Journey into the Land Before Time

I had a 4 day trek planned in Parque Nacional Puyehue on the Chile Argentine border that ends up at some geysers, fumeroles, mudpits, and best of all hot springs. Apparently thought I hadn't been keeping up with the news much (this is what Antarctica will do to you) to know that since last July Volcan Puyehue had been doing some pretty serious erupting. So much so that Australia was dealing with the ash spewed out by it. When I found out that it had been erupting, I googled it and the possibility of going, and saw that it was possible now, thought not completely open. The volcano wasn't erupting as crazily any more. An interesting blog I found on a recent trek made me even more excited to go, and I feel is worth sharing here

http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Chile/Los-Rios/Puyehue-National-Park/blog-696548.html

4-10
I woke up to a beautiful morning and hiked up for 2 and a half hours to get to the very basic refugio right at the tree line. Basic it may be, but it had a little fireplace and although the bunks had plenty of boards missing and were not level, it was fine by me to not have to carry a tent. The beginning part of the hike was through rainforest type vegetation and bamboo and by the top it was ash-killed trees. 2 dogs from the farm followed me up. I tend to have lots of dogs follow me on epic hikes throughout my journeys. Whenever I do, I name them after local food specialties (a few examples, adobo in the philippines, chapati in nepal, masala in india, nasi in indonesia) I was thinking of naming these to Asado and Parilla (names for the famous bbqs here) but settled on Asado for the male and Pisco (Picso sour the national drink of Chile) for the female
I dropped my stuff off at the refugio and then continued on to climb to the top of Volcan Puyehue. There was no trail anymore, on account of the eruption and the ash, so I just picked a ridge and a route and climbed it. It was quite difficult going bc erosion in the freshly laid ash had created at times deep and giant ravines and washes that were difficult to cross if they were too wide to jump. Sometimes they were as much as 30 feet deep and were impossible to climb down into or out of, so you simply had to walk straigth up or down the volcano until you came to a suitable place to jump across or climb down across. As difficult as it made the hiking, it was also a fun and interesting challenge. And it was such a cool landscape! Just like how you imagine the moon. It was pretty much ash as far as you could see with a few rocks here and there and some snow and some glaciers covered in ash. Just really crazy. From the top of the volcano rim you could of course see into the crater and then I had a 360 degree view of mountains and mountains and more mountains across the chile and argentine frontier. You could also see lots of volcanoes including Osorno (which I had just visited), Tronador, Choshuenco, Mocho, Puntiagudo, and another perfectly shaped one way in the distance that might have been Volcan Lanin. I could also see another one way off in the distance that was spouting some ash. I could also see the cool Rio De Lava, which looks just like a petrified glacier, but is just an old lava flow. Down below was also a small crater off the flank of Puyehue and this is where the erupting was ocurring. Every 30 minutes of so the volcano would grumble and you would see it spurt a big plume of ash and gasses into the air. It was always thrilling to watch it erupt and amazing how fast the gas and ash would rush up into the air from the crater. The eruption of course isn't near as big as it was when it was wreaking all the havoc in Argentina and elsewhere, but it was still totally cool to watch a live action eruption, especially from up above it. From the top I could also see a whole bunch of highly active fumaroles. I decided to circumanvigate around the large crater rim which was quite a distance and included a lot of ascents and descents. Asado and Pisco were of course still happily following me. When I had nearly gone all the way around, I realized that I didn't have my waterbottle and I must have left it way back at my lunch break. As I didn't want to lose it, I marched back in the opposite direction. Luckily and amazingly I hadn't left it, it had just fallen out and the amazing thing was that it was stuck on a little piece of snow right before it would have fallen several hundred feet into the crater. I had a spare plastic bottle, but this was my nalgene and I would have hated to lose it. And I was also glad I didn't have to go all the way back to where I had had lunch. Instead, I only had to walk an hour extra and a couple upds and downs. Once I had completed the loop, it was extremely tough navigation to get back to the refugio. Never ending ravines to jump over and go around, and I kept thinking I was getting close, but then there would just be another ravine or crest to go over. It reminded me a lot of the time when Joe Medley and I bit off more than we could chew in the Channel Islands National Park when we tried to go off trail in what looked like a short cut but had so many canyons and ridges to go up and down that we didn't make it back to our tent until 3 am. I have to admit I was getting a bit nervous that I wasn't going to make it back before dark (I did have my headlamp, but even in the light everything looked the same here...just like the moon), so I was relieved when the refugio came into sight. The dogs and I arrived to the refugio just as it got dark. Definitely nice to have a shelter with a fire up there even if it was all covered in volcanic ash.

