We hiked in with humongous packs, they were heavy and I complained a lot. We brought a weeks worth of food, climbing gear, camping gear and lots of cold weather clothes as we heard the weather is finicky. It's not measured I distance but instead by an hourly countdown. From the base of Cerro Catedral, the self proclaimed best ski area in south America, it's a 3hr 45 minute hike to the Refugio at Frey.
Once we got there the wind was ripping, dangit! Everything bad i heard about Patagonian climbing came back to me real quick. The wind, the cold and the bad weather. I was really starting to doubt this all at that point. We set up our tent in the wind..epic, made dinner and went to bed.
It snowed all nite.
We woke up and it was spitting snow, windy...really windy, and the clouds were low. Luckily I was worked from the hike so I was a little grateful for the bad weather. We made breakfast and went into the Refugio to socialize a bit, but mostly to get out of the weather. The first person we see in there, Dan Escalante. We knew he was in the country but hadn't contacted him and really had no idea where he was...classic. It continued to snow in every direction all day. Double dangit. We hiked around in the evening when the sky cleared a bit and got pretty psyched to climb.
The next day we woke up to more wind and cold but more or less clear skies. So we went for it....brrrrr, easily the coldest rock climbing day I've ever had. First pitch I my fingers felt like wood. The second pitch, the wind was ripping so hard that somehow it blew my sneakers, which were hanging from my harness, into the back of my head. On the third pitch all of the chalk in my chalk bag got blown into my eyes while I was waiting for a break in between gusts so I wouldn't get blown off the very sparsely bolted sandbagged route. The rock really is such high quality granite that despite the suffering it was hard to stop! We climbed a bit more then headed down to camp for some lunch.
It was not so bad down there. The area where the tents are set us is protected from the wind. By now the sun had really started to warm up the rocks and there were plenty of daylight hours left so we went back for more.
There is an ultra classic line that greets you as you arrive at El Frey. Its the first formation you see as you walk up the trail and you can watch people climb it from sitting inside the Refugio. That was what we chose to climb. It really was great... Splitter line, amazing granite, bolted belay stations. The last pitch is a splitter half way through the face that ends up with one bolt to some hidden huge jugs. You pull these positive heroic feeling moves right at the end of the route. Sick. Yes! Frey is awesome!
As you walk out to the other formations, it's crazy the way they all change according to your perspective. We would be climbing on one formation and look across and see some gorgeous line on another and so on. I kept feeling like we were at a playground just seeing all the attractions and hurrying around to play on all of them!
The weather kept getting better for the next 3 days. It actually got hot. We climbed some amazing quality routes. Everything seemed to be a little stiff and the sport climbs are super run out, keeps ya honest! The place is beautiful though, and the rock is divine. Everywhere you look is a photo op, I took lots. It's fully springtime there and the flowers are abundant and some quite different from the flowers in north America. We saw a mama duck and 5 little goslings in the laguna. The water is so clean you don't even need to treat it before drinking it. The snow is melting still so there are these little waterfall streams everywhere. To top it off, it is light out until close to 10pm so there really is no such thing as an alpine start.
Today the weather turned so here we are in (San Carlos de) Bariloche about to start another chocolate mission!
We wish lots of snow for you all up north! Powder it up!
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