the snow got harder and the way steeper. The going was slow. I cursed my splitboard the whole way up, thinking "Why the hell did I haul you and all your trappings all the way up here only just to haul you on my back at the end? I should have just brought my good board." But my mood quickly changed.

Toward the top, "Club Can't Handle Me" came through my earphones, and I had to stop and dance a little, and then ran to the top, and stopped and danced some more. No really, I did.

There's a back story here. The song was put on my MP3 player two years earlier by my friend Vicky when I told her I needed better running music. I never listen to pop, electronic, or hip-hop, and that's what she loaded me up with. Whatever, the beats were better for running than the rest of my limited music collection. But "Club Can't Handle Me" became my Power Song when one day while out on a "short" trail run, after months of physical therapy after struggling with an injured knee and not being able to run more than a mile or two at a time, this song came on and it was so funny, so happy, and so perfect for the moment that I ran a whole 8 miles and felt no pain. From then on it became my "Oh hell yes I can do this" song. Right before my thesis defense, I had this playing on repeat as I set up and paced the lecture hall waiting for people to arrive, mentally substituting "thesis committee" for "club" in the lyrics.

So when the song came on, I really did have to stop and dance. And decided it was the perfect way to mark the tops of all of my splitboard climbs in Patagonia. Hope you like it. :-)

All those lines are mine. Ignore the wet slides...

Once the dance party on the mountaintop was over, I ate another sandwich (I came prepared), then boarded down the steep couloir I had climbd up, skirting cliffs and a waterfall before coming to a stop at the very bottom in the bushes above Laguna Topeck. The snow was great spring snow and the boarding was awesome, but I had stupidly forgotten my GoPro at the hostel that weekend so you'll just have to take my word for it. By the end of the ride, I had a crowd watching, a group of physical education students who had arrived that afternoon and were tromping around in the snow and who had spotted me on my way down, so I returned to the refugio a minor celebrity.

Inside Refugio Frey

Meanwhile Gordi had returned from going out looking for me because it was getting late (despite there still being plenty of light) and he was worried because, as he later told me, "I thought maybe you went over the other side. I mean, usually people come back early. The snow is bad there, but I thought, she sleeps in a bivvy sack. She's a crazy woman. So I thought maybe you went."

Gordi then insisted that I sleep inside the refugio the coming night because the wind was howling and was supposed to pick up; when I hesitated he scolded me and said "no charge! but you sleep inside!" and put me up in the attic of one of the outbuildings. For dinner I sat with him and Santi, the other refugioero, in the kitchen and drank wine with them while the students partied.

My soup in Refugio Frey, Night 2 (love you too, guys)

Exhausted, I excused myself at around 11:30 and crawled up to the attic, where I slept soundly despite the wind shrieking and threatening to tear the roof off. I woke up the next morning next to a lost-seeming Canadian guy who explained that the refugieros had told him to sleep there to avoid the wild students but had warned him, "there's a pretty blonde girl up there, but she's crazy." I'll take that reputation.

Refugio Frey at night

Continued in Part II: Refugio San Martin (Jacob)

The Escape from Malargüe, and Santiago Redux

My debit card finally arrived! And the evening it did, I got the f*ck out of Dodge. No offense, Malargüe. You are a charming little town in a truly stunning location, but when Las Leñas closed and bus service to the mountains stopped, my reasons for staying were not many, and with Creepazoid prowling about my reasons for leaving were many.

My card arrived at around noon. I snatched it out of the arms of the FedEx guy, tore the package open, ran to the nearest ATM, and withdrew as much cash as it would let me. Just enough to pay for the hostel stay, not enough to pay for a bus ticket out. So I hit every ATM in town, and then started making an ATM cycle every hour, until finally I was able to pull out more money, enough for the 2am bus ticket to get me out and back to a place with snow.

