Navarino VII: Blizzards and Beavers

Part VII in the story of my 7-day solo trek on Isla Navarino, continued from Part VI: Bushwhacking North. To start at the beginning or to see the full list of Navarino episodes, click here.

The blanket of dry powder snow that I woke up to on Morning 6 in the tent

An all-day blizzard on Isla Navarino

It was so cold on my sixth night that it actually snowed inside my tent when condensation from my breath hit the tent wall, froze, and fell back down. So I woke at 6 am to a thin layer of snow on my sleeping bag and pack and ice encrusting the inside walls of the tent. The blizzard outside was still raging but I had a fairly full bladder so I decided to brave it.

In the time it took for me to open the tent door, use my poles to lean my ass as far out of the tent as I could, pee, and retreat back into the tent, there was a small snowdrift inside the tent that I then did my best to shovel back outside with my cooking pot. If you've been following this story, you've probably noticed that my reaction to morning adversity is to crawl back into my sleeping bag and sleep a few more hours, and that’s exactly what I did.

Around 8 am I woke again and it was somewhat warmer, so I poked my head out to see if it was safe to leave. It was still snowing hard and the tent was now buried in six-inch drifts (of dry powder! If I had had my splitboard with me, that might have made me happy). My retreat back into my tent and sleeping bag was like The Oatmeal’s Nope Godzilla scene (if you don't know what I'm talking about, click here and thank me later):

My response to waking up in a blizzard.

I may never have left my tent that day if, at around 9 am, I hadn't suddenly had to poop. Like two days earlier, it was preceded by that “DO NOT IGNORE” gurgle and although I pleaded with my bowels, “Can’t it wait? Have you seen the snow outside? Can we at least get things packed up first?” the answer was an insistent, “NO, must poop now!” So out I went. Sorry if this is too much poop talk and grossing you out (maybe put your breakfast away?) but the pile I left was so large that I was concerned. Was I not actually digesting anything? I needed all of the calories I could get. What was it I was eating? At first I blamed the garbonzo beans, but the timing was off… Time to head back to civilization. I had a cold, now diarrhea, and my feet hadn’t been warm or dry since the first day and were starting to turn a disturbing shade of yellow.

Stepping in holes like this probably hadn't helped my foot situation. Although I almost felt sorry for the poor cold microbes living in these stanky ponds...

It took a while to pack that morning. It isn't easy to maneuver inside a one-man tent and since the blizzard was still raging I needed to pack from the inside. Also, I wasn't terribly motivated to get up and go in the middle of the storm, but it wasn't showing any signs of letting up. So I cooked up a quick breakfast (very runny oatmeal since my supplies were low and one of Anneke’s Power Cookies), got my bag packed, threw it outside into a snowdrift, put on my rock-hard frozen-solid boots, packed up the tent, keeping it as dry as I could (the advantage of really cold snow is that it is fairly dry, so although I couldn't avoid including some snow when I rolled it up, at least it wasn't sopping wet from rain), and was off.

I decided to head back down the hill that I had struggled up the evening before in an attempt to find the alternate trail to and from Lago Windhond. The alternative was to head up into the mountains and back over the Dientes, which in the storm and after the past several days of snow in the mountains did not seem like a good idea. I thought the alternate route, which stayed at a lower altitude, would be easier and safer. So off I went, wading through shin- to knee-deep drifts of some of the driest powder snow I had ever been in (it was delightful, it really was, despite the cold I was enjoying myself…I love snow!). Downhill on the “trail” (a winter storm had blown down a lot of trees, including many that had once marked the way) was not much easier or faster than my long struggle up the evening prior, and I was once again reminded of Darwin’s description of his hike up Mount Tarn, or more specifically this time, of his description of the descent:

“The strong wind was piercingly cold, and the atmosphere rather hazy, so that we did not stay long on the top of the mountain. Our descent was not quite so laborious as our ascent, for the weight of the body forced a passage, and all the slips and falls were in the right direction.”

