Tierra Del Fuego

SummaryNone
OwnerEric Gilbertson
Creation Date2012-07-17 23:38:16 UTC-0400
DescriptionEric Gilbertson
Tierra del Fuego National Park
Ushuaia – Southernmost City in the World
July 6-8, 2012

Links: Adventures Webpage

You can’t get much farther south in the world than Ushuaia, Argentina, without going all the way to Antarctica. Ushuaia is at the extreme southern tip of South America, at the southern terminus of the Pan American Highway on the island of Tierra del Fuego. It’s at the equivalent latitude of northern Labrador, and July is the middle of winter down there. You could theoretically drive there from Boston, but it would be about 26,000 miles.

I found myself in Brazil for a conference this July and couldn’t help but keep going as far south as possible afterwards, to the southernmost city in the world* and the awesome mountains of Tierra del Fuego.

I flew out of Rio early on a Friday morning, stopped off in Buenos Aires, and then landed in Ushuaia at 6pm. At that time of year Ushuaia only gets 7 hours of daylight, and the sun had long-since set by the time I touched down. My goal was to hike around Tierra del Fuego National Park for the weekend before turning around and heading back to Boston. Unfortunately there’s very little information online about the park, and the only information I could find was for the summertime. I emailed the MITOC list and Pablo gave me some awesome advice about the park, though unfortunately I couldn’t find anyone who’d been there in the winter.

I had somehow managed to cram a full winter-overnight backpacking setup into one little carry-on bag, so quickly blasted by everyone else waiting at baggage claim and immediately headed to an information desk. I knew if buses did run to the park they’d probably stop soon so I had to hurry.

Luckily the woman behind the desk spoke some English, but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

“Yes, the park is open but you cannot camp there. It is closed between 8pm to 10am. Also, there is only one bus going in at 10am, and one bus leaving at 5pm daily,” she told me. “You’ll have to stay at a hotel in town and take the bus tomorrow.”

“But what about these places with the tent pictures,” I asked, pointing at a park map she had on the table. “And this campground?”

“No, those are only for the summer. The campground used to be open in winter but they changed their policy this year.”

I hadn’t brought my full winter camping gear all the way down there for nothing, and didn’t want to give up that easily. I tried asking again in different ways. Maybe was the gate just closed to cars at 8pm? Or would anyone mind if I just hiked around all night but didn’t camp?

She motioned for some official-looking guy walking by to come over, and asked what he thought. He turned on a walkie-talkie, exchanged a few words with someone on the other end, then said, “Si, el parque esta abierta en la noche para el camping.”[yes, the park is open at night for camping.]

“Muchas Gracias,” I told him. “Puedo tomar un taxi esta noche?” [can I take a taxi there tonight?]

He radioed someone else, then led me outside as a taxi pulled up. By now it was 7pm, and he estimated it might take up to an hour to drive to the park. That was cutting it close since it closed at 8pm, but I hoped for the best.

I threw my bag in and we took off into the cold, snowy night. The driver didn’t speak any English, but he wanted to talk so that gave me some good spanish practice. He was pretty sure I’d be the only one in the whole park tonight, and wondered why I was going alone. (It wasn’t too easy for me to find someone else to hike in Tierra del Fuego just for a weekend in the winter). He said it would probably snow tomorrow and the next day, and I got the sense it snows about every day here in the winter, and rains about every day in the summer.

It actually felt pretty cold outside to me coming from tropical Brazil, though it was probably only in the 20s F. They roads weren’t even plowed – just covered in a thick layer of ice that you had to drive pretty slowly on.

By 7:30pm we arrived at the park entrance and were stopped by a guard. The taxi driver told the guard there was an American inside who was going camping. The guard kind of paused for a minute, like he wasn’t used to someone actually camping there this time of year, but then he waved us through. From what I had read there was supposed to be an entrance fee, but for some reason he didn’t charge me anything.

By 8pm the taxi pulled to the base of the Lago Roca parking lot and dropped me off into the cold. I’m sure the Lago Roca parking lot would be bustling with activity at this time in the summer, with buses coming in every hour to drop off more trekkers, camp fires roaring, the little lodge serving dinner, and tourists driving in to see the end of the pan American highway. But I saw none of that this night. Once the taxi left it was absolutely silent and, except for the light from my headlamp and the stars, completely dark. I was possibly the only one in the whole park.

The squeaking snow under my shoes broke the silence as I walked around looking for a flat place to throw out my bivy sack for the night. I had actually wanted to go farther into the park to the approved backcountry camping area, but didn’t want to complicate matters for my taxi driver who already seemed a little nervous driving this far into the park. I was tempted to sleep right there at Lago Roca – I’m pretty sure nobody would have noticed – but decided to play by the rules and camp in the approved location since I was in a national park. I kind of wanted to walk around anyways after sitting in planes and airports all day.

I headed down the road deeper into the park and kept glancing up at the sky in every gap in the trees. I was secretly hoping to get lucky and see the Aurora Australus (southern lights), but had no such luck. I did see the Magellanic Clouds, which definitely are not visible in the northern hemisphere.
After about an hour of walking I came to the Laguna Verde and the official backcountry camping area. It looked like the peninsula in the lagoon could easily accommodate over 30 tents, but there would only be one occupant there tonight. I found a nice flat spot, crawled into my bivy sack, and went to sleep.

