Reaching the Fitz Roy viewpoint

Wow, what a day…… beautiful summer weather, approximately 8 degrees Celsius when starting at 06:30 in the morning but heating up during the day. After the early start, followed a 4,5-hour uphill climb to reach the uppermost viewpoint of the Fitz Roy Mountain peak. The trip up was very beautiful through mixed terrain and vegetation, the first 6 km with only a gentle increase in altitude. However, the last 4 km, though, was really steep in difficult terrain, huge stones requiring attention and full force each step of the way.

The last part even came with a warning – only to be attempted if in good shape……. (which is indicated in the photo below).

Thankfully we had our poles to give support to our shaking legs and help us balance, as we struggled to reach the “summit” eventually in good company of other hikers equally short of breath. Hard work but great fun, especially when you finally reach the top.

And we were proud we made it! Tired, but very content to have reached the beautiful view of Fitz Roy (reportedly so named in honour of Robert FitzRoy who, as captain of HMS Beagle, had travelled up the Santa Cruz River in 1834).

And we made it down again too, though the return trip was slow – politely having to stop on the many narrow and difficult singletrack passages, simply to give way to people hiking uphill.

Chaltén being what it is – a hiking metropolis, It will be interesting to see how this develops in the future. Mountain-hiking appears to be augmenting in popularity, which is good for the local economies, and nature and mountains are for everyone. However, the number of tracks and their infrastructure are limited, not least to avoid infringing on local ecosystems and wildlife. Tourist transported by local bus-companies are dropped by the hundreds each morning, and some places, even today, some tracks are at the border of what it can sustain in number of tourists at certain periods of the day. And notedly, most of the hikers and mountain-climbers are not Argentine, but rather from Europe, the United States and Asia.  

But as so many times, I’m probably oversensitive and weird, preferring nature in solitary (of course with my partner….. 😊), and as much untouched as possible!    

But of course, everyone has a right to enjoy the outdoors and a common good cannot be regulated through a pricing system alone. And certainly, this challenge and complexity is neither new – we have already seen that “overuse” of a good has poor consequences such as garbage at the foot of Mount Everest, to plastic bottles at a white beach in the Caribbean or too much touristic “noise” at a Balearic Island. Some kind of future regulation or rationing to protect nature from human exploitation seems to be looming.  Time will tell.