4-11 I set out early on the trail that would normally have lead to the hotsprings. Both dogs were initially with me, but after going up a steep and long hill and looking like we were climbing the volcano all over again, Pisco decided to turn around, clearly not wanting to go through another long and epic day like the one before. The trail was of course mostly washed out and covered in ash and after 2 hours of walking and getting closer to the eruption, the bamboo poles marking the trail that were sparse to begin with, completely disappeared. Just such a completely crazy landscape. So totally lunar. Only ash and volcanic landscape as far as you could see (other than the andes and snowcapped volcanoes in the distance). I continued on just navigating by myself and negotiating all the crevasses and ravines and washes and doing plenty of ravine hopping. I was keeping carefull track of landmarks, but I was basically just walking out to nowhere (though in the direction of the eruption). It reminded me a whole lot of Littlefoot, Spike, Sara, Ducky, and Petrie in the Land Before Time as they set off through that desolate dead volcanic nothingness in search of the Great Valley. It actually really did. And thinking of the movie brought back fond memories of watching it with mom and bro. The other bloggers that I posted a link to above, likened it to Mordor from the Lord of the Rings, which I could definitely see, except this lacked all the fire. Eventually I climbed one last ridge in front of the currently errupting crater. From there, the Rio de Lava was right in front of me and you could hear the fumaroles going crazy, sounding like jet engines. At times new fumaroles would poke up through the glacier of old lava causing a piece to break off and make a loud claking sound that lava rocks typically make. This "petrified glacier" had more in common with the real life glacier of Perito Moreno than you would think, even parts of it were falling off. Of course the highlight was that I was right up and real close to the action of the current eruption. I sat with Asado for a couple hours and watched the eruptions and listened to the grumblings as we shared a peanut butter sandwich and some crackers. It was just so cool to sit there and watch a life eruption and hear the booms.
On the way back I ran into a young dutch couple (who had biked the whole careterra austral...cool...bro we should do it someday!). They were happy to see me bc they had diahrea and were out of toilet paper and I had plenty with me. They were guessing they had upset stomachs from the ash in the water bc they had just been eating dried goods from camping. That night I watched a cool sunset over the lakes far below and then the 3 of us made a big meal together from some things left over in the refugio that other trekkers had left.

4-12 Hiked back down to the farm (if we are going to go with that lord of the rings theme, the whole farm area looked a whole lot like the shire with how green it was and the little buildings and all). Lots of blackberries around here too, which always makes the hike even nicer. I then hitched a ride in the back of a pick up for the 10km's or so to the Chile-argentine border. From there I waited for about an hour before I got someone to pick me up that was going to Bariloche. It was a gorgeous ride going over the pass, which was made even more unique by all the ash everywhere that gave everything the appearance of having fresh fallen snow. Of course huge swaths of forest had been killed by the ash as well. The last hour or so of the drive was along the 100km long Nahuel Huapi lake with the Andes rising up behind it. In some areas of the pass, over 6 feet of ash had fallen and some lakes were completely choked in ash. The first town in Argentina we passed, villa de angostura apparently had to shovel out and dig out quite a lot of ash (you should google image the pictures of all the ash from Puyhue, it's pretty crazy) from their yards and roofs. This town, however, reminded me a whole lot like a Colorado resort. Just had that feel and with the fall colors and perfect blue sky, reminded me of fall in the rockies.

The guy that picked me up was really cool. He is a tourist guide in the summer (he was coming back from showing some germans the careterra austral) and a ski guide and instructor in the winters. He's actually guided a lot in Europe as well, including Saint Anton, near where my parents ski bummed in Austria. He tried to visit the US for skiing, but was denied a visa and he hasn't tried again bc they charge 150 bucks everytime you try, even if you don't get accepted. He gave me lots of cool info and acted as a tour guide on the 3 hour drive from the border to bariloche. He joked how last ski seasn they got more ash than snow.

My first impression of Bariloche, which sits right on the shores of Lago Nahuel Huapi and has Parquen Nacional Nahuel Huapi and the andes right behind it was that of a touristy ski town. I had to do some shopping for a ski hat bc I had lost mine on my last trek, so I got to experience all the shoppes. All I know is that Mary and Grandma would love it. Lots of fancy shops and then of course they are famous for their chocolate shops and lawn gnomes. They are also quite famous for their artesenal micro brewed beers. Bariloche also has a heavy german and swiss influence.


http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/17/world/americas/chile-quake/index.html?hpt=ila_c2

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/29/australia.ash.cloud/index.html?iref=allsearch