In Tierra Del Fuego in July the sun doesn’t rise until 10am, and that night I took advantage of all 13 hours before sunrise to catch up on the sleep I’d missed while traveling. At dawn I hiked back to Lago Roca, and was met with spectacular mountain views along the way that I hadn’t noticed in the dark. Treeline there is about 1000ft and the mountains only about 3000 ft tall, but they still look like they were cut from the top of the Himalayas and brought down to sea level. Even down at my elevation there was lots of ice forming on cliffs, and it was odd that the south-facing cliffs had the most ice. I’m used to the north faces being the coldest in the northern hemisphere, but it makes sense that the opposite is true in the southern hemisphere.

Lago Roca is an enormous lake that spans the border of Chile and Argentina, slicing right through Fuegian Andes. It’s flanked by Cerro Guanaco on the East, Cerro Condor on the West, and innumerable mountains to the north. There’s a trail hugging the northeast corner of the lake that leads to Cerro Guanaco and to the Chilean border. My goal for the day was to hit both of these features and maybe even touch my toe into Chile if there weren’t any border guards.

I left the road at the edge of the lake and started up the Lago Roca trail, as alone as I’d been for the past 14 hours. Fortunately someone else had hiked this trail since the last big snowstorm, so I had a well-packed trail to follow. In fact, I think someone had ridden horses on most of the trail.

I got to the turnoff for Cerro Guanaco, the mountain that promised amazing views of the Beagle Channel and the rest of the park, but was met with an explicit “NO PASAR” [NO TRESPASSING] sign pounded right into the middle of the trail. There was no explanation of why it was closed, and I didn’t see any footprints past the sign. I briefly considered going up anyways, but remembered the forecast for snow today (possible whiteout above treeline), and considered that, if something happened to me up there, nobody else would probably be heading up for a few more months until the trail officially opened.

I reluctantly turned around and continued up the Lago Roca trail. The views here on the lakeshore were still amazing, so I couldn’t really complain. After another 1.5 hours I spied a landmark I recognized from my panoramio picture research online – a huge red metal pyramid structure - and knew I was at the Chilean border.

Here again I encountered a “NO PASAR” sign, but this one I sort of ignored. How often do you find yourself right on the Chile-Argentina border with no border guards or fences or security cameras watching your moves? I strayed a few feet across the border to a nice looking rock and sat down to eat my lunch. For the record this marked new country number five for me for this trip (Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile).

I hung around admiring the view in Chile until I was too cold to sit anymore, and then started heading back. I arrived to the trailhead with several unexpected hours of daylight left and was somewhat disappointed to see three other people there standing next to their car taking pictures. I guess I didn’t have the whole park to myself during the daylight, but these people didn’t look prepared for a winter hike so I still probably had all the trails to myself.

I hiked down the road past my campsite and continued south until there was no more road. I had officially reached the southern terminus of the Pan American Highway at Bahia Lapatia. A huge sign greeted me, claiming “Alaska 17,848 Km.” I think they might have their math a little off , since the northern terminus is more like 50,000km away, but it was still pretty impressive to see a sign for Alaska way down here in southern Argentina.

The sun was nearly set by now, so I returned to my little campsite and again had the whole park to myself that night.

There weren’t really many more trails open in the park so I decided to check out the town of Ushuaia on Sunday before my flight in the evening. I started just walking the 15 miles into town (since I thought there were no buses until 5pm), but I soon saw one bus pass by and I waved him down. He had to drop off a few hikers first in the park, but then agreed to make a special trip back to Ushuaia for me.

I decided to see if this bus driver could settle a question that had been nagging me for a while. “¿Es Ushuaia la ciudad más austral del mundo, o es Puerto Williams?” [Is Ushuaia the farthest south city in the world, or is if Puerto Williams?] I asked innocently. I was referring to the thorn in Argentina’s toe – Puerto Williams – a little habitation on the Chilean Navarino Island ever so slightly to the south of Ushuaia.

“Ushuaia,” he replied sternly, as if I shouldn’t dare question such status. “Puerto Williams es sólo un puesto militar muy poco con 3000 personas. Ni siquiera una ciudad. Ushuaia cuenta con 80.000 personas y es una ciudad real .”[Puerto Williams is just a very little military outpost with 3000 people. Not even a city. Ushuaia has 80,000 people and is a real city.] That settled the matter – I was officially in the southernmost city in the world (at least according to the locals).

I ended up walking around town most of the day and in the afternoon took a spectacular boat tour on the Beagle Channel, passing islands teeming with sea lions and cormorants. Supposedly one island even had penguins, but we couldn’t get out that far in the boat. In town I saw several buildings offering cruises to Antarctica, though of course they were closed this time of year. Ushuaia is actually one of the major starting points for Antarctic expeditions since it’s reasonably close to the southernmost continent.

I caught a flight back to brazil that night and had to bid farewell to winter in exchange for more jungle hiking. Tierra del Fuego is definitely worth a return trip for some longer hikes – perhaps in the summer when the days are longer and bus service is more frequent.