When I first hatched the plan for this voyage and decided to quit my job, I told everyone that I was sailing down to South America so that I could ski from the boat in the fjords of Chile.  I wasn't sure if that was a pipe dream or not at the time, and I didn't really care.  I needed a new challenge and the goal of skiing from the boat seemed like the right challenge to light a fire under a real adventure.  

I knew all along that this adventure would be more about the voyage and less about the end destination, and I've gotten to do some incredible things along the way: sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge, cruising the Sea of Cortez, crossing the equator in the Galapagos, and making a successful landfall in Chile after 37 days at sea.  But looming in the back of my mind was this end goal: skiing directly from the boat.  I knew it wasn't going to be easy and it certainly wasn't. Snowline sits more than a thousand feet above sea level and the brand of jungle that grows in the fjords is especially impenetrable.  I spent several months exploring some of the wildest corners of Patagonia for easier access points and I hadn't found anything that looked very promising until we arrived in San Rafael.  

This was the best chance I was going to get.

Without any clouds to hold the heat in, it had gotten really cold, and we woke up to a layer of ice on the Rascal’s deck.  Despite the south winds, no bergs of consequence had entered the anchorage and we felt good about the security of the boats.  I decided that we were going to do whatever it took to get some turns in on this fine day, and we reloaded the dinghy with all of our ski gear.  

​The pack ice looked a lot like it had the previous day and we slowly worked our way into it, switching off between the two dinghies every five minutes or so.  One of us would push ice chunks out of the way for a while and then the other leapfrogged to the front to do the icebreaking.  As we got towards the south coastline, where we’d expected more open water because of the south wind, we found that the pack was just growing more and more dense.  Clint was rightfully worried about the possibility of popping one of the dinghies and he offered to stay behind in a close (but safe) location to help us out in case we ran into trouble.  

​This was the moment when Jess found her true calling as a black-belt Ice Ninja.  She took the pair of bamboo staffs up at the bow of the Superhighway and we charged into the fray, with her blocking and deflecting bergs and flows left and right.  

​We found that once you were into the densest parts, you could kind of push a bigger burg in front of you to serve as a blocker.  This pushed all of the smaller bergy bits out of the way.  The only issue was the occasional chunk that slid underneath the dinghy.  I’m sure our propeller didn’t appreciate these chunks, but no calamity befell the outboard and if anyone had been following behind us, they would’ve had the perfect ingredients for a margarita.  

​After more than an hour of pushing through dense pack ice, we finally gained a lead on the south shore and made it to our intended landing spot.  We parked the dinghy in a zone where a small river came out and it was protected by some rocky islets that kept it relatively free of ice.  From there, it looked like a relatively straightforward jaunt along the rocky / bushy shoreline to get up to the shoulder of the glacier.

​It was slow going in ski boots, but we wound our way up through the twisted trees and jumbled rocks until we got to the crux of the approach, which Jess colorfully nicknamed “The Pantshitting Death Ladder of Doom”.  

​Some glaciologist must’ve attempted this same approach at some point and was unable to get over or around this cliff without a little bit of aid.  It was built of stripped trees and rusty nails and it looked like it hadn’t been used in about a decade.  That said, it was our only ticket over this section of rock climbing and we had no choice but to pick our way up it.  I managed to edge my rubber-soled ski boots onto a small flake of moss-covered rock and that, combined with the remains of the ladder, was enough to get me up and over onto the ledge above it.  

​Jess came up behind me and was making a similar ascent when one of her feet started to slip.  She was already well beyond her rock-climbing-in-ski-boots-comfort-zone and the slip was enough to send her into tears.  I dropped my pack and worked my way back down to where she was clinging on for dear life.  With some encouragement and a few extra footholds, she was able to mantle up and over the sketchiest part and we were back on our way.

The weather was absolutely spectacular and the views of the glacier and the laguna were absolutely spectacular.  The rest of the approach was pretty straightforward, slowly working our way up and over a bunch of rocks that’d been rounded and smoothed by the glacier.  There was moss and small bushes growing in the nooks and crannies but none of the horrendously thick jungle that typically characterizes the shorelines around these parts.  

​Eventually, our objective finally came into view and it looked just as perfect as it had from afar.  

​We were both stoked to get on snow and we charged up the last section of rock with considerable spring in our step.  

​We decided to ski one-person-at-a-time for safety’s sake and I threw my crampons on to work my way up the face of the glacier.  I went a couple hundred feet up and kicked out a platform with my crampons to change over. 

​We decided to head back up together for the second run and it was just as glorious as the first.

​It felt totally surreal to be skiing in this place.  Icebergs lay bobbing around in the distance.  4000 meter snow-capped peaks surrounded us on all sides.  You could hear the cacophony issuing from the face of the glacier far below us.  The ice crystals glinted in the sunshine and the clear blue sky made the perfect backdrop.  

​We skied that glacier for all we were worth and high fives abounded at the bottom.  

​With the mission accomplished, we packed our bags and once again started working our way across the rocky expanse.  Eventually we came upon a long cascading waterfall dropping into a perfect little pool.  Between our heavy packs and the hot sunshine, we were really roasting and we decided that a little dip was in order.

​It felt great to cool off and the setting couldn’t have been any better.

​The ice had cleared away from the shore while we’d been skiing and we decided to leave Jess with all the gear on the shoreline while I worked my way back around to the dinghy solo.  The “Pantshitting Death Ladder of Doom” was much easier to finagle without a big pack and I was back to the dinghy in no time.  I motored around to meet Jess at our rendezvous and we decided it was time to crack into a bottle of champagne and some lunch.

​The return trip to the anchorage was much more casual than the entrance and we pulled up to Karma with big smiles and were greeted with loud cheers!  

​It was then and there that we decided cocktails were in order and we all hopped into the dinghies to have a little party on an iceberg.  We tethered the dinghy to the berg with an ice axe and Reina donned crampons for the ascent to our chosen partying locale.  

Clint and Reina had all the fixings (Jack Daniels and rock & roll) and we couldn’t have asked for a better view of the glacier.  We took some self timer photos, chipped bits of ice off as our cocktails melted, and sang for all our lungs were worth!  The sunset that night was spectacular and I felt like the happiest man in the world.

The day wasn’t quite over, however.  We still had dinner to knock out and we decided to make a bunch of dumplings on Karma.  I’ve been in love with dumplings ever since my time living in China and its always fun to get everyone involved with mixing filling, rolling wrappers, and stuffing dumplings. They were absolutely delicious and it was the perfect cap to an exceptional day. 

My heart was content, my belly was full, and it was about time to start the long trek back north. ​

​After the Superhighway’s bid for freedom on the high seas, we needed a down day in a major way.  Our friend Raul had told us about a lake that was several miles up a river that emptied into the sea not far from our anchorage in Bahia Tic Toc.  Clint and Reina were also keen on a little exploratory mission and the weather was slated to be sunny – a nice change from the torrential rain and high winds we’d been getting beaten up by for the past few days.  

​We had the poor fortune of arriving to the river’s mouth at low tide and after transiting the bar with breaking waves on either side, we found that progress up the river was pretty slow.  We inched our way up for an hour or two until we came upon a glorious looking black sand beach, clearly eroded from all of the volcanic rock in the mountains above us.  

​Our thirst and hunger were both strong and our wills were weak and when the sun started splitting through the clouds we had no choice but to stop.  Beers were cracked, fires were built, and the party commenced on the spot.  80s rock could be heard echoing through the jungle and across the glacially fed river as it swirled past our beach of choice.  

