Delta and I woke up early on the 8th, full of anticipation for the challenges of the day ahead. Excitedly, we pulled open our tent screen. And stopped short. Over the night, it had snowed. All around us, the camp was covered in 2-3 inches of snowfall. 2-3 inches doesn't seem so bad itself. But that's 2-3 inches in a campground densely protected by forests. What did that mean for exposed mountain pass above?
Unsure of whether or not we would be able to make our pass traverse today, we headed over to the cooking shelter to speak to the other campers. The refugio owner, who had a radio, which was our only contact to civilization, was trying to get a weather update from the park rangers office. But through the snow and thick cloud cover, the radio just wasn't working. Finally, he gave up and headed over to the eagerly waiting campers.
"Sorry guys," he said in spanish, "I just can't get through. No idea what it's like up there in the mountains. What you could do is just try, and turn around and come back if it's too bad up there."
All of us turned to each other in uncertainty. No one wanted to get caught in a mountain top blizzard. But neither did anyone want to just spend another day here at Perros, waiting restlessly for the weather to clear. Finally, a general consensus emerged. We would attempt tentatively to cross the pass.
By the time Delta and I finished our breakfast, packed up our tent, and were ready to head out, all other campers had already left the camp and we were already running an hour behind.
"Let's hurry, Delta!" I urged, nervous about having to traverse the mountain conditions on our own.
The path rose steeply from the camp, up the thickly forested mountain side. An hour into the hike I was over-heating, and cursing my choice to wear so many layers of clothing. I pulled off my hat and gloves in desperation.
"Put your hat back on," Delta admonished. "If your hair gets wet there's no way to get it dry again." We were both nervous of hypothermia, so I obediently jammed my hat back onto my sweltering head again.
A couple hours into the hike, we suddenly broke out above the forest line onto the bare, exposed, mountain face. Relatively protected by the trees in the forest, we hadn't quite appreciated the extent of the snow. Now on the exposed mountainside, our feet instantly sank knee-deep into the snow. It was snowing heavily and flurries of snow swirled around us, settling everywhere - our hats, shoulder, eyelashes and noses.
Although we were less than an hour behind the previous campers, their trail had already been obfuscated by the wind and snow. The only way for us to to keep track of the trail was to follow the orange trail markers staked periodically into the ground. The snowy air, the snow-covered ground, and the white, cloudy sky all merged into a single backdrop of white, and it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. The snow kept getting heavier and our visibility reduced to less than 40 meters. Sometimes we couldn't even see the next trailmarker, and would have to stop in our tracks and wait for the visibility to clear enough that we could at least find the next stake and determine our direction.
Every year, hikers die losing their way when crossing this pass in stormy weather, and this knowledge was front and center in Delta's mind.
"Do you think we're close to the pass yet?!" I asked Delta.
"We must be," he said reassuringly, "we've been hiking straight uphill for about three hours now."
Good, I was already exhausted.
And just then the trail wound around the corner of the mountain, and for an instant - just an instant - the snow stopped and our visibility cleared. We were staring up the face of the mountain, and as far as the eye could see, the trail just continued up and up and up. Higher and higher, into steep snowy drifts. And in that instance, it hit us. We had barely done a fraction of what we had to do. And the part in front of us was far harder, and the snow far deeper, than anything we had done so far. And then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the snow started again and the curtain on our sight. All we could see again was the next stake, some 40 feet above us.
"Effin ^%##^ freaking crapping *&&%$$ shit!" I muttered.
Delta didn't say anything. My string of profanities had said it all.
We took nervous gulps of water. Ready? I nodded. And we plunged ahead.
Sometimes, the snow was deeper than we had anticipated, and our leg would sink in past the thigh. Sometimes, one of us would set our foot on an unsteady rock that caused us to trip. Sometimes, our feet would land in water, and we'd realize we were talking on a stream flowing below the surface of the snow. Many, many times, I stumbled and face-planted right into the snow, and had to pick myself up and brush the snow off my cheeks and brow.
Our legs turned into lead. Woodenly, we plodded on, higher and higher. When we reached a point where we couldn't move our legs anymore, we'd pause for a few minutes to catch our breath and have some water.
"Delta, I have to pee."
"You're kidding, right."
I shook my head miserably. So there, behind a rock, amongst the snowdrifts in the middle of a blizzard on top of a mountain, I had to go. Definitely the most daring place yet that I've bared my posterior.
Then suddenly, the wind picked up, creating a snow-storm that started below us but was moving up the mountain side toward us. I stared at it, frozen, pointing impotently.
"Come on! We got to move!" Delta barked. And the urgency in his voice snapped me to attention and fired a renewed bout of adrenaline through my body. Somehow, we found the energy to clamber hurriedly to the top.
We turned a corner and found ourselves in a spot that looked somewhat definitely like the mountain pass. There were also two other figures vaguely discernable through the snow stumbling in the other direction towards us.
When we approached them, "are we at the top?!" we asked them, full of hope.
"I don't know," the other man said, "are we at the top?!"
If we were coming from different directions and both of us wondering the same question, then we had to be. Finally, impossibly, we had reached the top of the pass! We smiled at each other in elation, but the high winds and snow made any more indulgent form of conversation impossible. A quick shaking of hands, and we were off, stumbling blindly down the other side of the pass. Whatever happened, we had to get out of the wind and snow.
The rocky layer under the snow was sharp and treacherous. We stumbled often as we clambered down the mountain side. But finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we descended into the tree-line again. Instantly, the snow and wind ceased, and we could pause to catch our breath. We took exhausted gulps of water and quickly scarfed down some tuna and cookies - but a break for more than a few minutes was out of question because we instantly started shivering uncontrollably.
Once in the forest, the descent because unaccountably steep. At parts, there were no switchbacks at all, and the trail simply went straight down the mountain side. The mud was slippery and offered no traction, and incredibly, Delta and I found ourselves actually missing the snow. On several occasions, we lost our footing and slipped down 15-20 feet down the mountainside. Twice, Delta took a complete spill where we actually had to stop and see if he'd broken anything. Partly, the ground had become slippery to the point of impassable.
Partly, our legs had just lost their ability to support themselves any longer. But onward and onward the path went, winding it's way through the forest. And just as we were both at the absolute end of our limits, the path suddenly brushed up against the edge of the cliff, and broke out of the tree-cover. And there before us was a site that simply took our breath away.
We were standing on the edge of one of the largest glaciers in the world, Glacier Grey. There, below us, stretching out till the horizon, were mounds of cracking, churning, growing ice. Glacier Grey, the tip of the Southern Ice Field, dwarfing everything around it by it's enormity and grandeur. And there we were, tiny mere mortals on it's very edge, offered a glimpse into the magic of the scene. We stood there for a long time, just absorbing the beauty of what stood before us. Then gradually, silently, we turned around the proceeded the rest of the way to Camp Paso.
When we reached the camp, the other campers had already arrived, and were anxiously waiting our arrival. It was reassuring for Delta and me that someone had been looking out for us. For Gawd knows we needed looking out for!
All of us were wet, cold, bone tired, bust just happy to be alive. One of the campers had started a fire. Campfires are prohibited in the park for risk of forest fires, but on this wet and snowy night, there was no risk of starting a forest fire. We all toasted our hands and feet by the smoky fire for a couple hours, then headed exhaustedly into our tents to collapsed into a relieved slumber, just grateful to be alive.
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