View from the ridgeline where I had camped looking out at where I had come from the day prior: Lago Windhond and Bahia Windhond beyond.

I arrived back at the bottom of the hill with only a few falls and was hoping for smooth sailing…if only I could find the trail.

Because beavers. I fucking hate beavers. After getting down the hill I spent all day shin-deep in muck and mud in a blizzard while trying to pick my way through the beaver-flooded terrain and fallen logs that were everywhere. Trail markers, when I happened to see any, were few and far between (I maybe saw 10 in an entire 6 hours of hiking after getting down the hill), the beavers having run off with them, apparently viewing the painted red stripes as “fell this tree” signs. Somewhere in that miserable valley there must be a beaver who decorated the interior of her fetid dam home with chunks of red-painted marker signs.

To my Caltech and MIT friends: your mascot is Satan dressed in fur.

Logpocalypse courtesy of the introduced North American Beaver

I was stuck in a wet maze of the logpocalypse. Between wheezy breaths, I cursed the beavers out loud while I walked (after 7 days without communicating with anyone, long one-way tirades directed at the beavers seemed like the thing to do). The problem wasn't a lack of track, the problem was figuring out whether that track was made by humans (probably the men whose tracks I had seen leading up to the refugio) and therefore indicative of a path passable by humans, or whether the track was made by beavers and would dead-end in the forest or lead straight to some filthy little beaver lair in the muck. Beaver tracks and human trails were indistinguishable in width and appearance except, when the mud was clear, the occasional bootprint. When the mud was not clear, occasionally I would see the shimmer of a parallel set of lines which could have been made by boot tread…or just accidentally by sticks. So for hours I honed my tracking skills and played the “human or beaver” game, picking my way through that final cesspit of beaverdom.

At one point I had stopped to wheeze for a bit when I had once again lost the trail to a dead-end of beaver track when a movement caught my eye. I turned toward the nearest beaver pond and saw a splash. MOTHERFUCKER, I thought. Sure enough, one of the filthy little beasts poked its furry little brown head out of the water and looked right at me. I stared at it, scowling. It floated to the top of the water so that its whole body was visible. I stared. It stared back.

“You filthy little piece of shit!” I yelled. Then wheezed for a bit.

The beaver didn't move.

I looked around me for a rock to throw. There were no rocks, only logs and sticks left by no doubt that very same little hellbeast. I looked around for a pointy stick and found a few, but remembered how poor I always was at javelin in high school track and field. Still… Patty at the hostel had mentioned that, in an effort to eradicate the beavers from the island, the government pays out $10 USD per dead beaver. I didn't think $10 was worth schlepping back a dead beaver to town, but maybe I could kill it and cut off its tail. I picked up a stick with a sharp, pointy end.

My nemesis

“Come here, I dare you, you fat brown turd.” I said.

The beaver swam closer. Still out of range.

“Your mother has big ugly yellow buck teeth, doesn't she?”

Beaver swam a little closer.

“You’re an invasive species. Know what that means? It means you don’t belong here.”

Closer. I suck at insults.

I stepped toward the pond, crawled up on a log, stick in one hand, and as I was stepping down to the other side, slipped and fell face-first into the mud. Fortunately not onto the pointy stick. I laid there, chest in the mud, backpack pinning me down, wheezing. I looked up and there the beaver was, just out of spitting distance, no doubt laughing at me. I didn't have the energy or the breath to laugh, but had to smile at the absurdity of it all. Me, hand bloodied on my spear during the fall, faceplanted in mud, beaver swimming smugly in its little engineered swimming pool as the snow fell lightly. In the standoff of me vs. beaver, the beaver had won. My species had inhabited this island at least ten thousand years longer than its species had, and yet here it was, the homes it and its forbearers had built essentially restricting human habitat to where the beavers were not. Having grown up in a part of the world where beavers have been largely displaced by humans from their native habitats, there was a certain poetic irony in that thought, and I granted the beaver his last laugh as I limped away.

