Early Winter in El Chaltén
April 30 - May 10, 2024
After a very active April, I was feeling mostly satisfied with what I’d done in Patagonia, though I did want to at least get a taste of winter around here. After the first snowstorm of the season, I walked up to Laguna Capri on April 30 for a very relaxed two nights of winter camping. The entire landscape had transformed into a winter wonderland since I was last here just ten days before. I enjoyed shooting by the shore of the lake as well as down by the river at my favorite composition I’d previously scouted. The nights were long and cold and it was clear that the gear I brought would be insufficient much deeper into the winter.
Ty Lekki returned from visiting his girlfriend in Bariloche and suggested we do a trip together. I rescheduled my flight to Peru along with several bus tickets so I could stay a few extra days. We set out for an awesome spot overlooking the Piedras Blancas glacier partway up Cerro Electrico. We spent two nights up there, shooting lots of photos of the mountains and of each other. I probably wouldn’t have tried to get up there alone with so much snow and mostly followed his lead in some of the trickier routefinding sections. It’s not often that I do trips with other photographers who are equally passionate about getting to remote vantages in the mountains, and it was cool to see firsthand how he approaches winter camping and drone photography. I learned quite a bit on this trip with Ty that I applied when I ended up returning to Patagonia in 2025.
There was a nationwide labor strike in Argentina scheduled for May 9 when I planned to leave El Chaltén. The day before, I went to the bus terminal to ask if the strike would affect the bus schedule, prepared to leave that night instead if needed. The woman at the kiosk explicitly said that the buses would be running like normal the next day despite the strike. When I arrived at the terminal the next day, the same woman looked me in the eyes and told me no buses would be leaving today due to the strike. This was an issue because if I couldn’t get on the bus to El Calafate, I wouldn’t be able to get to the airport in Punta Arenas in time for my flight to Lima the following day. Lots of other travelers at the bus terminal were in a similar predicament and we were all trying to figure out what to do. I was considering trying to hitchhike to El Calafate in the blizzard that was now raging outside when some guy showed up and asked if we needed a ride to El Calafate. He said he’d be back in 30 minutes with a van. An hour and a half later, our savior indeed showed up with his wife and baby daughter in a large van. I didn’t know who the guy was but it seemed like my best available option by far, and I was glad this enterprising family decided to capitalize on the opportunity to undercut the labor strike. We each paid him roughly the normal bus fare and piled into the van. Understandably he wasn’t accepting credit card and I didn’t have enough cash to pay him since it had all been stolen a couple weeks earlier. A guy from Buenos Aires named Jeremias kindly paid my fare and I later reimbursed him on Paypal from a questionable wifi network in El Calafate. I was relieved to have completed the first leg of the journey to Peru and not be out hundreds of dollars on a missed flight.
Watching the snowy pampas fly by out the bus window between El Calafate and Puerto Natales early the next morning, I couldn’t shake this gnawing sense of déjà vu, as though I shared some deeper connection to the land just beyond the horizon of my awareness. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but it felt like there was unfinished business despite living here for three months and doing almost everything here I had intended. Late that night I got on a plane to Santiago and then to Lima (read about my first Peru adventure here).
Aconcagua visible from above Santiago