Elated, I wandered through town, loving everything in sight. I loved the birds. Loved the dirt streets. Loved the buses rolling through town honking their horns and blaring sirens celebrating the return of the high school Judo champions, loved the friendly people, loved that my Spanish had improved to the point where I could sort of talk to people and make myself understood, loved the views of mountains in the distance.

I did a final round of sink laundry, put my clothes out to dry, and treated myself to a fancy dinner ($35 for a three-course meal involving locally-sourced goat meat, pasta, and wine-soaked pears as well as my own personal bottle of wine), spending two hours eating and drinking alone in a state of pensive ecstasy. I returned to the hostel around midnight to a horrible smell, which I traced to the ball of goo on the heater that had once been my ExOfficio anti-microbial underwear. You can't win them all.

The dessert course of my celebratory fancy dinner

My melted panties

At 1:15am, with the taxi I thought I had ordered nowhere to be found, I began the long lurching journey from the hostel to the bus station, rattling down the otherwise silent gravel streets of Malargüe with my 50lb snowboard bag, 40lb backpacking backpack, 20lb work backpack, and a purse slung over my neck full of food and wine for the journey ahead. About 10 minutes in, one of the wheels broke off of my snowboard bag, making the movement even more difficult, and progress far slower than I had hoped. It was exhausting, but I had to make that bus, so rattle and lurch I did, sounding like an earthquake, sweating despite the freezing temperatures in my t-shirt, grunting, lurching, panting, and lurching all the way to the bus stop. I arrived just as the bus was pulling away from the terminal. I dropped my bags and sprinted to the bus, yelling and waving my arms. I caught it, slapping my hands on the doors, the windows, whatever I could reach as I ran alongside. The bus stopped. I showed my ticket and pointed to my bags and the bus driver scolded me (or something, I didn't understand except the tone), but I retrieved my bags, put them on the bus, and collapsed, dripping sweat, into my seat.

Woke up to this view. Not bad.

I arrived in Mendoza at 8am, having almost sort of slept on the bus, and spent the hour between bus connections eating most of the food I had brought with me (since I knew it would be confiscated at the border crossing). Then with significantly less drama than the first departure I got on the second bus for a reverse of the Paso Los Libertadores trip of two weeks prior. Except Chileans are waaaaaay pickier than Argentinians about what is brought into their precious, disease-free, unjustly beautiful country so where the border crossing took about 40 minutes on the way to Argentina, it took close to 2 hours complete with bag searches, luggage scans, and questionings. 

Me, post-pat-down

Portillo ski resort. The U.S. ski team trains here in summer. Poor suckers.

Oh, and as the sole North American on the bus, I was singled out for an on-bus pat down and thorough bag hand search. Racial profiling at its finest: hey light-skinned girl, hand me your passport. Oh you're from the United States? Gruff voice! Stand up! Empty your pockets! Eagle position! Give me your bag! I think the guy was disappointed not to find anything, although I was sweating bullets because I had a pretty rock in one bag pocket that I worried would get me into trouble. But the pretty rock was never found, the one pocket he didn't search. Rock aside, I decided that the special treatment was acceptable. It's only fair that I, racially privileged white blonde girl (the red has been sun-bleached almost completely out of my hair now), be treated in the darker-skinned part of the world the way all too many darker-skinned people are treated when they arrive (and when they live) in the U.S.

Anyhow, I made it safe and sound with no rocks confiscated and no fines levvied and no arrests made back in Santiago, descending into the city just as a squadron of what looked like 20-some F-16s roared in formation overhead in honor of the Armed Forces Day part of the September Fiestas Patrias celebrations.

Fiestas Patrias. Biggest holiday in Chile. All the stores and restaurants were closed and I had eaten all my food.

But it was okay, because I arrived at my hostel (having left the wheel-less snowboard bag in bus terminal storage) to a wonderful group of friends-I-hadn't-met-yet and they fed me in exchange for the bottle of Argentinian wine I had. The conversation ranged from the best places in Chile, to engineering special beer fridges, to safety tips for visiting Brazilian Favelas ("Oh, the people are super nice! I love the Favelas! I hang out there until 3am all the time! Oh yeah, but if you don't speak Portugese and know people there, you'll probably die."), to strategies for the cultivation of soil fungus, to earning a living via travel blogging. I got to my dorm bunk bed and crashed hard, sleeping like the proverbial rock.