I stopped to make camp at 7 pm having not really stopped all day except to try to figure out where I was and where I was going, pulling cookies and pieces of a sort of gross butter and mystery-paté sandwich as I walked. I was hungry, soaked, tired, but the lake that I stopped at was gorgeous and surrounded by high mountains, it was snowing lightly, and it was hard to not feel like I had landed inside a beautiful End of the World snowglobe.

Inside my end-of-the-world snowglobe

I unpacked and set up my wet tent. It had been so cold when I had packed it in the morning that the ice had remained as a thin sheet on the inside walls of the tent and had slowly melted throughout the day, soaking the tent from the inside as I walked. My sleeping bag was slightly damp which meant it was going to be cold. I wiped the inside of the tent down as best I could and try to let the bag dry (unlikely in the below-freezing weather) while I cooked dinner.

Dinner was spaghetti (again! But spaghetti makes great trail dinners and I can’t say I was sick of it…although being starved at the end of a long day means I was just grateful for something—anything—to eat) with pesto seasoning and a few scoops of the weird-tasting mystery paté, and, again, packaged instant pumpkin soup mixed into the pasta water. Although by this point I had gotten the hang of the soup-water proportions and the soup finally tasted pretty good. I threw a scoop of butter into the spaghetti for good measure. Then another into the soup. Calories.

I prepped lunch and breakfast for my final day in the morning, pre-packed my bag for a fast exit when I woke up wanting to get an early start, and slipped myself a melatonin in hopes of getting myself to sleep despite the damp and cold. I had a long day ahead of me with more beavers to come and did not trust the weather to get any better, so I was going to need the energy. It was full daylight when I closed my eyes at 9 pm.

View from near camp on Night 6

The story continues for my final day of the trek in Navarino Part VIII: The Feral Swampbeast Returns to Civilization

Navarino Part III: Paso de los Dientes and Descent into the Swamp

Part III in the story of my 7-day solo trek on Isla Navarino, continued from Part II: The hike begins. To start at the beginning or to see the full list of Navarino episodes, click here.

The night had been rough due to the wind and rain. 

I felt like I had been rained on all night since every time a drop of water would hit the tent in the right place hard enough (which was often), a tiny bit of spray would hit my face through the tent. I woke up at first light at 4:30 am to puddles of water inside the tent from condensation and a very damp sleeping bag (my most prized possession—my 0°F down sleeping bag—is wonderfully cozy and warm, but the minute it gets wet it becomes worthless as an insulating layer, so the damp bag was not just annoying, it was potentially dangerous). The inside walls of the tent were dripping wet and I spent a good twenty minutes sopping up the puddles with my little camp rag, wringing it out on the ground outside through the bottom zipper, soaking up more puddles, wringing out the rag, wiping down the walls, wringing out the rag, wiping down my sleeping bag and sleeping mat, wringing out the rag, and starting over in what felt like a hopeless case of bailing water out of my tent. Exhausted, discouraged, and frustrated, I went back to sleep. I woke again at 6 am, repeated the process, went back to sleep, and finally woke up for good at 8 am.

View from my campsite after Night 1

After another wipe-down of the tent, I cooked water for breakfast (oatmeal with generous scoops of honey, as well as some cookies and a half-moldy mandarin—you take what you can get in Puerto WIlliams), checking the water periodically through the bottom zipper. The sun came out briefly, cheering me up significantly and giving me a chance to partially dry out my soggy tent and sleeping bag while I made lunch (Chilean flatbread, which holds up well to a beating and tastes fabulous, some slices of packaged salami, smeared with butter and avocado) and studied my maps and trail guides. My goal that day was to cross over the Paso de los Dientes and head down a side trail to the north shore of Lago Windhond, some 13 km to the South as the crow flies. By the time I had eaten and packed and hit the trail, it was already 11 am.

The first snowfield, the tops of the peaks I'd skirt in a blizzard later in the day peaking out over the top.