​Clint and Reina were planning to head down to San Rafael as well, so we started planning out where our next few anchorages would be and what we’d do once we got to the glacier.  We cracked into a few ciders and hung around the fire, watching steam rise off the beach as the sun worked its magic.

​It was exactly the warm, relaxing day we needed and we decided to slow-boat our way back down river with a couple of bottles of wine and some classic oldies ringing out across the water.

​After a quick afternoon nap, the girls went out kayaking and Clint and I hung around on the front deck of Karma, watching dolphins frolic around the boats and waiting for the sunset to come.  

​A tasty crab appetizer and a big dinner of chipotle cream mussels followed and we all went to bed early with full bellies.  

​We turned out early the next morning and were greeted by the perfect quartering breeze just after we left the anchorage.  The Rascal sails really fast on a broad reach, but Karma caught up with us after a couple hours of sailing and we were close enough that we could take a few pictures of each other as they passed.  

​The wind rose and fell a lot throughout the day and we did a lot of reefing and unreefing, but generally made good time and pulled into a delightful little anchorage by the name of Pozo de Oro that evening.  It was a little sheltered lagoon with a bottom of golden sand and stones.

​The next day of sailing wasn’t the fastest, with a fluky headwind and thick clouds, but we had several dolphin escorts, sailed past a few interesting fishing villages in the islands, and sailed close to a couple of sea lion colonies.  In fact, one little sea lion pup followed us for more than a half an hour, splishing & splashing and peeking up at us from the water.  

​On the final approach to our anchorage, the breeze that had been light all day shifted around a bit and we finally were able to scoot along at 5 kts under sail alone.  It had all the makings of a superb sunset and all the worries of the day melted away.  There were a few dark clouds to our south, but nothing that looked particularly troublesome, and we figured we would make it to our anchorage about an hour before dark.  

All of a sudden our light breeze from the side suddenly turned into torrential rains and violent gusty wind from dead ahead.  It climbed from 10 knots to 25-30kts in less than five minutes and the Rascal had her rail under water despite a double-reefed main and the little jiblet up front.  We cranked up the motor and tacked back and forth into it with the sea rising, the clouds darkening, and our on-time arrival looking dubious.  A particularly big wave swamped us at one point, stole our crab trap from on deck, deposited a couple hundred liters into the cockpit, and receded back into the ocean with a rude splash.  
​
The entrance into the anchorage looked exceptionally sketchy, with no soundings and a few sizable rocks, but we had little choice and we plowed ahead with Jess on the bow scanning for rocks in the gather darkness and me watching the depth sounder from the helm.  We made it through a little pass just as the wind began to die off and finally got the hook down about an hour after sunset.  It was a stressful evening, but luckily the Rascal pulled through nicely and we made a big mussel dinner (garlic butter wine sauce? Why not?) to recharge our batteries before bed.  

The next day had more south winds predicted, so we decided to take advantage of the sunshine to dry out the boat and do some exploring.  A beautiful sunrise greeted us in stark contrast to the previous night's foul weather.

​The anchorage was a cool little nook with lots of islets around and we went out in the dinghy to see what we could find.  

​Unfortunately lots of parts of Chile, despite their remoteness, have bit of floating garbage from salmon farmers and litterbugs piled up on shores and this otherwise pristine little nook was no exception.  We decided to collect some to build into a new crab trap for ourselves.  

​The views were still exceptional and we spent a good bit of time traipsing through the woods to find a little lake that showed up on the chart.  

​Not a bad spot for a nap, I reckon.  

​We spent the rest of our afternoon drying things out, editing photos on our laptops, and drinking gin and tonics.  All of a sudden, to our surprise, we saw Karma steaming into the anchorage!  After leaving them at Pozo de Oro, we hadn’t been expecting to see them until San Rafael.  It was great to catch up with them again and we spent the evening eating steaks, a rich mussel stew and dispatching the last of our gin supply.  

​We again split off from Karma again the next day and we made good distance, broad reaching and sailing straight down wind.  The big channels start to choke down into smaller tighter fjords at this point and the wind is pretty much always either coming from dead behind or dead ahead because of the funneling affect the cliff walls have.

The views were quite spectacular and we spent plenty of time slowly sailing along, dancing to funk music, playing cribbage, and drinking plenty of Chilean wine.   

​As we continued further south, we saw fewer fishing boats and the anchorages showed less signs of human activity.  We spent one afternoon constructing our new “recycled” crab trap out of the beach garbage while a light following breeze slowly pushed us further south.  

​We looked up part-way through the traps construction to find a big motor catamaran bearing down on us, the first big ship we’d seen in days.  They were clearly a sight-seeing mission headed down to San Rafael and they swept pretty close to us as we went by, breaking up the peace of the afternoon and rocking us with their wake. 

​The day wore on, and a little while before sunset, we saw them returning in the other direction.  In good spirits, and with a few glasses of wine in us, we decided mooning them would be a pretty damn good idea.  They were several hundred yards away, but someone must’ve had their binoculars out as they were passing because we could just make out the sound of a wolf whistle above the drone of their engines.  We waved in reply and we each continued on our way.  

We spent that evening finishing up the crab trap on the beach, eager to resume our nightly fresh-seafood appetizers.  

That night was nice and clear and we decided to head to the beach to take some long-exposures of the beautiful night sky.  There was no light pollution for hundreds of miles and the moon had yet to rise, so the Milky Way was crystal clear.

​Just before bed we christened our new crab trap “Carmen” with a bottle of pisco, baited it with some old steak grizzle, and dropped her over the side to try our luck.  We’d gotten a good weather report (strong north winds slowly tapering off) from Porter that afternoon and decided that we’d try our luck at entering Laguna San Rafael the following day.  There were south winds predicted for the following few days, so we knew if we didn’t make it, we’d be stuck just short waiting for a new weather window.  

​The San Rafael Glacier spills into a big circular body of water that looks like a lake, but is actually still affected by tides.  Its attached to Estero Elephantes (named for the sea elephants that used to frequent the area before they were all hunted to extinction) by a long narrow channel called Rio Tempanos, which is guarded by two very shallow narrow passes.  Because of the huge tidal swings and all of the melt water coming out of San Rafael, strong currents of up to 6 knots sweep through each of these passes daily and its very important to time your passages carefully.
 
We couldn’t transit the passes until about mid day according to our tide tables, so we had a fairly leisurely morning and eventually hauled up the crab trap to see what had happened by in the night.  It had twisted itself around the anchor chain, so it took a while, but when I finally got it up on deck, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was, by far, the biggest jaiba I’d ever seen and its claws were big enough to dismember me if I wasn’t careful!  We decided to name him Goliath.

​It was an auspicious start to a pretty goddamn righteous day and we pulled anchor and navigated back out into the channel.  The tide was still running against us so big waves piled up, and the wind was blowing at least 20 knots with the rain coming in droves.  Jess decided to spend the morning down below and whipped up some savory French toast that was just the thing to warm me up.  We were going a bit too fast for our anticipated bar-crossing, so we decided to drop sail and putter along under bare poles for an hour until the tide changed.  

​There were several shallow banks where the water and waves were piling up and by the time we got to the pass, we were getting lots of waves jumping into the cockpit and the wind was gusting up to 25.  We decided to switch down to the storm jib (a sail I very rarely use) because I didn’t want to be overpowered going into the maelstrom of the currents rushing through the pass.  We managed to sail through the pass at about 5 knots with the storm jib and a double reefed main pulling hard.

