As I briefly mentioned in my last post, my younger brother just returned from a mountaineering excursion in Patagonia, Chile.  I’m almost positive that I will not be able to successfully coerce him into writing a guest post, so I ripped off his journal and grabbed some photos off of his Facebook account.  His journal is rather sparse, but the photos speak for themselves.  I’ll include parts of his entries in this post (with my own pertinent commentary in parentheses), but then, in subsequent posts, I’ll just add more photos.  Trust me, he’s a better photographer than writer.  You won’t be missing much…

Day 1

Woke up at seven and went into downtown Coyhaique to meet up with the rest of the group.  A bus met us and took us to the NOLS camp on the outskirts of town.  We spent the entire day fitting boots and checking out equipment.

Day 2

Woke up at 5 am (In our family, waking up before noon is a big accomplishment.  Okay, maybe not noon…) to catch a bus.  It took 12 hours to drive 181 kilometers on a gravel road.  My group consists of 7 people, including the instructors.  I am one of the youngest.  The oldest is a 49 year old, Orthodox minister.  We spent the night at a lady’s house (Ohhhh, a lady…).

Day 3

Once again, we woke up early (Poor baby…) for a boat ride across the largest lake in Patagonia.  The water is the bluest I have ever seen, though it isn’t that clear.  The blue is caused by minerals deposited from the glaciers ( Whoa…Let me catch my breath.  Was someone paying attention to something academic in nature?).  The boat ride was more than an hour in a boat that was made out of wood and constantly leaking.  We reached the other side and started to head up a valley.  We gained about 4,000 feet of elevation the first day alone.  We reached our camp at about 5 pm (Happy Hour!).

Day 4

We woke up and packed only climbing gear: helmets, crampons (HAHAHA.  I’m immature.), ice axes, harnesses, and other tools.  We also carried 20 pounds of food for the ascent to the ice field.  The hike was very intense and very vertical.  We reached the glacier in about 7 hours, after gaining 6,000 vertical feet.  We set our gear and 10 days worth of food under rocks, marking it with a flag incase it snows.  The way back to camp was quite eventful.  I was bit by some sort of bug, which caused my hand to turn purple and swell up.  Also, we took a wrong turn and ended up going down a cliff.  About 15 feet from the bottom, the whole rock face gave way, and I fell.  Thankfully, I landed in a tree, instead of the rocks on either side.  Tomorrow, we do the same hike again to move camp.  Also, I’m probably starting to stink. (Okay, he might not have added that last part.)

The journaling only lasted 4 days.  I’ll just blame it on the bug bite and purple hand…

More pictures to come.