The trail from the frozen lake climbed steeply up a creek bed at the north shore to a wide white bowl that was another frozen-over lake buried in a thick layer of snow. From the bowl of snow, the trail continued up a shallow snow-covered ridgeline. The sleet started almost as soon as I began the climb and turned to increasingly heavy snow as I continued, postholing through the deep, crusty snow all the way to the top of Paso de los Dientes, the first of the mountain passes of the Dientes circuit. By the time I arrived at the top of the pass, I was in the middle of a blizzard. Visibility was poor at best and there was no trail as any signs or cairns were buried in snow. But I can read a map and a compass and when I repeatedly ended up at places that, at least in the limited visibility looked like they were supposed to, I felt pretty confident that I was on track. Every once and a while after carefully picking my way across a steep snowfield that fell down into the end of my field of view or scrambling along slippery, rocky ridges I’d come onto an unburied cairn, confirming my choice of path.  However, due to the snow, the hike had taken a full three hours instead of the hour and a half I had been expecting.

Me in the Dientes in the sleet.

The views, I’m sure, would have been spectacular. I had heard that on a clear day from the pass you have stunning views of the mountains and ocean in all directions. As it was I could barely occasionally make out the outlines of the massive peaks that I was skirting.

It was still beautiful though.

I descended from the pass past more frozen alpine lakes and the snow turned back into rain and the cairns marking the trail gradually became visible again. I reached the turnoff for Lago Windhond (marked by a little arrow and LW spraypainted on a rock in a boulderfield). Scree gave way to peat at the end of the descent as I approached the beaver-dammed lake at the other side of the pass. In theory, there was a trail (I was in possession of a map showing a trail and even GPS waypoints all the way to the north end of the lake). But I kept losing the trail as the area was a maze of fallen logs and the beavers had run off with, it seemed, all the trail markers (which at this elevation were red stripes painted onto tree trunks). My GPS signal kept cutting out due to the heavy cloud cover, so was little help in finding the trail. Studying the map, I decided to continue straight on past the lake and through the bog instead of fighting through trees up ridges—the route the map showed—without a clear trail. At least in the swamp I could see where I was going.

Beaver damage along the shores of a lake south of the Paso de los Dientes

It was relatively good going along the side of the lake with the exception of some fighting through bushes until I got to the bog. It was like that scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo and Sam and Gollum pick their way through the Dead Marshes, an absolute maze of soggy spongy ground snaking around eerie-looking holes (hereafter called the Death Swamp) that, I would soon find out, would happily pull you in and keep you there forever. I was soaking wet after the hike through the snow, and was not getting any drier slogging in the rain through the mushy bog, often slipping knee or even hip-deep into soft spots in the moss. It was like walking on a giant soaking wet sponge, complete with holes to fall into. Progress in the Death Swamp was extremely slow and, in the freezing rain, I started to lose my happy. And that was when I came across a line of water as far as I could see in either direction, too wide to jump across, even if it had been possible to get a running start in the moss. It was either attempt to hike around—wherever around was, which as far as I knew could be all the way back to the beginning of the bog—or choose my steps well and attempt to wade through.

Figuring I couldn’t possibly get any wetter at that point and may as well wade, I stepped…and immediately sank chest-deep into the muck.

The Death Swamp. Looks innocent enough in this photo, but beware!

My now waterlogged backpack rapidly became heavier as it started to fill with water and pushed me deeper into the mud, which seemed to have no bottom. I tried to stay calm, remembering horror stories from childhood about people struggling and drowning in quicksand because of their struggles and wondered if this could be similar as I tried to swim my way through the viscous goo to the other side. When I reached the bank, there was nothing solid to grab onto. Only sponge, and I was still chest-deep in mud with a heavy pack pinning me down.

After frantically smearing my hands around for a bit and realizing I wasn’t going to find anything to grab onto, I dug my arms as deep as I could into the moss on the bank to serve as anchors, and pulled on all of my climbing muscles to heave myself partly up so that my chest was on the bank and then, holding my chest up with my arms which were slipping out of the moss, I swung a leg up, and face and belly buried in the moss I wiggled, slowly, miserably, up out of the bog. It felt like ten minutes but in reality I was probably only in the water for less than 30 seconds. Still, it was more than long enough to get very, very wet, and enough to scare me. Dying in an avalanche while doing some epic splitboarding? Fine. Dying by hypothermia because I couldn't crawl my way out of a stinky hole in a swamp? Significantly less fine.