​Once we got to the other side of the pass it was like a switch had flipped.  The wind died off, the sun started to break apart, and all the swell that’d been coming down Estero Elephantes shrank down to a light wind chop.  

​We had another hour or two of sailing before transiting the other pass, so I decided to slip down below and mix up a big glorious lunch of American fried rice, complete with sausage, cheese, and even some bbq sauce.  We ate in the cockpit, bathed in sunshine with the clouds slowly peeling back to reveal some monstrous snow capped peaks behind them.  

​With the improving weather, we were less concerned about the second pass, but once we got into it we found a counter current of a couple of knots flowing out of the river.  This didn’t jive with the tide info we had, but we fired up the engine and powered through up into the river.  We were still making plenty of headway despite the failing wind and we had plenty of daylight left, so we just kept chugging along.  We’d covered a mile or two, when out on the horizon we noticed a floating white chunk.  I let out a whoop and we both went up on the bow to eyeball it.  It was our first iceberg!

​​We each took dozens of pictures and could hardly contain our excitement for this little white bergy bit.  Little did we know that we were about to see lots of bergs that were a bit bigger than this little Volkswagen-sized toddler.  

​The wind had risen again so we sailed on and slowly we saw more and more bergs as we approached the head of the river.  We had a decent following breeze and were able to sail up the entire thing after getting through the pass, which felt like a pretty good accomplishment given the counter current, the narrowness, and the fact that we were dodging icebergs left and right.  

Eventually we reached the river’s end and popped out into the laguna.  We were both dumbfounded.  There were several bergs around us that were the size of apartment buildings, just floating around placidly.  You could also see the full expanse of the glacier itself off in the distance. 

​Our friend Raul had told us of a good anchorage on the far side of the laguna and we pointed the Rascal towards it.  I was super eager to go and see an iceberg first-hand and I also wanted to get a few photos of the Rascal sailing amid bergs, so I set off in the Superhighway to do some recon while Jess kept the Rascal moving in the right direction.   The sunshine was flirting back and forth with the clouds that were piling up on the mountains and it created the perfect lighting for such a dramatic scene.  

​The intense deep blue color of the ice bergs was absolutely staggering and I moved in towards one in our path that looked like a crouching puma getting ready to lunge.  

​I also managed to collect some ice for cocktails and I got back to the Rascal just as the wind was picking up.  

​It turned into a perfect, clear north wind with no swell and we rocketed across the laguna to our anchorage at 6 knots with the wind whipping through our hair and ice bergs scattered as far as the eye could see.  

It was the perfect way to end such a challenging day of sailing and there was lots of congratulations and reflection once we dropped the anchor.  It felt like we’d “finally made it” – whatever that meant for each of us.  It was an emotional evening and we wasted no time in celebrating.  

​Bulleit poured over ice that was literally thousands of years old.  It tasted awfully sweet.

​The next order of business was dinner – Goliath was on the menu and we could barely fit him into the pan.  Each of his claws on their own would’ve been enough to feed us and he paired perfectly with the ice cold bourbon.  

​Not surprisingly, that put us right to bed and we woke up with a thirst for exploration.  The north wind continued throughout the night and kept all of the icebergs at bay, but it was fairly calm by the time we ventured out.  

​Just after the glacier came into sight, some dolphins appeared out of nowhere and started jumping and frolicking in front of the dinghy.  It was the perfect escort.  

​As we got closer to the glacier there were more and more icebergs.  Some were the size of a football, but others were the size of a 12-story building.  At times, our path would be totally blocked, but we were able to find leads through the ice that brought us up closer and closer to the face of the glacier without having to push much ice out of the way.

I’ve been impressed by how much abuse the Superhighway can take, but I never dreamt that it was capable of pushing big blocks of ice around.  

​We eventually got within a couple hundred yards of the glacier and decided to just stop and enjoy the scene.  The sheer size of it is absolutely incredible and we both sat in awe for a while.  

​All of a sudden, a loud thundering sound echoed across the quiet stillness of the icepack and we looked as a ginormous skyscraper of glacial ice calved off from the face of the glacier.  It slowly tipped away from the face and then, gathering speed, slid down into the sea with a smack and an enormous splash.  

​It’s tough to imagine the exceptional amount of water that gets displaced by such a huge object and the cloud of spray it created was several football fields long.  We were sort of expecting a big tsunami to come and cream us, but all of the surrounding ice damps the wave out and it just turns into a long, slow swell.  As the swell moves through all the dense pack ice, all the bergs bump elbows and make this incredible grinding, rumbling noise.

​We sat there for several hours, moving back and forth with the floating ice and watching as more and more large bergs broke off.  Each time it happened was just as exciting as the first time and we couldn’t help but let out oohs and ahhs each time a chunk would calve off.  It is one of the most incredible displays of the power and strength of nature that I’ve ever seen.  

​There were also lots of different types of calving.  Some bergs would tip off while others would slide in.  Sometimes a big chunk would break off all at once while others would slowly crumble piece by piece.  Some would hit the water like a cannonball while others slid in pretty quietly.  There were even icebergs that broke off from deep underwater and burst up from below!

​The bergs that came from down below (and from the corners where the glacier was getting pinched) were a glorious deep blue color.  Because there was so much pressure on these areas, all of the tiny air bubbles were squeezed out and they were perfectly clear unlike the whitish opaque pieces on top.  

​Eventually the wind started picking up and we decided that we ought to work our way back to the Rascal.  We picked our way along the shoreline and saw that some numbers were written on the rock in white paint.  Each number corresponded to the year when the glacier had been calving off in any given location.  Because of global warming, the face has slowly been receding and by the time we got out to the mark for 1978, we were more than a mile from the face of the glacier.  

​You could also see the areas around the glacier where trees and plants were starting to move into places that’d been under hundreds of feet of ice just a few decades ago.  This painted a very real, tangible picture of climate change and the tremendous rate at which our world is heating up.  

The wind and waves had risen substantially and we had a long, wet ride back to the Rascal that afternoon.  We decided to hunker down, cook a hot meal, and relax for the rest of the day. 
 
The following day, the weather was really horrendous and there was no way we were going anywhere.  We both caught up on our journals, played a lot of cribbage, and did some reading. 
 
When the clouds finally lifted the following day, we could see that the storm had created lots of snow in the high country.

​We knew about a trail that wound up through the woods, so we decided to venture off on a hike.  San Rafael is part of a national park and the trail has several spots that overlook the glacier.  On the way, we passed an old burned-out hotel that was built to stimulate tourism back in the 30s and 40s as well as a decrepit airstrip that is apparently still used at times.  

​It was a warm day, and we spent lots of time at the overlooks watching the glacier calve off and listening to the cracking and splashing of the icebergs.

​We were trying to scope out good zones to try our hand at skiing and we noticed a shoulder on either side of the glacier that seemed to have a good smooth surface without any big crevasses.  Most importantly, they’d be accessible by dinghy, because all of the approaches via land were blocked by cliffs and drop-offs.   

​With that important piece of recon completed, we started working our way back down towards the anchorage.  We both agreed that we should try and ski on the flanks of the glacier the next day and the weather forecast sounded promising.  We were just wondering aloud what Clint and Reina had been up to when we rounded a bend and there they were walking along in matching outfits.  It was a joyous reunion and we decided to cook up a big tex-mex pot luck dinner (complete with cocktails and a great sunset) on Karma.  