Food! Glorious food! And a creep-free hostel! Good folks at the Princessa Insolente Hostel in Santiago.

And the next day, I ate mind-blowingly delicious seafood empanadas (have I said yet how much I love empanadas? mmmmmm empanadas), filled a bag full of more empanada (you can never have too many empanadas, I have determined, but you can always have too few. my stomach thinks I have too few right now), and went to go chase more snow. This time to the Chilean side of the mountains, to Nevados de Chillán, the place I had originally intended to go first before the rain drove me across the Andes to Argentina.

OMG <3 Empanadas!!!

My stomach is growling just looking at this picture. Ohsogood.

And sweet, sweet baby Jeebus, I hit the jackpot.

(but you'll have to wait to hear about my awesome snow week until the next post)

The rolling list of lost items

As anyone who has spent a day with me probably knows, I am hopeless at losing stuff. I am the sort of person who regularly locks her keys in her car, leaves her wallet at the check-out-counter, drops cell phones out of her back pocket into the toilet, forgets nice cameras on train rides, etc. My nickname in high school was "spaz" because of my record of doing stupid stuff (losing things, falling into creeks, forgetting it was a weekday, tripping down stairs...). During my first year of grad school at USC, there was a poster in the building bathroom taped to the inside door of the women's restroom that read:

Carie:

do you have

-your keys,

-your wallet
-your glasses

-your phone?

I have often thought that the only solution to this problem would be to get a bunch of those big ring piercings all over my body and just clip things (my phone, my wallet, my keys, my computer, my camera, etc.) to them. But I don't even have pierced ears, and that sounds painful.

But in addition to my incredible knack for losing things, I also have had incredible luck with recovering lost items. Like the time the camera that was left on the train was turned into German lost-and-found and mailed to me. Or the time my male professor emailed me telling me he had found my phone in the womens' restroom (he got strange looks for that one). One of my most memorable stories is the time I thought I left my cell phone at a gas station in god-knows-where Wyoming, and after two hours of driving on bumpy dirt roads and going out sample collecting, the phone was found on the hood of the van, and on the phone was a butterfly, peacefully sunning itself.

So, for everyone's amusement, here is the current updated list of things I've lost so far on this trip.

Item	Lost	Recovered
BECU debit card	Sep 4, Viña del Mar bus terminal?	Sep 18, replacement arrived by FedEx (2 weeks "emergency express"...right. But finally! Hooray!!
Snowboard boots	Sep 6, left on Las Leñas ski bus	Sep 6, bus driver found them and chased me down
One liner glove (brand new REI gloves! Aaargh!)	Sep 12, mountains around Pozo de las Ánimas	Need to purchase new gloves before my hands freeze off
One pair of quick-dry anti-microbial ExOfficio travel panties	Sep 19, Malargüe, Argentina: Melted while trying to dry them on the heater after a sink-washing.	Need more! SOS! Somebody!
Quick dry ultralight camping towel	Sep 20, left to dry and forgotten on the balcony of the Princessa Insolente Hostel, Santiago	Still searching for a replacement...so far no luck.
1L Nalgene water bottle w/ a rad sticker collection	Sep 27, left behind in Las Trancas (the BackChillan cabin)	Think I can sweet talk the guys into mailing it to me?

Crossing the Andes, or, Awesome Adventures on the Megabus

I crossed the Andes in a bus, and it was awesome.

We were just barely able to stuff two of us, my snowboards,
and my backpacks into the back of a Santiago taxi on my way
from Ignacio's place to the bus terminal.

