FKT: Erin Ton - Huemul Circuit (Argentina) - 2025-01-25

Chris & I set off from the park visitor center a little after 6am. This provided us enough time to avoid some of the tourists on trail and avoid the ticket check booth. The sunrise was absolutely beautiful, with hues of pink and purple lighting up Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy. Definitely a good way to start the adventure! We maintained a pretty cruisy yet sustainable pace up and down the first pass. When we reached the valley, we were able to bypass one of the Tyrolean traverses by cutting through the river directly. The water was so cold it felt like a thousand needles stabbed my feet! It took a few minutes for both of us to warm back up again. After this comes the section where you hug the side of a glacier. It was such a neat landscape and I definitely want to return at a more leisurely pace to explore. We got off track for a bit and stayed too high, entering into some loose boulders and scree. Once we realized our mistake, we cut down and stayed on top of a rib next to the glacier, which is where we should have stayed to begin with. Going over the next pass was a bit windy but tolerable. This was where I, Erin, started to feel not so great. I was taking in calories (perhaps not as many as I should have), but I felt inhibited by muscle weakness and my hip flexors more than anything. This pretty much lasted for the remainder of the circuit, so I learned a lot about prioritizing strength in addition to training volume. I didn't know if I wanted to continue for time at this point, but Chris encouraged me and pulled me along. Still, it was hard not to be captivated and in awe of the Patagonian ice field. Once we topped out on the next pass, it was a relief to see the lake and know that we were in the final stretch. Descending the pass was not as bad as we had heard, perhaps it was because there had been a lot of moisture recently so that helped the texture. The final stretch is not quite as scenic as the first. My mind kept wondering if we would beat the 9 hour 18 min goal the entire time. Part of me wanted to just enjoy the rest of the adventure at a more leisurely pace but Chris would not allow that. We knew we had the "mixed-gender" time in the bag, but Chris wanted to abide by the old rule that mixed-gender teams must beat either the previous women's or men's times. After the Tyrolean traverse is when Chris started feeling bad. Fortunately this was on much more cruisy singletrack and road that I had previously scouted, so I had to pick up the slack here and lead us to the finish. We both collapsed when we reached the visitor center and probably looked very odd to surrounding tourists. We were so sore and it took us a while to get up and waddle back to town. The Huemul is beautiful and definitely something I would consider running again upon returning to El Chalten. Now that I have learned from my mistakes I think there is time to be shaved off.