We woke up in a haze and I started gathering my things together for the ski mission.  I’d broken my skis weeks before in Argentina, but a friend had offered me one of her old pairs and I still needed to move the bindings over.  Mounting bindings isn’t a particularly easy thing even with a jig and all the tools you need, but doing it on a rocking sailboat with a raging hangover and makeshift tools was really taking things to the next level.  First I had to troubleshoot the inverter that seemed to be on the fritz.  After disassembling a few electrical panels, I traced the fault to a blown fuse and we were back in business. 
 
I made a quick, shotty paper jig and taped up an old, worn drill bit to avoid drilling too deep.  Against all odds, everything came together pretty well and by 9AM, I had a pair of early 90’s Salomon X-Mountains all mounted up and ready to shred.  We got on the radio with Karma and started planning our next moves.  The south wind we’d had during the night had started pushing a lot of the pack ice up towards our anchorage.  That said, all of the bigger bergs had run aground short of the shallow zone we were anchored in and the wind seemed to be dying off a bit.  We decided to make a run towards the glacier in the dinghies, but retreat if the wind kicked up or the weather turned threatening.  

​We loaded all the ski gear into the Superhighway and Jess rode with Clint and Reina in their high-powered dinghy.  

​It was a gorgeous morning, and we started exploring a bunch of the bigger bergs, getting up close and checking out all the nooks and crannies.  It almost feels like you have an enormous museum all to yourself, able to freely cruise around these glorious natural sculptures.  

​We even hopped off to walk around on one that seemed particularly stable without much risk of rolling.  

​But was we moved deeper into the pack ice, we found that it was much more dense than it had been the day before and we weren’t sure if we’d be able to even make it to the far shore like we did on the first day.  In retrospect, this change in the character of the ice was almost certainly due to the prevailing southerlies.  Right around this time, the wind started to kick up again and we decided that it was probably time to turn tail and get back to the anchorage to make sure our boats weren’t getting swamped with ice.  We were also a bit worried that the leads we’d used to enter the pack would close up on us and our exit would disappear. 
 
We mixed up a couple of pisco lemonades and began our retreat back to the anchorage.  The pack was slowly closing up around us, so it was a good call and we found the sailboats unmolested when we got back.  

I was a bit disappointed that we hadn't gotten to do any skiing, but the boats were safe and we had better confidence in our anchorage after a full day of south winds.  The high pressure was predicted to last for another couple days and we decided to make another run for the south coast (and our ski objective) the next day.  

Stay tuned for the dramatic ski attempt on the San Rafael Glacier in the next installment of the Voyage of the Rascal.  

My friend Jess and I first met back in 2007.  We had both sequestered ourselves to college in the relatively flat and snowless state of Pennsylvania, and in order to get our fix of skiing, we joined our respective colleges’ race teams.  Jess went to Penn and was, thus, a rival competitor.  A lot of camaraderie existed between teams and we often did just as much partying as we did skiing.  Jess and I have kept in touch ever since, and because she lives the life of a seasonal skiing gypsy, she was able to take off for a couple months of adventure in Chile.  

I had been jonesing to get back up to the Frey – a backcountry hut in the mountains above Bariloche, Argentina, for months and Jess agreed that it would be a good place to start the trip.  Jess rolled into Puerto Montt on an overnight bus and after a whirlwind day of unpacking, repacking, errands, german food, and beer drinking, we hopped a bus for Bariloche.  

​We had a lovely sunshiney day for the ride to Bariloche, with great views of snow capped peaks as we crossed over the pass and of the sparkling lake down next to town.  We found a cheap hostel, tossed all of our gear down, and went out into town for a huge, meaty mixed-grill dinner.  

​The next morning, with even more sunshine in the forecast, we started our trek into the Frey.  The winds were quite strong, but not strong enough to dampen our spirits and by the time we got up to the hut we were ready for a hearty meal and a cold beer – which is exactly what we got!

Everyone knows that Argentine wine pairs well with cribbage and we tore into plenty of it over the course of the trip.  Despite her being British (we did some investigating and apparently cribbage was invented by an Englishman), ​Jess had never played before.  That said, she was a very quick study (it must be in her blood) and she soon was winning games left and right.  

​You could hear the hut getting buffeted by wind all night long and when morning dawned, the wind didn’t exactly let up.  After the typical bread and manjar (its something like caramel) breakfast, we decided to venture out to keep our legs moving and investigate how the snowpack had changed since my last trip.  We got spanked pretty good by the wind, but dug a few pits and found generally good avalanche stability despite the wind affected snow on top.  

​Lots of people arrived to the hut that afternoon and by sunset it was totally packed with standing room only.  A pair of the new arrivals happened to be splitboarders (Susan and Tim) from Alaska and we had a great evening chatting with them.  Susan happened to play cribbage as well and we drank more than our fair share of wine while we were getting to know each other.
 
The wind finally abated in the night and it was game-on the following day.  Sunshine and big, open couloirs were the “menu del dia” and we feasted like a bunch of famished hobos.  

​ The good weather held out for several more days and we continued to ski, drink wine, make friends, and soak up the good vibes of this incredible place.

​Eventually the time came to slink back down to Bariloche and Susan, Tim, as well as a couple new Argentine friends joined us for the trek out.  I managed to crack a ski in half on some refrozen corn, but other than that, it was an uneventful exit, with plenty of sunshine and some great conversations.  

​We were famished after a couple of big days in the mountains and a huge fondue dinner as well as some frosty cold beers were in order.  Once again, Bariloche didn’t disappoint and brought a gorgeous sunset as well as a couple of big chunks of grilled beef to the party.    

​Susan and Tim had planned to head further south for more skiing in Argentine Patagonia, but the forecast looked pretty grim and Jess and I conned them into coming over to Chile to celebrate Chilean Independence day instead.  It was at this point that we christened the four of us the Frey Amigos (a play on words of the Three Amigos!).

​The skiing was good, the mid-skin wine break was better, and the view of Lake Llanquihue was the best.  

​Eventually fate caught up with me and my broken ski decided the time was right to self-destruct.  This happened in pretty dramatic fashion and I hit the deck in a plume of snow, Spanish obscenity, and splintered ski parts.  We all decided they must’ve come from a defective ski factory.

​There was nothing to do but turn on some rock and roll music, put on a smile, and one-ski it back to the trailhead to drink Escudo while everyone else made another lap.  

​Once everyone had gotten their fill of good views and corn snow, we drove back down into town and grabbed a bunch of the supplies we would need for Chilean Independence Day.  Can you guess which shopping basket belonged to me? 

​We planned to stay in some cabañas near the Rascal and drove all the way down to the marina in Huelmo, a couple dozen kilometers south of Puerto Montt.  The poor, overloaded Morning hit a monster pot hole on the drive through the countryside and by the time we were getting close to the marina we could feel the characteristic thump-thump of a flat tire.  Luckily a Chilean couple soon happened by and was kind enough to help us re-inflate it enough to limp back in to the stable.  After a big pasta dinner, we all hit the hay to prepare for a big day of celebrating. 
 
Chilean Independence Day is best celebrated with roasted meats and gratuitous amounts of wine and my friend Mario invited us to join him on his organic farm.  We all showed up with armfuls of wine and got to work chopping wood to roast the suckling pig that Mario had procured for the occasion.  The sun shone all day, music echoed from the hilltops, exceptional food was enjoyed by all (all of it grown on Mario’s farm!), and the revelry lasted late into the night.  

​We woke the next morning with hangovers that were just as tremendous as the day before had been and slowly stumbled around until it was time for Susan and Tim to return to Argentina.  It was very sad to see them go and we decided to take a commemorative photo to remember each other by.  There were all sorts of odd props in the cabaña and we put them to good use.  

