Woo! That was close. Amazing day out there, from start to finish, but in different ways throughout. We still had some Torres del Paine in our legs and also wanted to enjoy the first several hours, so we took it pretty conservatively to start.
From the beginning, the views of Fitz Roy and Cerro Huemul were absolutely on fire. The running was really smooth for the first 10 miles, and if we wanted to, miles 6-10 would be an easy place to shave off time. Didn’t see a soul until the first campground. At the first river crossing, we knew from the lack of rain that it would be quite low, so we steered straight towards the shallow crossing closer to the lake. It was not hard but VERY cold on the feet.
After that, we had a bit of steady climbing, and at some point, we ended up on the moraine trail without purposely trying to avoid the glacier. This was fairly easy to follow for a little while, but then we found ourselves on a trickier section than we anticipated. We were about to cross a steeper, looser grade when we decided to track about 100 meters downhill onto the black mounds of scree at the low point between the glacier and the moraine. Once we hit that, we found a footpath again and progress was much easier.
We really started the aerobic effort on the first larger climb up to Paso Viento, but still kept it conservative. Our first glimpse of the southern Patagonian ice fields was breathtaking. We stood speechless for a minute and then began the descent into the valley. Footing was a little trickier for the next segment, but we started to pick up the effort a bit.
We finally felt the fabled winds of Patagonia during our climb up to Paso Huemul, which was welcomed because they were at our backs. The lake views at the top were stunning, but we knew we had a big drop coming up. The dusty steep descent from Huemul Pass was tough, but not as bad as we anticipated. We took it incredibly slowly and used all the fixed ropes. Folks should spread out here because we did trigger a small rockfall.
When we bottomed out, we did the math on the FKT and knew it was going to take some serious negative splitting. As soon as the scenery got a little less dynamic, the run got a good bit harder. We had some route finding trouble in the cacti by the beach, but we didn’t lose too much time. The second river crossing was a nice little break for the legs and the pulley was already on our side, so that made it easier. We rented the Huemul Circuit kit from Patagonia Heights, and it did the job nicely. The Tyrolean Traverse took about 15 minutes for both of us with one harness.
When we repacked and got back on the trail, we had 6 miles of desert to go in about an hour. We had a moderate headwind, but it felt nice in the desert heat. Those final climbs were tiny in comparison to what we had done that day yet they felt a lot tougher. In the final two miles, we were bringing down the pace, just barely staying within seconds of the FKT. With about 1.5 miles to go, we hit a fork pointing left towards El Chalten. We followed the single track to the final descent down to the road where we hopped a fence onto the highway. We opened it up and finished hard that last half mile, ending at the ranger station with a mere 90 seconds to spare!
We carried filter flasks and way too many layers (we wanted to be safe in case the weather turned, but ended up not using any of them). Very grateful for such a beautiful day out on the trails! The weather probably couldn’t have been more perfect.