The hole that tried to eat me alive, trekking pole stuck partway in the mud inside for scale.

I threw off my drowned pack and unzipped my jacket as water poured out of it. My camera had been tucked away inside my jacket, and it had been submerged. My pockets, too, were full of water and I emptied those, wondering if any of my stuff: camera, cellphone that I had been using as my GPS, chargers, water treater, etc. would ever work again. I tried to dry things out as best I could by wiping them off with my undershirt, patches of which had managed to stay dry, but the patches were small and the rest of me was just as wet as the equipment, so I wasn’t able to do much good.

But mostly I was worried about my sleeping bag. Down bags are totally worthless when wet, and it was cold out, and if my sleeping bag was wet it was going to be a very rough night. As it turned out, however, the bag was fine. I had stored it in a plastic garbage bag and that had kept the water out of it. Same with my thermal camp clothes which I had also stashed inside a garbage bag inside my pack. My electronic stuff was maybe fried, but at least I’d be warm and dry that night.

Raindrops falling in pools in the forest. Photo taken while I was still un-miserable enough to enjoy the beauty of the rain...and while my camera was still working.

Shivering, sopping wet, hungry, and without a means of catching a GPS signal with soaked equipment and heavy cloud cover, I gave up on WIndhond and decided to head for the woods on the horizon in an attempt to find a somewhat sheltered, not-waterlogged, somewhat flat place to pitch my tent for the night. I walked as fast as I could (mostly to warm myself up) across the bog, focused on stepping on safe spots and praying for no more long uncrossable lines of mud. About an hour later, at around 6:30 pm, I made it to the woods. In the first semi-level spot I found big enough to set up my little tent I dropped my pack and attempted to build a fire, no easy task given the downpour and how hard I was shivering. Miraculously, I succeeded, and as the fire grew I hung my clothes and soggy boots on branches around it to try to dry them.

I was shaking hard from the cold, too hard to get my tent out of its bag. Remembering stories about the island’s natives who had preferred nudity to clothing because the place was always so damned wet and wet clothes are colder than bare skin, I stripped naked next to the fire. I felt immediately warmer. The natives were right, standing next to the fire with the rain falling on my bare skin, I was far warmer than I had been all day, and was able to stop shivering long enough to set up my tent.

Campsite. Yeah, camera wasn't working too well after its swim in the Death Swamp.

I could see steam coming off of my boots and clothes and hoped that the flux of water out of my clothes via steam was greater than the flux in by rain dripping in through the trees. Item by item as my stuff went from soaked to merely soggy, I tossed things into the tent. There’s nothing quite like snuggling with wet gear, but I didn’t want stuff to get any wetter.

As I arranged things in my tent I suddenly smelled smelly sock…smelly sock…SMELLYSOCK! I bolted out of the tent and saw one of my socks on fire. I snatched it and the other clothes items away from the fire, but it was too late for the socks. The toes of one had burned clean off, and there were large scorched holes in all the others. Shit. I had brought my only two pairs of good hiking socks, planning to switch them out each day and wear one pair while the other dried, and now both were burnt. I had brought one other pair of thinner socks, and although the thinner socks were much harder on my feet and I had meant them as dry camp socks, they would have to do.

My sad-looking campsite the following morning.