Jess and I hadn’t quite gotten our fill of holiday festivities and we put our party hats back on for another big asado.  This one was with our friends Clint and Reina from S/V Karma, the crew of a big steel sailboat boat from Scotland, my friend Raul from Puerto Montt, as well as my friends Alejandro and Ledda who are in the process of refurbishing a big 50 ft ketch.  We had another lovely day and played lawn games, drank wine, and feasted until late into the night.

​The next morning, we shifted gears and started to prepare for the sailing portion of the trip.  The main goal of the voyage was to try and ski from the boat and we agreed that that would be best accomplished near the San Rafael Glacier.  We’d be gone for 6 weeks in total in the depths of Chilean Patagonia so we had to do some serious provisioning before we left. 
 
We spent a couple days gathering all the supplies we would need for the trip and we capped everything off with a big pichanga dinner with Clint and Reina at the oldest bar in Puerto Montt.

​The first day of our sail south was about as glorious as sailing gets in Patagonia.  We had the current in our favor, fair winds, and even a few breaks of sunshine.  

​We even managed to spot penguins, albatrosses, and sea lions all within the first hour after leaving the dock.  Volcán Corcovado, some 70 nautical miles to the south, even made a quick appearance above the horizon.  

​We had to start things off right and our first anchorage was near some hot springs.  We pulled in just before dark and made fast the shore lines with our headlamps blazing.  When we awoke the next morning, perfect calm reined and the clouds began to lift, revealing all of the grandeur of the fjords.  

​We’d managed to find a goose egg in the markets of Puerto Montt and we decided this would be the perfect time to crack into it.  It was literally as big as my fist and it filled up half of my frying pan.  It seemed to have a never-ending supply of yolk to dip into and it was absolutely scrumptious.  

​Once high tide came around, we took the dinghy over to the hot springs and spent the whole morning alternating between soaking and sunbathing.  

​Eventually it was time to crack into the wine and we kindled a little fire as well.  Our bellies started grumbling around mid-afternoon and we grilled up some burgers and made a big pot of beans.  

​Our next anchorage was beside the town of Buill, and this time we pulled in a couple of hours before sunset.  A couple of young men in a fishing launch pulled up after we got the anchor down and as they got close, we saw they had a whitewater kayak in the bottom along with a bunch of their fishing paraphernalia.  We invited them aboard for a beer and they happily accepted.  We chatted for a half hour or so and found that they work in tourism for half the year and as fishermen during the other half.  They were super friendly and outgoing, which seems to be the case for 90% of the Chileans you run into in the fjords.  

​As the sun started to set, they came back by the boat and dropped off a big ole’ fresh merluza that someone had clearly just caught and we immediately started to roast it in butter, garlic, and wine.  An absolutely glorious sunset wrapped up the night and we went to bed with big smiles and full bellies.  

​We’d thrown the leftover fish parts in our crab trap the night before and when we woke up, we found the trap absolutely swarming with sea life.  There were dozens of starfish, sea urchins, and crabs crawling all over it and it took me a while to sort through it all.  It was by far the biggest catch I’d ever made and we selected the two biggest crabs for our evening meal.  

​We had a blend of sun and squalls that day as we sailed past the town of Chaiten and we made good time down to one of my favorite anchorages of all time.  We knew bad weather was on the way, and we were happy to have a good nook to hide out in.  

​During the day, Jess was making tea (how very British of her) and all of a sudden, my kerosene stove started acting funny.  Once we were anchored (and after a glass of wine and a game of cribbage) I took a closer look and found that the bottom of the burner had cracked.  It didn’t look particularly fixable, but luckily I’d bought a spare burner from the states back when I was in Mexico in case of such a conundrum. 
 
I started installing it and the threads were cut a little bit crudely, but if I really gave it the business with a big monkey wrench I could get it fairly well seated.  I tried firing it up to no avail and realized that it wasn’t quite sealing properly on the tank.  The new burner didn’t have any spare washers and the old burner’s washers had long ago disintegrated so I was faced yet another conundrum.  If we couldn’t get it sealed, we couldn’t cook and we couldn’t keep sailing.  I started wracking my brains for potential solutions that’d be able to conform to into the crevices of the gap, but also would be able to withstand the high heat of the burner.  Eventually some ideas came to mind and I started tearing the boat apart to find pieces and parts I’d stored away in the depths.  I had some silicone emergency tape that purported to be “high temperature resistant” but found that it didn’t quite seal properly and started burning a bit when the burner got up to temp.  I had a number of washers of different types of metal, but none of them would crush enough to seal either.  A bunch of different types of epoxy claimed to be good with high heat, but would take several hours (or days) to cure properly and would mean that I couldn’t fix the burner if it failed again.  Lots of bad options.

During the course of trying several of these options out, I managed to start a good number of kerosene fires that required the use of the fire extinguisher to put out.  Just when I was beginning to despair and think about planning a return to Puerto Montt for parts, my eyes landed on an old baked potato that had been rolling around our kitchen since our asado with Clint and Reina.  I’d wrapped it in foil and cooked it in the coals and it was charred around the edges, but for some odd reason we didn’t have the heart to commit it to the sea.  The glint of the foil caught my eye and a plan slowly hatched in my head.

​I rolled the crusty foil into a long skinny snake and then curled it up into a ring and wrapped that ring around the base of the burner.  When I cranked it down with all the gusto I could muster, the burner crushed the foil, filled the gap, and sealed the leak perfectly.  We turned the burner on and it glowed with a lively blue flame.  MacGyver, my childhood hero, would’ve been proud. 
 
It was quite late at this point, so we decided to pack all of the scattered pieces and parts back away, eat some guacamole Jess had put together, and go to bed.  When we awoke, we were quite ravenous and the wind was raging hard enough outside that we definitely wouldn’t be going anywhere for the day.  It was time to hunker down and put our robust new burner to work.
 
First on the menu?  A quick crab and hollandaise appetizer.  In fact, there may be no better way to start your day.

The second course?  How about a brunch of garlicy roasted potatoes and pan seared flank steak… with leftover hollandaise drizzled over the top.  I can’t say I have surf-and-turf breakfasts very often… and this one certainly didn’t disappoint.  

​After a few games of cribbage and a quick movie, we hopped in the dinghy, braved the wind and rain, and harvested a couple kilos of mussels.  It was, of course, time for the third course – steamed mussels dunked in hollandaise-wine sauce.  

The winds increased during the afternoon and we had to add a few shore lines to keep us off the rocks in our snug little anchorage.
 
We got an updated weather forecast from my brother that afternoon and it sounded like things would calm down the following day, but when I first woke up early the next morning the wind was still blowing 25 knots through the anchorage.  I let out a quick ‘bah-humbug’ and went back to bed for a bit.  Eventually I dragged myself out for a quick spin in the dinghy to see what the sea looked like out beyond the island.  Surprisingly enough, the sea didn’t look too rugged and I made the call that we should go for it.  I knew that our next hop down the coast was of substantial mileage, but I rationalized that we’d be going plenty fast with such a strong north wind blowing.  I also wanted to try and meet up with Clint and Reina from Karma who were one anchorage further south than us.  I had no idea just how big a day we were getting ourselves into.  

I returned to the Rascal in her cocoon of shorelines with the wind raging and waves gently rocking her back and forth.  It was obvious that it would take some time to extract her and we got to work immediately.  The trick was the sequence in which we removed them so that we could avoid ramming into the rocks when we only had one line left attached (the wind was still gusting over 20kts in the anchorage).  There wasn’t much room to maneuver, so we decided it would be best to just drop the lines from the Rascal, have me motor out of the anchorage with a full head of steam, and leave Jess behind to retrieve the lines in the dinghy and then meet me around the corner. 
 
