Guest Blog from Gale Dahlager
Click here to read the first part of this adventure.

(Patagonia, Chile):Our goal was to spend a month in Patagonia, going out on the southern ice cap to ski a range in the middle of the ice cap know as the Cordon Mariano Moreno. The one thing we were told the most is that the weather down there is unpredictable. After our journey, I can confirm that indeed the weather is very unpredictable, and luck didn’t work in our favor for giving us enough good weather to achieve our goal.

My friend Chantel and I did have a great trip and saw some amazing scenery
though. We planned food and fuel for being out for 20 days. After trying
to hire a porter to help us get our stuff onto the glacier where we could
carry half our loads in sleds pulled behind us, and having the porter not
show up for our meeting, we met a guy, Max Mogren from Jackson Hole, who
wanted to go back onto the ice cap with us so we decided to do all the work between the 3 of us to get onto the ice cap via Marconi Glacier pass.
Our GPS broke before we ever left town so our travel would be limited to good
weather, or traveling with Max who was only going to the refugio just past
the 1st pass.

The first day we packed all of our gear in about 5hrs and set up the tent
with everything in it, then returned to town. The next 5 days were bad
weather, with super high winds and lots of snow and rain which kept us
inside the hostel. When it quit snowing in the afternoon on the 5th day, we carried all of our food & fuel in 2 hrs through the protected part of the trail, but the weather was too bad above that so we left our bags in a camp area and returned to town. The following day we made it across all the
treacherous snow covered scree fields and rock slabs to our tent, which was
completely buried in snow except for the top 2 inches of the vestibule. We
were so grateful when the tent was still in perfect shape and all of our
contents inside dry. I vowed then & there to never own anything but a North
Face tent! We spent a full day making trips to get all the food up there,
then getting our gear another hour and a half up to where the snow began and
where we could use the sleds. As we were about to pack the tent and our final load, it started raining and didn’t stop for 18 hrs, which kept us in the tent for another day. The next day we finally got a break and were able to get all of our stuff onto the ice cap, and into a refugio that is set up by the Chilean National Park in a little over 8 hrs (you cross the border from Argentina at the top of the pass getting onto the ice cap). That 1st night a guided group of 11 people on a trekking trip and a Polish guy trekking by himself showed up at the refugio. They were the only people we saw the entire trip.

We planned on skiing 1 day on Gorra Blanca, the mountain next to the
refugio, before heading to the Mariano Moreno, but instead we were hit with
4 days of bad weather and only went out 1 day on skis late in the afternoon
playing around on short low angle slopes close by. The winds are crazy
strong up there and it oscillated between snowing and raining sideways for our entire stay.

When we finally got a clear break late one afternoon, we packed up and
headed 4 hrs away to the Circo de los Alteres, which is a beautiful cirque
of steep sharp towers that includes the back side of the famous Cerro Torre. Max left for town where he could ski some more easily accessible runs with better weather. We decided it would be too risky to go all the way to the Mariano Moreno without a GPS since it was another 5 hrs across the ice cap with no guarantee of good weather to get back on. We heard there was some skiing at the cirque and it was an easy traverse along the range we were on to get to it. We had an overcast but otherwise good day the next day and scouted out the area. We found a great 1500ft chute to ski on the next good weather day. During our scouting mission we skinned up a short 200 yrd slope a couple of times and at least got some fun turns in on good corn snow. Little did we realize it would be the longest downhill skiing we
would do the whole trip. The next 4 days were full of strong winds, snow
and/or rain, and zero visibility. Our tent was solid and kept us warm and
dry, but it was hard to not be skiing for so long. Luckily we had a few
good books and did plenty of reading and card playing. We did get some
clearing one evening around 5 and did many laps on a short hill just outside
our tent.