I didn’t even bother to cook dinner. I ate the rest of my open pack of cookies, my second sandwich that I had been too wet to eat before, and a few handfuls of cold Garbonzo mash instead. It was damp in the tent but at least I was out of the rain. My phone hadn’t died during the swim, but I still wasn’t getting a GPS signal. Still, after looking over the maps again I thought I had a pretty good idea of where I was and figured I was within an hour or two of the refugio that supposedly existed at the northern end of the lake. If I could make it to the refugio in the morning, I could hang out there and dry my stuff. Although I had heard that the place was infested with giant somethings—the Spanish word wasn’t one I had understood sounded like some sort of rodent but could be mosquitoes. Also, I had seen a few fresh-ish footprints of a group of three or so men on the way down from the pass earlier that day so it could be infested with humans as well. Being alone I was even less keen on seeing a group of unknown men than giant rats or mosquitoes. So as I curled up in my sleeping bag wearing every item of dry clothing I had (including, thankfully, my down jacket) I prayed for a dry day, at least a day without any more dunks in the Death Swamp, and that the refugio would be empty when I arrived.

Despite the wet, I fell asleep early and slept well that night, no doubt completely and utterly exhausted.

But I survived, and the story continues in better weather: Navarino Part IV: Refugio Charles and Lago Windhond

Nevados de Chillán Days 2-4: Shangri-La and the Markets of Chillán

Following the incredible powder day that introduced me to the magic that is Nevados de Chillán, I slept great and woke up early ready to rock another snow day. However, as we rolled out in the truck caravan we noticed strong winds on the mountain, wind that turned out to be so strong that the resort shut down, wind that blew all that great snow right off the mountain, turning it into an icecake. Booo.

Puelche wind blowing the snow off of the mountain

Apparently this particular type of wind has a name: Puelche. They are warm winds that blow over from Argentina and have the nasty effect of blowing any fresh snow off of the Chilean mountains and then melting a layer (that later freezes) as a final kick to the nuts of skiiers in the Chilean Andes before retreating a few days later. Argentina, I know you are jealous of Chile’s superior snowfall, but do you really have to be such a jerk?

But the BackChillan guys had other adventures up their sleeves and we reversed direction and headed deep into Shangri-La for a mellow tour in the sunshine. We climbed through forest, past gorgeous mountains, through a volcanic landscape that Panchi (one of the BackChillan guides, also unofficial Grillmaster) pointed out looked like an Oreo Blizzard (I don’t remember what he said since I’m pretty sure there are no Dairy Queens and therefore no Oreo Blizzards in Chile, but I immediately knew what he meant) because of the snow on the black volcanic rocks, and out to the recently collapsed Refugio Shangri-La. Where we stopped and ate lunch and drank beer. Which was glorious.

Suiting up for the Shangri-La tour

Photo shoot with Manu in Shangri-La

Collapsed Refugio Shangri-La

On our return, Spanish Amazon Maria, a friend of the BackChillan guys and ski patroller by profession who spends her European summers snowbirding in Chillán, made Spanish Tortilla, which despite the egg allergy I tried a bite of and enjoyed thoroughly (Benadryl chasers have been my survival tool here in Chile), and Xavier, another friend of the group, made “barber’s spaghetti” (apparently his nickname is “the barber” although I never found out why).

Since the strong winds put a kink in any touring plans, we spent the next day in the city of Chillán, a 2 hour drive away, a place known primarily for its sausages (Longaniza). The guys took me through the Chillán market, a huge multi-block partially open-air market that sells everything, especially meat (like, there’s a whole block dedicated to meat, meat, and more meat). I of course loved it. And bought a lot of meat. They also got me to try Cazuela (a sort of hearty soup/stew involving a broth with vegetables, a boiled potato, and a large chunk of meat) and I had my second "mote con huesillos" (the first having been sprung on me with glee by Ignacio in Santiago), which is like a liter of supersaturated sugar with rehydrated peaches and grains inside. It looks as vile as it sounds and tastes delicious. The guys somehow gulped theirs down in all of 10 seconds, and it took me the better part of half an hour to finish mine, after which I had that “oh god, what have I done?” sugar overdose feeling (but oh, was it good).

Cazuela de Pavo (turkey)

Mote con huesillos

The primary purpose of the Chillán trip was to pick up a shipment of five brand-spanking-new mountain bikes that the guys had purchased on government start-up grant money in order to help make BackChillan a year-round venture (and therefore support their mountain hut-living lifestyle year-round, something I both completely understand and fully support). Five beautiful shiny mountain bikes, which we loaded into the back of their truck to cart back to Shangri-La.