All of this was much easier said than done and it was around 10:30 by the time we were able to rendezvous.  To begin our downwind run, we first had to beat upwind into 20kts for a mile to get around the corner of the island.  The waves were piling up on the shallow water and sloshing the Rascal around like a rubber ducky, but she powered through it and we were soon running with the wind like a bat out of hell.  

The wind was extra gusty and as we got further offshore it started gusting up to 25.  It was also raining cats and dogs at this point and Jess decided to head down into the cabin to warm up.  I was sailing with a fully reefed main and the jiblet up front and we were making 7 kts, which is notable because the Rascal’s hull speed is supposed to be 6 kts.  That was right around the time the tide decided to flip and all of a sudden the waves started getting huge.  Whenever a tidal current is pushing against the prevailing winds, the waves get big, but these waves were bordering on ridiculous.  Every few minutes a big frothing crest of white would crash into the cockpit and fill the Rascal up until she slid down the side of the way and sloshed half of it back out again.  The waves were easily up to 12 feet at this point and we were towing the dinghy (the Superhighway, she’s called) – which had started surfing down the waves.  It would sometimes pass the stern of the Rascal until it fell into a trough, where it would slow down and suddenly come taut with a big jerk on the towing line. 
 
My brother’s forecast had predicted nothing more than 20kts decreasing down to 5-10 after noon, but at this point the wind was a steady 30kts gusting higher and the Rascal was doing 8 kts over the ground with the main lashed down and just a tiny scrap of jib up.  I was peeking down into the cabin, mentioning to Jess that the waves had gotten pretty big when all of a sudden we both heard a loud “Poppp-TWANG”.  My heart leapt into my throat.  I turned around to find the Superhighway slowly drifting backwards and the tattered shreds of the towline dragging in the water behind us.  “Shit!” I yelled down at Jess, “Get up on deck now!”
 
I put the tiller over hard and started working back upwind towards the Superhighway.  The waves are still enormous, so you could only ever spot her when she happened to be on the crest of one at the same time as you, and at this point the wind was whipping dead into our faces.  With that kind of sea running and that much wind, its not easy to maneuver up on a moving target, but we went for a first pass towards her and were off by some 20-30 feet.  By this time I’d fired up the engine and Jess was up on deck and we pulled out the boat hook to try and grab the Superhighway on our next pass.  This time we came within 15 feet, but still not nearly close enough. 
 
I know that it’ll be easier to maneuver if we drop all the sails, but I also know the Rascal could easily get knocked down in these kind of seas if we don’t have some sail up.  After two more closer, but ultimately unsuccessful passes we realized that there isn’t much of anything to hook onto now that the painter is in tatters, but we also remember that there is a bunch of tangled shoreline in the dinghy still and figure that perhaps we can get a hook into that.  The shorelines are classic for tangling up on everything in the dinghy when you’re trying to deploy them, but when we finally managed to hook one our fifth attempt, we found that it slowly dragged its way out of the dinghy without wrapping around a single thing until its entire 110m length was dragging behind the Rascal and slowly getting wrapped around the windvane.
 
This created a bigger issue because if it got caught in the propeller, we would be in an even bigger mess.  We had to get it untangled in a hurry, but it took nearly ten minutes and the Superhighway was drifting away the entire time.  We were just barely able to keep an eye on her and once all the line was clear we raced off after her, sighting her on the wave tops every 20 seconds or so.  At this point, it was still blowing at least 25 with driving rain and our chances of ever boat-hooking the Superhighway seemed non-existent.  There seemed to be only one other option to retrieve the Superhighway so and I grabbed the key to her outboard, tightened my life preserver, started giving Jess instructions, and we looped around for another pass. 
 
Our six path was nowhere near the Superhighway, our seventh pass literally hit her in the stern, and our eighth pass seemed like it was as good as it was going to get.  Just as we passed her beam, I took to the air, and with the grace of a swan, I dove across the 6-8 feet of ocean that separated us. 
 
My adrenaline addled body landed with a mighty thud in her cushy, inflatable bottom and I gave a quick prayer of thanks to Poseidon for delivering me.  Time to get to work.  I quickly built a new tow line out of the one remaining shoreline that was in the dinghy and put a backup loop to a ring in the inside of the dinghy should something decide to break off again.  I fired up the outboard (started first pull, thank god!) and started blasting off across these mammoth waves in pursuit of the Rascal, which was about a quarter mile away at this point.  I was absolutely drenched and every 3rd or 4th wave would crash over the bow and into the bottom of the boat.  I’d covered about half the distance to the Rascal when all of a sudden the outboard coughed, sputtered, and with an indignant snort, cut out entirely.  Shit.
 
There was obviously no chance of rowing the couple hundred yards that separated us, so I went to work trying to diagnose what the issue was.  Water in the fuel?  Totally possible.  Water in the air intake?  Also totally possible.  Luck run out?  Seems likely.  Finally I looked down in the floor of the dinghy and saw that one of my feet braced against the floor of the dinghy had pinched a fuel line.  Five or six pulls later, she fired back to life and before I knew it, we were approaching the stern of the Rascal. 
 
The wind was still blowing 25-30 kts and the Rascal was quite a scene of chaos when I got back to her.  Jess had been pointing her into the wind, hove-to, with the jiblet flogging around on the foredeck where the wind had thrown her loose of her sail ties.  Sheets were dragging in the water, twisted around each other, and the mast was ticking back and forth 90 degrees as each wave came and passed.  Surely she must’ve been shitting her pants, especially when it looked like the engine had given up the ghost, but Jess kept her calm and kept the Rascal on course as I approached.  With a dip of a wave and exceedingly lucky timing, I was able to cut the engine of the dinghy and step up onto the Rascal with one hand around the kill switch and the new towline and the other clutching onto the Rascal’s stern. 
 
We cleared that carnage off the Rascal’s deck and soon we were pointed back down wind, and we both breathed a big sigh of relief that we had all survived the ordeal with out any major injuries or mishaps.  It was still blowing hard and the Rascal was still making insane boat speeds of 8+ knots.  

The rain had slowly abated and we both sat in the cockpit, eyeing the Superhighway with suspicion and malice in our eyes.  Her bid for freedom had filled her up with a fair bit of water, and the extra weight was making her tow more smoothly, but we also noticed that the fuel tank was starting to float pretty high up.  I turned to Jess.  “You suppose that will be an issue?” I asked.  As she turned to reply, a wave tipped the dinghy a bit more and the gas tank leapt overboard.
 
It was dragging through the water at 8 kts, attached by an old spongy fuel line, bouncing and jumping all over the place.  We quickly put the helm over to heave to and I started dragging the tow line back in by hand.  Even hove-to, the Rascal was moving too quick to be able to get the Superhighway alongside and we were both expecting the fuel line to break lose at any moment.  I unclipped my safety tether again, and prepared myself for another swan dive.
 
Jess gave me high marks for form on this dive and, against all odds, the gas tank, with its rusty hose clamps, managed to stay attached through the whole ordeal.  I slowly tugged it back in and, as the Superhighway was still attached to the Rascal, getting back aboard was much easier this time.  I threw the fuel tank down into the cockpit and we pointed the Rascal downwind once again. 
 
At this point, I came really close to making a sarcastic comment to the effect of, “When I got back from the first dive into the Superhighway, I never expected to be making a second!” yet I decided to hold my tongue.  Best not to tempt fate, right?
 