After 3 days of bad weather we finally decided to head back to town where we
could get some skiing in more easily accessible areas, but we had to wait
another 2 full days before we had any weather we could travel in. When I
woke on the 6th day to the first sunrise I had seen all trip, I was
ecstatic! We took about 100 pictures of the beautiful scenery and sky, ate
a good breakfast, and packed up for the journey out. We chose to go a
different way out hearing that Paso de Viento (windy pass) was incredibly
beautiful, and we wanted to see more of the area. It was so hard to leave
on the first clear weather day we had yet with absolutely perfect views of
Mariano Moreno, but it was also a blessing as the journey out was the
hardest part. We spent 5 hrs skinning to where we would get off the ice
cap, than another 3 ½ hrs of difficult route finding over moraine, scree
fields and gigantic rock slabs getting to a camp at the base of the pass
with our 1st load. Not realizing we wouldn’t be able to make 2 trips to the
camp before dark, I left both of my sleeping pads and all of our food in our sleds where we got off the snow. It was a long night sleeping on the rope coiled up and any extra clothes we had, eating gels and Sharkies for dinner.

The next day we made good time getting our second load from the snow, and
making 2 trips with all of our gear to the top of the pass. Chantel had to
leave Argentina 3 days before I did, and we only had 1 extra day if all went
well to get her back in time for her flights, so we decided to leave 1 bag
with both sleds at the top of the pass that I would retrieve later. We
packed literally all we could physically carry onto our backs and headed down towards town. Our packs weighed about 80-90lbs., with getting the packs on and standing up being a 2-person task. After 7 hrs of getting
everything up to the pass, we spent the next 5 hrs hiking down scree fields, across the edge of a glacier, up and down rock canyons, and finally made camp in an enclosed cove. Despite the calmness of the wind that night, we woke a few times in the early morning to the wind lifting up the sides of our tent.

The next morning was again clear, making us wonder if we were really in the same place that just shut us down from skiing for 10 days! We continued our journey down, crossing a river on a Tyrolean traverse, battling the winds
going around a lake, suffering up another 2000ft climb, schlogging through swampy fields, and finally making it to town. About 8 hrs into the day, just 3 hrs away from town, I couldn’t walk under the weight anymore and had to cache my tent, stove and some climbing gear in the trees just to be able to keep walking. It was one of the hardest days I’ve ever had! We were so happy to finally drop our packs in the hostel front yard, and treat ourselves to a hearty dinner and some well earned beers!

We had one last day together in El Chalten, where Chantel packed for going
home, and I packed the bare minimum necessary for the bag retrieval mission
before enjoying a great Argentine BBQ-style dinner with lots of wine.
Completely hungover and covered with hives (turns out I was allergic to some
cheese puffs I ate), I left the next morning for a much smaller, dingier
refugio that was 5 hrs in with a light pack. The refugio was really an old
shed that slept 2 people and not very inviting. I woke 3 times that night
to a mouse crawling into my sleeping bag with me before I finally moved
outside where I slept on top of a metal storage box. It was very windy that night, but the tress offered good protection. The next day I made good time up to the top of Paso de Viento, repacked the stuff into my backpack, and returned to the camp in just over 9hrs. Traveling was much easier knowing the way! It was yet another beautiful day, with the winds being so calm it was eerie. I stopped at a small glacier lake just before the camp for a quick swim and basked in the unusually warm sun to dry. The thought of spending another night with the mice was more than I could take, so I packed up my gear at the camp from the night before and headed out for my tent which was still cached 3 hrs away. An hour past the camp the winds picked up again, it started to spit rain, then snow sideways. Ahh so typically Patagonia – swimming and basking in the sun one minute, fighting a sideways snowstorm just 3 hrs later! I was exhausted when I finally made it to my tent 13hrs after my day began. Luckily I found some good trees to protect me from the weather and got a great night’s sleep while the snow fell most of the night. The final 3 hrs walk out the next day seemed more like a victory lap, except that my pack was now back up to about 70 lbs. It was so
gratifying being back in town knowing that our trip was over with no major
problems – a successful journey despite not reaching our goal.

So our epic ski trip turned into more of an epic ski trek, but the whole
journey was worth every bit of hard work and effort. We got to see some
amazing places, and have a good feel for the area now. I look forward to
returning for another attempt at skiing the elusive Cordon Mariano Moreno, and playing the roulette game with the weather with hopefully more
prosperous skiing results!

Gale Dahlager
Pictures to follow.