Ramble On

It's hard to believe that we're on the way back home. We've started the journey up north. 3hr bus to El Calafate, 28 hr bus to Bariloche, 18 hour bus to Mendoza...then we will climb in the Andes fora few days before we start the air portion of our journey home. It's deffinately bittersweet. We're having an amazing time, but missing our families, friends, skis and blender...Mmmmm smoothies...

A little recap on the El Calafate end of things...

We stayed there for about 3 weeks. It was delightful. We were a little worried that we were not prepared gear wise for climbing anything down there, that didn't seem to hold us back. We agreed that if we even got one big route in, we'd be psyched. So after the first route, anything else was a bonus.

For the next 10 days, the weather was pretty much a wash. Some rain, LOTS of wind and general low pressure which is just unreliable to plan any sort of big trip into the mountains. We still got to do lots of great sport climbing in town and some super bouldering. Then things started to change. So we made plans to go back into the mountains with Jonny, a friend from home with whom we had been bunking in a teeny trailer. (We are all very close now.)

Wow. We went for it. It was a dream come true, literally. Im not the type of person that gets obsessed with a particular line, I'm just psyched on the adventure. However, a friend had put a particular route in my mind back in August, and then it kept coming up in our travels down her via other sources. When we were discussing what we were psyched on, I of course had to say Chiaro di Luna. So, up we go. And up and up and up hand over hand rappelling, tyrollean crossing, navigating pretentious scree fields and glaciers. This redefined adventure. The three amigos kept on and on for countless hours. Sometimes we slept when it got dark, but mostly we moved right through it When we couldn't go up anymore, we started the journey down. When we were hungry, we didn't think about it and when we were really hungry, we allowed ourselves a small snack.

 Human beings are amazing creatures. We have so much potential when we put our minds to it. What we climbed had been the longest day of climbing I'd ever had, it made the grand traverse seem like child's play...or maybe I've just forgotten the pain of that too. When we arrived back in town, we started to hear what other people had climbed... our little route kept sounding smaller and smaller. There are some real inspiring, driven freaks of nature out there. Send!

Lessons learned; 1) don't compare yourself to anyone else because there's always going to be someone better than you 2) the right gear makes all the difference in the world, and yes every ounce will count (it's worth spending the dinero on the light expensive stuff) 3) I'm coming back next time with "muscles and money."

So hopefully our moms can rest now that we've safely made it past the most dangerous part of the trip! 

¡Ciao!