Panchi and Pipe with their truck full o' bikes

And of course once we returned to Shangri-La, the first order of business was to assemble and test out the brand-spanking-new mountain bikes on a few mellow trails around Shangri-La and Las Trancas. The bikes came back nice and dirty, officially deflowered and ready to be rented to future visitors. That evening dinner was a giant rack of mutton ribs that the guys had pilfered off of an Asado at the local bar the previous night. Like, they literally brought a very large sheep’s rib cage home, intact, and plopped it down in the middle of the dinner table. A massive, dry heap of mostly bone and broiled fat. It was ridiculously tasty. And fat makes excellent touring fuel.

The next morning we were back on the mountain for the tour I had been most looking forward to: Aguas Calientes.

Boarding Las Leñas Days 2-3: Hiking off the thesis belly and a day so exciting I almost pooped myself

With a few minor excursions, I have maintained a pretty constant weight since I was 15 (enjoy it while it lasts, I know). One notable exception was my first exchange in Germany, where the food my host parents cooked was soooo good that I ate everything I could, and came back almost unrecognizably fattened (love you Martin & Beate, and the butter sandwiches, looooved the butter sandwiches). But after returning home, a semester on the soccer team took care of that problem pretty fast. Prior to this trip the combination of sedentary lifestyle and stress-eating during the final push to finish the thesis defense--there were entire weeks where I only moved from my seat to pull something out of the fridge and use the toilet--gave me what Germans call a "Bauchlein", which is one of my favorite German words because it sounds so adorable (whether or not mine actually was adorable is up for debate), and translates literally to "little belly".

It took less than a week in Argentina for the Bauchlein to disappear.

I thank Tom, Ellen, and traveler's diarrhea.

Ellen and Tom. Badass mountain couple extraordinaire. Tom has a face (at least the parts not covered in mountain man beard), it's just not in this picture.

The night I arrived home from Las Leñas Day 1, I sat down with Ramón to explain the latest in the debit card situation and he pointed across the room to where a couple was sitting and eating dinner. I waved and said Hola, they waved back and responded, and I knew immediately: my people! Within five minutes of conversation it was established that all of us were splitboarders here to make the best of the rainstorm. I don't know many splitboarders. I know a fair number of Randonee skiiers, but until Tom and Ellen, my sister and her ex were the only splitboarders I knew. It's not a very common thing. Yet here were two people, doubling the number of splitboarders I had ever met, and they were fellow granola Pacific Northwesterners. I had a friendcrush.

Tom and Ellen had been splitboarding in Chile and Argentina for two months. They had been to all the places I wanted to go. They spoke Spanish. They knew the ropes as much as I had arrived utterly clueless and unprepared. I latched onto them like a flea to a dog's ass. When they said they were heading back up the mountain the next morning to check it out and go splitboarding, I tagged along.

We arrived at the mountain and despite another "snow and sun" forecast, it was raining. Again. When we checked in with the ski patrol team to ask about backcountry conditions, they said "absolutely not, avalanche danger is extreme." Raining. No backcountry. No bus down out of the rain until 5:30 that evening. We sat down for an overpriced coffee to discuss the situation (hitchhike down? play cards in the lodge all day? cough up the $80 for rainy lift skiing? nothing sounded appealing). We decided to hike, despite the rain. I mean, if you're going to be stuck in the rain, may as well be moving, right? The weather gods rewarded us for our courage: almost as soon as we decided that and grabbed our gear to set off, the rain started to clear up.

We decided to hike the resort. Splitboards were broken down, skins strapped on, and off we went. At first we worried that we'd get stopped and asked to not hike on the resort, since we weren't paying and were taking up precious run space. The only people we got stopped by were folks skiing who asked:

(1) why are you going uphill? (Tom's answer: "No hay dinero para un boleto!")