Five minutes later, we looked back at the Superhighway, who I had decided was out to commit suicide, and we saw that the engine cowling had somehow popped off and was dangling precariously by the pull cord.  At this point, I was fully committed to the cause and I made the jump for the third time.  I landed atop an oar that has been guilty of cracking ribs before, but my life preserver cushioned the blow and I grabbed the engine cover just in time and latched it back on. 
 
Despite the fact that we were still blazing along at a ridiculous speed (we peaked at 8.7 kts), we’d lost a lot of valuable time in wresting with the Superhighway and we were now way behind schedule. We both agreed that I would’ve been totally hosed (and the Superhighway would’ve likely been successful in her suicide attempts) if Jess hadn’t been there to man the helm of the Rascal while I was practicing my gymnastics.
 
The wind and current slowly started abating as we sailed south and we eventually made radio contact with Karma to see where exactly they were anchored.  We mentioned that we’d had a pretty big day and they offered up a big chili dinner and a sipper of Jack to warm our spirits.  As we navigated between islets and around rocks on the final approach, the clouds started breaking up and a glorious sunset spread across the sky.  

​It lit up everything around us and the colors really helped to lift our spirits after such a challenging day of sailing.  

​Dolphins escorted us into the anchorage and Clint and Reina helped us run shorelines as the light slowly faded to darkness.  We went over into the warm, cozy cabin of Karma for dinner and we each told tales of the adventures we’d had in the previous days.  

It was the perfect end to a harrowing day of sailing and it felt great to be across the notorious Gulf of Corcovado.  We fell asleep early that night with smiles on our faces and adventure in our hearts.

​Stay tuned for the next chapter - when we finally reach the San Rafael Glacier!

Patty Murphy was a great friend and mentor of mine during my days at Bucknell (he was president of the ski team my sophomore year) and he moved out to Vail after he graduated.  We were never more than a few hour drive from each other and we got to do a lot of partying and skiing over the years, with rendezvous in the Utah desert, the central rockies, and the backwoods of Montana.  

I hadn’t gotten to see him since my going-away asado in Salt Lake almost two years ago, so when he proposed a trip to visit me in Chile, I said yes immediately!  As a bonus, he was bringing along his girlfriend, Haleigh, a Vail local that skins faster than a spandex-clad-randonerd and had strong enough cribbage skills to give me a real run for my money.  Truly a force to be reckoned with!

We met up at the airport in Puerto Montt and everyone’s bellies were rumbling for some Chilean grub.  We went straight to the best pichanga bar in town and ordered up a round or two of pisco sours and caught up on the last two years of our lives. 

That turned out to be just what we needed and I mentioned that there was a traditional Chilean drink that (I’m embarrassed to say) I hadn’t tried yet.  It’s called a terremoto (earthquake) and it consists of a sweet white wine, a splash of grenadine, and a scoop of pineapple ice cream.  They’re a sweet, powerful concoction, and when you stand up after one and notice the room is shaking, you suddenly understand the reasoning behind their name.  

As you can imagine, those went over great with the team and by the time we went to bed that night, everyone’s fear of earthquakes had disappeared and everyone’s Spanish skills had improved tenfold. 

The next day, we had a leisurely morning, put on all of our ski gear, and took the bus (amid stares from confused Chileans) up to Puerto Varas to meet my friend Jess for a little afternoon skiing on Volcan Osorno, a little mom-and-pop operation above Lago Llanquihue.  

It was the weekend so there were scores of Chileans heading up in two wheel drive sedans to go sledding on the flanks of the mountain and it was quite an entertaining, if frustrating, drive to get up to the ski area.  The upper cone of the volcano was going in and out of the clouds and by the time we hopped on the ski lift it was totally socked in.

We couldn’t see more than a turn or two ahead, but the snow was absolutely great (we described it as being cream-cheesey) and we carefully sliced and diced our way around volcanic rocks that seemed to be sticking out of the snow all over the place.  Eventually the clouds broke apart and we got a view across to Volcan Calbuco and down towards the lake.  

Jess’s truck was triple parked in by the intrepid sledding crowd, so we decided a few pisco sours by the wood stove in the lodge might be a nice way to warm up after skiing in the clouds all afternoon.  We still didn’t have a solid plan for where we’d go for the rest of the trip, but Jess offered to let us use her extra car (a lovely white Toyota Corolla which we soon named Karen) and it looked like the best weather would be a couple hours drive to the north.  Thus, we cheersed "To The North!" and to the north is exactly where we went!

The following day was nice and clear and we spent it working our way slowly through the Chilean countryside, stopping for the occasional empanada on the side of the road.  We eventually found ourselves in a little hostel outside the village of Malacahuello.  We took it pretty easy that night and retired early with plans of trying to skin up Volcano Lonquimay early the next morning while the weather was still clear.    

Eventually the sun caught up with us and we got to enjoy the second half of the skin totally bathed in alpenglow.   

The wind continued to build as we got higher on the volcano and by the time we got up to the summit pitch, it raging in our faces.  There were times when it could even blow you back down the skin track.  We knew it would only get worse with elevation and on the exposed ridgeline it’d be downright unsafe, so we decided to bail.  It was a bit of a bummer to not reach the crater, but we were able to console ourselves with four thousand vertical feet of soft wind-buff.

There is only one thing to do when weather kicks you off of a Chilean volcano - we spent the rest of the day soaking in Malacahuello hot springs, drinking wine and watching the clouds build in.  

The next day had rain and more high winds on the docket, so we elected to take a rest day to explore another set of hot springs in the area.  They're out in the boonies and it was an adventuresome drive working our way out to them.  

The Rio Blanco hot springs are a bit more natural than others in that neck of the woods, with stone tubs, a stream running past, and trees overhanging the whole thing.  

Clouds built and parted throughout the day and there was a great view of the Sierra Nevada mountains from our tub.  

We brought sandwich makings and plenty of Escudos and whiled away the day soaking, listening to tunes, playing cribbage, and chatting with the proprietor of the joint who had excellent stories to tell.  He gave us all the delicious mineral water we could drink and told us great stories about the various times he'd gotten kicked out of Argentina.  He was a real character, and was happy to put up with all of our shenanigans.  

The next day was predicted to be warm, sunny, and clear so we got an early start on the road to Volcan Llaima.  After the restorative waters of Termas Rio Blanco, we were really primed up and the stoke level was high.  Unfortunately, google maps isn’t particularly reliable in this part of the world and it routed us on a shortcut to the base of the volcano that was closed off by snow at that time of year.  

This would’ve have been a big deal, but it meant an extra hour of backtracking and then another two hours to work our way around to the other side of the volcano on dirt roads.  The volcano felt so close, but in reality it was still three hours away.  By the time we finally got to the small ski area at the base of the volcano, it was nearly noon and the sun was really cooking.

After getting shut down on Lonquimay early in the week, everyone was really raring to go and we set a mean pace up the side of Llaima.  The approach is a bit long, and we wound our way through lots of low angle lava flows before we got to the proper summit cone.  Distances and elevations are really tough to gage on these volcanoes because of the lack of trees or any other thing to compare for scale.  It looked like we were nearly there, but in reality we still had about three thousand vertical feet to go.

We alternated between skinning and booting as we worked our way up the cone and eventually we spotted some mountaineers higher up that looked smaller than ants to give us some perspective.  We redoubled our efforts and made good time on the upper snowfields. 

