“When one is lost it is not the number of days that matter, but the absolute uncertainty that claims every moment.”
-Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow
Roughly two weeks ago I arrived in Bariloche, a mountain town at the northernmost tip of Patagonia. Bariloche is at once eerily familiar and totally foreign: it incorporates German architecture, Argentine food (and the Argentine party ethic) and Vancouver Island-esque scenery. It’s beautiful, but only a shadow of what the surrounding wilderness has to offer.
After a mellow tester-hike, my newfound partner in crime (a sunny Californian girl with a similar appetite for the extreme) and I decided it was do-or-die: time to launch ourselves into a three-day mountain trek and hope for the best. We loaded our packs with -15 sleeping bags, dried food and canteens, consulted our map, and hopped a bus to the trailhead.
Our first day, we had been told, would consist of a simple 5 hour trek to a refugio, a small mountain cabin heated by wood stove, with bunks for rent for roughly $12 CAN a night. It was explained that the last quarter of the hike was challenging (a 900m climb in 2 km), but nothing we couldn’t handle.
After 6 hours of bushwhacking, slogging through marshland, and scrambling up loose scree slopes, we’d yet to encounter anything resembling a refugio. We were, in fact, at 2000 meters in an unmarked valley in the Andes, with night coming on rapidly. By now our party had swollen to 5, to include two Dutch boys on the third hike of their lives, and a Swiss optometrist.
At the base of yet another shaky ascent to a narrow traverse between valleys, we decided to stop and take stock. Grudgingly, as the wind picked up and the landscape shifted under the receding sunlight, we admitted that we were lost.
To put this into context, Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi is 7500 square kilometres and boasts hundreds (maybe thousands) of trails of varying difficulty, not all of which end with a refugio. Or even exist on a map. Also, temperatures in this part of the Andes routinely drop well below freezing. Getting lost is not just a nuisance – it represents legitimate danger.
After much discussion and a totally necessary group shot, we decided to double back along the valley and look for the original trail markers we’d been following. There was a good chance we wouldn’t make it to the refugio before dark, in which case we would break out our sleeping bags and spare food (and the two bottles of wine the Dutch boys had brought along), make a fire in a no-fire zone, and attempt to stay warm as the temperature went down. It was a mildly alarming prospect, but the only reasonable plan of action given the circumstances.
Luckily after a further 3 hours of haltingly retracing our steps, we arrived at our intended destination. On shaky legs, we settled in for dinner and conversation in the toasty mountain cabin.
I come from city stock: my first camping trip occurred at the tender age of 18 and true hiking only made its way into my life 5 years ago. I have little experience with the peculiar sensation of being at the mercy of the natural world, but I will say this: I kind of love it. The soaring adrenaline and immediacy of the problems you face bring out your most essential self. In those moments, nothing really exists except your surroundings, and your survival.
The next two days passed without (negative) incident, and describing the sights I saw is virtually impossible. We climbed towering peaks, contended with gale-force winds, made a (planned) detour to a mountain-top lake, drank wine from plastic bottles while huddling around a wood stove, forded streams using guide lines, woke up in the snow, and bonded in a way only the woods can inspire.
And at every crossroad, with every step, we witnessed the splendour of the Patagonia Andes.
On the second morning, while new friends and fellow hikers slept on, I woke to see the sun rising. Shimmying to the window in my mummy bag, I pressed my nose to the cold, cold glass and watched the sky move from blue, to pink, to brilliant red over the silhouette of a thousand peaks. It was so profoundly beautiful that I couldn’t speak, or reach for my camera, or even breathe. It was so beautiful it made me ache.
But being in the quiet of the mountains, surrounded by the natural world, powered by sheer determination, has brought me back to myself in a way I couldn’t have anticipated.
I have lost, and found, myself in the Andes.