(2) isn't it hard? (My answer: [pant, pant])

(3) what are those things? (splitboards are pretty rare)

Tom and Ellen on their way up the mountain

Two and a half quad-burning hours of climbing later, we got to the top of the lift, and then came the hard part on exhausted quads, boarding down the slush. At the bottom I was done. Done done done. My legs were screaming in agony. So of course I got talked into doing it again. At which point we met David, who was so impressed by our badassery that he asked if he could buy us a round of beer. Within half a millisecond we had all independently answered "Yes! (Yesyesyes,ohgodyes)"

Ellen afterwards: "Did I answer too fast? I didn't mean to sound that desperate..."

Me: "Whatever, we are desperate."

Surest way to make friends with a bunch of filthy splitboarders: say the word "Beer".
Drinking on the lawn with David, Tom, and Ellen.

There's nothing quite like skiing uphill for
working off a Bauchlein.

The forecast for the next day looked good, if warm: clear skies and balmy temperatures. Not good news for snow on the bottom part of the resort, not good for avalanche conditions, but great for hanging out in t-shirts on the mountain. We decided to head up a different side of the mountain in hopes of getting up the back all the way to the top, and continuing from there to some of the really cool-looking stuff above the resort. The avalanche bombing we were hearing made us nervous, but after an hour or so we rounded a corner to see that the upper lift was open and rejoiced! Because that meant at least they had cleared some of the area as safe.

And even better, when we made it to the base of the upper lift, the lifty waved us over and let us sneak onto the lift! Proving that while ski resorts may be run by soulless vultures who charge $80 for a day of skiing slush in the rain, the people who work on the slopes tend to be broke-ass ski bums and totally get the "I want to ski this but can't afford it" desperation that drove us to ski uphill for hours instead of just coughing up the dough to take the lift.

At the top, we ran into two guys we had seen the day before (who, and some of you will get a laugh out of this, tried to start a conversation with Ellen and me while Tom was in the bathroom with the ever-classy "Heeey laaadies"), and they offered to show us around the off-piste. Awesome, except that just as we got to the sidecountry entrance, just as we were doing a quick avalanche beacon test, ski patrol came by and closed the area, which had just avalanched (we later found out that our friend David from the day before was there when it happened, and caught it on video).

A bit discouraged but still psyched about our free ride to the top, we sat on a pile of rocks with an incredible view and had lunch as the wind attempted to blow our assess back down the mountain and succeeded in stealing one of Tom's sandwiches.

This view. Didn't suck.
OMGIMINTHEANDES!!!!

As we were sitting there, debating what to do next, we saw a little black spot appear on the ridge across from us (in the photo above, right at the end of the line of rock that starts at the upper right). "Wait...is that a person? Holy shit, it is! Whaaat?? Is he seriously going to do it?" And he did. Dropped right off the ridge and into what looked like a giant gnarly slide zone, but as we held or breaths waiting for his certain doom by giant avalanche, nothing slid. And just as if to throw a giant middle finger to the fate that let him live, the dude dropped two cliffs in a row before making perfect turns down to the basin below.

Tom: "I want that."

Bootpacking up the backside of the ridge.
This was steeper than it looks.

We debated safety, egged each other on, psyched each other out, all while subconsciously walking toward the backside of the mountain so we could climb up and around. And climb up and around we did, until before we knew it (okay, we knew it, it was exhausting), we were standing at the top where the little black dot had been close to an hour before.

And one at a time, we dropped in.

And it was good.

Until about halfway down, when, mid turn, the ominous gurgling of my stomach from some previous meal it was less than happy about hit my bowels and I suddenly, desperately, needed to shit. So I dropped faster, and the fun and adrenaline must have convinced my system to contain itself because I miraculously made it down off the mountain and survived the sprint to the toilets before exploding in the first of several rounds of toilet emergencies from my first bout of traveler's diarrhea on this trip.

Upon emerging from the restrooms and meeting Tom and Ellen where they were drinking beer on the lawn I had only one thing to say:

"Well, that was exciting!"

Tom and Ellen standing across from the Awesome that we got to board. It was a good day at Las Leñas.