The views of the surrounding countryside (with volcanoes speckled throughout) were stupendous and it was tough to concentrate on climbing.  As much as I love skiing volcanoes, I might’ve been just as happy to bask in the sunshine and take in the view for hours on end.  

One thing we could make out from down below were the volcanic vents on the side of the mountain slowly letting out steam and melting snow.  These vents slowly create small crevasses where they’ve melted fresh (or windblown) snow and sometimes their tough to spot.  You can imagine how they’re quite a hazard to the alpinist, especially when they’ve had a couple of days to work their magic without any fresh snow to bridge over them. 

We eventually ran into some Basque ski mountaineers (randonerds in the truest sense) and they reported having fallen into a half dozen of them during their ascent of the final hundred meters of the climb.  At that point, the corn snow from lower on the mountain had given way to a mix of ice chunks and deep sun cups.  The snow conditions, combined with the prospect of dying in a volcanic vent crevasse, made the decision an easy one: we would ski from there and, once again, forsake the summit.  

The ski descent was one of the coolest of my entire life.  

The upper section was good and steep, with sections of good soft corn between the chunder and ice chunks.  We were careful to dodge vents were we could see them and we all made it through unscathed.  

As we got lower on the mountain, the pitch moderated and we found ourselves swooping through lava tunnels with crazy wind features and natural half pipes.  The snow had cooked long enough that it was good and soft and we hooted and hollered the whole way.

We skied a slightly different route than we had climbed and as we got back towards tree line we did some traversing up and down through the lava flows to get back to the trailhead.  It felt like a hell of an accomplishment and some celebratory beers were definitely in order after such a long day.  We had been considering a late evening drive back to Puerto Montt and then an early morning bus to Bariloche, but the weather there had been hot and was expected to get cold again without any fresh snow in the forecast.  We knew we’d end up skiing on concrete and the weather for Chile seemed much better, so we decided to find a spot to spend the night.  The bartendress pointed us in the direction of some cabanas down in the village of Cherquenco which were supposed to be good and cheap.

As we pulled into the driveway, we were greeted by a pack of small dogs that seemed eager to eat us for dinner and a dark-haired woman popped her head out the door to greet us.  She looked a bit suspicious, but was friendly and the little cabin she had was wonderful, with a kitchen and several bedrooms and bathrooms all to ourselves.  We got to chatting with her and her husband and found that they were half Italian and half Arabic and had moved to Chile several years before. 

Now, I’ve never met a gypsy in the flesh before, but these folks, combined with the vibe of the whole place, immediately struck me as gypsyesque and we couldn’t help but make jokes about it the whole night.  Pat tried to collect some of their tears, which are, of course, a powerful ingredient in potions, but he was unsuccessful.  


The next morning was also nice and clear and we up to a little lodge on the other side of Llaima to do some more exploring.  Tree line was a bit higher there and there was only one type of tree on offer: the legendary Monkey Puzzle tree. 

We skinned up a good distance to explore more of the cool wind features that build up around the lava flows and then made a bunch of short laps through the trees.

It was another perfect sunny day and smiles and Escudos abounded.  

The next couple of days looked stormy.  As we had found out at this point, storms in Chile normally mean high winds and high winds mean chairlifts don’t spin.  Thus, we decided to wait out the weather again and hang tight for another window of no precip and low winds.  Our cheap little homey cabana was the perfect place to do that from.   After a quick food run, we sent the first day holed up, playing cribbage with the wood stove roaring, the wine flowing, and the rain coming down in droves. 

The next day we were feeling well rested and a bit more ambitious and we decided to head north to another hot springs that we hadn’t seen yet.  They had a website that looked really promising and made mention of how exceptionally hot their springs were.  It was up in the mountains and as we gained elevation, the rain eventually turned to slush… and then the slush turned to a light layer of snow.  Karen had no problem working her way through it, but there were several busses stopped along the side of the dirt road and eventually we came to one that was blocking it entirely and was clearly having issues making it up a hill.  We stopped to let them get out of the way.  A half hour slowly marched by and they made little progress.  Eventually a group of surly passengers from the bus trudged up to us said that we would have to turn around because the bus could “never make it past us”.  There was clearly plenty of space, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer and we turned Karen around and pointed her back up the road away from the hot springs until we found an extra wide spot with at least two lanes of passing space.  It was clear that the process of getting the stuck bus around all of the other stopped busses would take hours, so we decided to hoof it the remaining 3 kilometers to the hot spring – the only snag was that I’d just brought sandals.  It was a cold, wet, slushy walk, and a shuttle from the hotel at the hot springs buzzed past and totally splashed us with muddy slush as we walked up the hill.  Talk about adding insult to injury.

All of these stupid shenanigans wouldn’t have seemed so bad if we’d arrived and been able to jump into some glorious steaming hot springs, but instead we jumped in to find that they were barely luke warm.  We spent enough time for each of us to drink a beer and then trudged another three kilometers in the snow and sleet back to the car.  Hands down my least favorite hot springs in all of Chile.

Spirits were pretty low at this point, so we decided to head back to the cabana and fire up a big delicious dinner to bring us back to life.  Ribs and baked beans it was, and we all felt much better after a few glasses of wine, a hot meal, and a few games of cribbage.  

We left our gypsy cabana early the next morning and made the drive back up to Lonquimay.  It had rained almost up to the parking lot so the road was clear and the cloud deck had risen enough to make out the summit in the early morning light.  We met a few Spaniards in the parking lot that were also going for the summit and we each wished each other well. 

This time around, we elected to buy lift tickets and try to get a bunch of skiing in before we made for the summit.  It was some of the oddest snow I’ve ever seen – windblown and extra grabby – but we had a blast lapping it and waiting for the t-bar on the upper part of the mountain to open.

The wind was still blowing with some force and the clouds were threatening to close in again, so we made for the summit at the first opportunity.  A couple hundred feet of skinning brought us up to the final ridge where the wind had blown the snow into a bunch of ice bulges.  We switched over to crampons and slowly booted our way up to the crater with the clouds just skimming above our heads and the surrounding volcanoes beginning to disappear into the overcast.  Pat and Haleigh looked down into the crater in awe and we all took a moment to rest and collect ourselves.  We’d finally made it to a summit!

The slope immediately in front of us looked to be wind loaded from the storm, so we decided it would be best to wrap around to the slope I’d skied with Porter a month before.  It was during this process that we realized Pat was missing his beacon.  He’d definitely had it on in the parking lot, which meant that he must’ve left it behind somewhere during the climb while he was changing layers.  With the way the wind was blowing it seemed unlikely that it’d still be there if we went back for it, so we decided to charge ahead and get off the summit before we lost visibility.  

It turned out that the aspect we chose had the best snow we’d seen all day and we ripped big, fast turns all the way down.  We pulled up at the base area with huge smiles on our faces and exchanged copious high fives all around.  It was the longest run of Haleigh and Pat’s illustrious skiing careers and we were all really stoked to finally have ticked off a big objective.  Beers were enjoyed in the lodge and eventually we ran into the Spaniards who had come across Pat’s beacon on the ridge and brought it back down for us – talk about a lucky day!

The next day we drove back to Puerto Montt through the rain and packed everything up for the flight back home.  We went out to a big German dinner and polished off more than our fair share of local microbrews.  

The end of their trip marked the end of two whirlwind months of land travel, and while I had a big smile on my face, I was worn out and needed a few weeks to recuperate before the party can continue.  Spring is starting to arrive and the rainy days are becoming fewer and fewer.  Another friend arrives soon and I'm in the process of getting the Rascal ready for several months of cruising deeper into Patagonia!