Take a Walk, Take a Rest

Thursday 28 January
San Carlos de Bariloche

So as the only thing to do round here is outdoorsy-type stuff I thought I better do some. I heard the best walk was to go to a refugio called Frey on top of a mountain near an out of season ski resort called Catedral. I surfed the web and left it a bit late to start but set off eventually.

Except that the bus that was due to come at twenty to twelve hadn’t turned up by midday. So I caught a taxi instead. As I was behind schedule I thought I’d walk fast, after all it was meant to take 4-5 hours to get up and a bit less to get down so I didn’t want to be up there too late.

So I go hardcore. I find myself singing various different songs to keep me going. For some reason I start off with Right Said Fred by the great Bernard Cribbins, which changed to Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed, later it was She Wolf by Shakira which is a song I hate, and there were others I forget. It’s strange what your mind will come up with sometimes.

It’s hot to start with, and I regret wearing trousers as I’m getting a bit sweaty as I push myself and the sun beats down. After a couple of hours I’ve over taken a bunch of people and no one’s overtaken me so I take it to mean that I’m ahead of the game. I sit down and eat one of my two sandwiches that I packed for food as I start to get hungry. I’m having to ration myself as I don’t have much and I don’t know how long it’s going to take overall. I also have to ration the water I have with me.

The cutting through the half-dead woods and via logs placed over small streams eventually turns round a headland and the woods become deeper and cover overhead. It seems trite to describe landscape in terms of Middle Earth, but that’s never stopped me before so I have no shame in describing this part as like the outskirts of Rivendell (where the elves live). The path gets more twisty and there’s a few makeshift bridges as slowly the incline starts to get steeper.

I’m still pushing hard and try not to think about the effort, just to keep up the pace and keep going. It becomes a case of Charlie versus the mountain. I pause occasionally as it gets steeper to catch my breath, though I’m keen not to stop too long in case I lose momentum and fatigue overtakes me.

I reach a refugio that is about an hour away from the summit and it’s taken me two hours and forty minutes – for something that’s meant to take 4-5 hours in total I must be making good time.

One hour to go. Of course, this last bit is the steepest. And of course, the altitude is higher and the air thinner and so I’m getting out of breath more frequently. At times I’m clambering up rocks. And the wind starts to pick up. As I get closer to the top, the winds of the Andes (at the end of the armies, badum-tish!) start to add to the strain.

Halfway through this point I meet a group of Latinos on their way down. They try to explain something to me but I can’t understand them. Luckily through a series of hand signals and the arrival of a dog following them, I understand that this dog belongs to the refugio at the top and had followed them by mistake, and they were asking me to take it back up. With a combination of whistling, stroking behind the head and making clicking noises with my mouth, I manage to convince it to follow me.

So with the wind, the incline, the thin air and now a golden Labrador following close behind I make the final ascent. Every time I look round to see if the dog is following me it somehow always ends up on the other side so I have to turn right round. I also keep clipping it with my heels which reduces momentum and increases the guilt. The wind continues to increase and now picks up a whole load of dust and sand making it hard to see. This feels like a true battle of endurance but I’m determined not to give up.

I see the top. I push through. The wind is icy and the temperature has dropped remarkably but I’m not going to stop now. I force myself forwards to the refuge and make my way to the door, barely glimpsing the remarkable landscape around me. I dive in, panting, out of breath, covered in sand stuck to dried sweat. Everyone looks round to me and a few even clap given the state I’m in. I check my watch. Three hours and twenty minutes. Yeah bitches, take that!

When people ask hikers why they climb up mountains the frequent answer is “Because it’s there.” But that strikes me as a lack of imagination or vocabulary. It’s because it’s a finite challenge, something we don’t get much of in life, and it’s not only a challenge against the mountain, it’s also a challenge against yourself.

Anyway after about ten minutes I regain my composure enough to ask for a fizzy drink and eat my remaining sandwich. I refill my water and play with a very skinny cat that resided there. I take some pictures of the landscape from inside the refuge. The top of the mountain is a ring of vertical jagged rocks above a small lake. It is an alien, harsh, vicious and yet beautiful landscape.

The walk down was a bit of a chore and a bore as it went on and on and the fatigue was already kicking in big time. I was dying for it to finish. All I wanted was a hot bath and ideally, someone to massage my feet. Neither were available.

As I arrived back at Catedral I saw the bus leave. They run every fifty minutes or so and I wasn’t going to wait for another. I was desperate for an ice cream for some reason so I found a place selling Helados and asked them if they could get a taxi for me. The person serving me called her husband and charged a reasonable fare, given my desperation to get home.

After I got back and relaxed and showered, I had a cup of tea and then supper, and I wasn’t feeling too exhausted. I hadn’t been out in Bariloche and so I went to a popular bar. I wasn’t staying out late and when I got there it was pretty empty. But I got talking to a frustrated German architect (all architects are frustrated) and had a couple of drinks with him then went to bed for a well deserved sleep. I wouldn’t get it.