22/03/2015 I’ve had experienced some truly exciting days on the hike to Paso del Cuadrado, but was still not just yet finished in El Chaltén. After some more bouldering and a really amazing Argentinean Asado in the hostel’s garden, I started my last hikes. While doing the first one to Mirador de la Loma and it’s fantastic views on my own, I was once again joined by the two Julias to summit the easy viewpoints of Los Cóndores & Las Águilas, offering less spectacular, but still very nice views on El Chaltén.

>> Full Picture Gallery <<

Following my typical El Chaltén eating routine, I once again had masses of Dulce de Leche for breakfast and even continued eating it at the point I ran out of bread – I just loved it so much I guess! I also bought the same food again for the last hikes, basically a lot of bread, cheese and salami. This time, I was packed light and only carried some food for the six hour hike to Mirador de la Loma. I left at noon and was hoping to return for football at 15:30. The first part of the trip would lead me to towards Paso del Viento, which was my main goal here in the area but sadly, due to the weather conditions, not possible to do on my own. After about one hour of walking uphill, I left the Paso del Viento path and turned to the right, heading into a forest. The hike until there was pretty boring, but just when I left the forest again, I could finally see Fitz Roy in the Background from a different perspective and was extremely lucky with the weather too.

Not long after, I would head into another forest, constantly hiking uphill. There were a lot of people around here, mainly Asians as they hiked up in a huge group, and I passed all of them on my mission to get back to football. I think I was walking as fast as possible before you would have to define it as running 🙂 Leaving the forest again, I was walking uphill through some scree now, eventually reaching the end of the trail. What I saw when I reached the viewpoint was just amazing – I had a clear view on Fitz Roy, all the valleys, lakes and hiking paths I used before and most importantly: I could see Cerro Torre for the first time! After all those days in El Chaltén, I was so happy to finally see him as well and it was impressive sight. Too bad it’s so hard to climb this thing as it was really tempting.

I decided not to go up to the highest point of the nearby summit, which would take about another half hour extra walking and apparently, the view from there would be kind of the same according to Hugo from the hostel. I spent around one hour at the Mirador though to enjoy the landscape to the fullest before I started to hike back to town. Probably breaking a lot of speed records, I made it back way before the football starts and could enjoy a nice warm shower first. It was actually my last day here in the hostel and I really loved this place, making it a bit hard to leave. If you ever make it to El Chaltén, please check out Hem Heru and say hello to Hugo 😉

One last hike was still to be completed though and both of the Julias joined me once again for a fun hike to Miradores Los Cóndores & Las Águilas. You can easily combine both of them and do it in about two hours, offering nice views along the vast fields close to the Patagonian ice field. It was super windy up there as well and as usual, the weather was good too. Other than the four-day bad weather window that I used to do some bouldering, I was always lucky down here! As hard as it was, it was now time for me to leave El Chaltén and I wanted to give hitch hiking a try again, just like about the ten other people per day here! It was just very expensive to use the bus here and while I failed to hitch hike from El Calafate to El Chaltén, doing it the opposite way now was much more easier, thanks to the smaller size of El Chaltén. The first car actually picked me up after just a minute of waiting!

The older man worked in El Chaltén and was on the way back home, could not speak any English at all but was a really nice guy in general. We somehow communicated in my broken Spanish and I could finally, on my last day, see the famous view from the road looking back to the Fitz Roy Skyline. I took a quick picture from the car as I didn’t want to ask him to stop and I only had my crap phone camera anyway, but this picture will always remind me of the great landscapes in this part of Patagonia and I’m happy to have it now. My next stop was the famous Perito Moreno Glacier near El Calafate and I will tell you all about that in the following Live Update 🙂

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this post and would appreciate a comment below 🙂

If you want more, head over to my Travel Report page for full travel reports, or the Video and Photography pages if you are not in the mood for more boring text. And if you want to help me to upgrade my site, click on the link below for more information 🙂