To prepare, I spent a final night in Santiago with Ignacio and had my first empanada (I thought they were with cheese and had avoided them, but no! I can eat them! Empanadas are *awesome*). We stayed up until the wee hours of morning drinking wine (of course, when in Chile... the stuff is soooo good and is about the same price as water, so why drink water when I can drink wine?) and having a deep and emotional conversation about my ill-starred love life. I love this about Chileans, at least all of the Chileans I've gotten to know so far. It's like they meet you and instead of shaking hands go straight for the heart. It was a conversation I had been dreading--Ignacio is a mutual friend of someone who I've spent close to a year and a half hoping would be eaten by tigers--but left me feeling strangely lightened.

Lightened and ready to spend 16 hours crossing the Andes by bus! Bus left 9am from Santiago (following an extremely frantic last-minute purchasing of the $160 "Reciprocity Fee" that Argentina charges--the "sorry we're assholes about letting people into the U.S." tax--at a bus station internet cafe), was scheduled to arrive at 5:30pm in Mendoza, Argentina, and then I had another bus from 6:30pm-1:00am to get me to the hostel in Malargüe, Argentina where I had booked 4 nights.

The bus! I was on the upper Peasant Class level, not the lower Royal Suite level. I think I got the better deal: inexpensive and excellent views. Also, the mountain scene on the back is of where I was headed. I took that as a good sign.

View from inside the bus.
Also, that's a lady reading the bible.
People actually do that here.

The bus left from the main Santiago bus terminal and wove its way out of the city, into the countryside, and through the canyons and hills at the feet of the Andes. We passed through at least three villages perched precariously on gully ledges about which I thought, "I want to live here someday." Just me and my goats. Added goat herding in the Chilean Andes to my list of "if science doesn't work out" backup plans.

And then, BAM, the Andes, starting with this incredible pass (Paso Internacional Los Libertadores) that winds up the mountains to the Argentinian border. Winds 29 times up to the Argentinian border. And you pass underneath a bunch of chairlifts (part of the famous Portillo ski resort) on the way up. While researching how to get to Argentina from Santiago, I read blog posts saying "do not attempt this in winter, too scary!" So I was pretty jazzed. It wasn't as scary as I had hoped--and I had great, grow-hair-on-the-chest upper-deck seats--but it was still pretty rad, especially when the bus driver decided to gun it and skip ahead in the line, careening up the hill and around blind curves in tunnels in the lane of opposing traffic.

Paso Internacional Los Libertadores. Do you see that? 29 switchbacks! Those long blocks are all semi trucks! Craziness. And this is the *main route* connecting Santiago and Buenos Aires via Mendoza.

More photos from the Paso Los Libertadores trip in the Photo Album

Gracias por su visita? No, thank you, Chile.

Then there was the border crossing, where we all had to get off the bus, file through a series of lines to check out of Chile and check into Argentina, file back onto the bus, and continue on our merry way.

The other side of the Andes was dry and barren and mountainous and colorful: Death Valley on steroids. Finally we dropped down into the desert plains that are somehow (magic) used to produce grapes for some more excellent red wines, especially Malbec.

When I arrived in Mendoza, I set out to buy an Argentinian phone card, when I had a heart-stopping realization: my debit card was nowhere to be found. After sitting on a park bench for 15 mins collecting myself, I set off to find a place where I could exchange the Chilean pesos I had recently withdrawn (which is probably where I lost the card) to Argentinian pesos. Not much, but enough to hopefully survive a few days. I didn't have time to call my home bank and thought there was a chance it was just hidden somewhere and I'd find it when unpacking, but hours later when I finally got to the hostel in Malargüe, no card. Shit.

Mendoza. Wine and mountains. I like it.

With the help of Google Translate I was able to communicate (at 1am) to the hostel proprietor what had happened. He said "no problem" to letting me pay him for the first two nights and then pay him for the other nights once my replacement card came in.

Little did I know, an "emergency express" replacement card from my bank (BECU, which I'd thought was a great credit union until this happened) wouldn't arrive for another two (? here's hoping...) weeks.

To be continued...