Patagonia Dreaming

Morning mate and jam. Bariloche, Argentina.

The simple rock n’ roll instrumentation of Sumo’s greatest hits album, an Argentinian classic, fills the ambient void. The sun sinks below the distant mountains - I can only guess their names - and the twinkle of the Crux starts to appear. But it’s 10 PM and the days are long, there will be light in the sky for some time yet. We’re south of the 45th parallel and not long past the austral summer solstice.

Sean nods off in the back seat and up front in shotgun I fight the urge not to do the same so as to keep Felipe company. It’s been a long day on the road. The scenery, though Patagonia as a whole is the most beautiful landscape I could conceptualize, is monotonous. True to his reputation as the Belgian big wall troubadour, Sean brought five different wind instruments on this trip and the jams have carried us down hundreds of miles of unpaved highway but that contagious energy has waned this late in the day. Soon we’ll find a place to pull over and sleep.

Sean teaching Walas how to play the gaita.

It was probably 15 years prior that I watched Patagonia Dreams (a film made by a young Sean Villanueva-O'Driscoll, the professional climber currently nodding off in the backseat) as a budding teenage rock climber - was that the first time I consciously wished to go there? - no, that was before that, maybe sometime in middle school when I would spend hours on Google Earth, when the most vibrant color palette around the southern tip of the American continent caught my eye. Turquoise lakes big enough to be a freshwater sea, expansive ice fields, verdant temperate rain forests. But maybe it was even earlier still, when I saw Galen Rowell’s classic photo of a herd of mustangs galloping in front of the Chalten Massif in a coffee table book, a scene so magical I couldn’t believe it existed on Earth. Who knows. Whatever it was, Patagonia has permeated my soul for a long, long time and the call of the place is one I’ve had the privilege of answering several times since 2019

Galen Rowell’s famous photograph - taken decades before Ruta 40 and the establishment of the town of El Chalten.

These mountains have shaped me as a person, as a photographer, as a climber - they’ve given me enough trauma for months worth of therapy right alongside some of the best and most triumphant memories I’ve ever had. I’ve met some of my closest friends there, found the best ice cream in the world, discovered what rappelling in the middle of hurricane-force winds feels like, and brought back a persistent mate habit. In Chalten I’ve learned to love bouldering and do away with consistent sleep schedules, that cake is the only choice for breakfast after stumbling out of the mountains, and a ribeye is best consumed around a bonfire with your bare hands. I’ve climbed some of the cleanest granite hand cracks I could imagine, chopped ice out of an offwidth while still wearing rock shoes, slept while sitting upright on a tiny ledge, and climbed up onto the summit in the middle of the night with expansive constellations and the endless Southern Icefield to augment our headlamps. The kind of memories to relive often, and I do.

“Can you pour some mate?” Felipe asks.

Shit, I was nodding off. I grab the thermos - still hot - and pour hot water over the cup of dried leaves that’s been keeping us semi-caffeinated for the last several hours. Sean’s snoring. Here we are, recreating a scene straight out of Patagonia Dreams, same main character and all. They say don’t meet your heroes, but I’m glad we met Sean and that he decided to join us for this journey.

The headlights of the tiny car illuminate a neon orange sign: “Precaucion: Zona de Baches” it says. Potholes. The experience of driving Ruta 40 is defined by dodging them. This time, someone’s spray-painted over ‘baches’ and replaced it with 'crateres’. We chuckle.

We chuckle until the crater bigger than our car comes into the narrow visibility range of the headlights and Felipe swerves. The driver’s side tire clips the edge of the pothole and gives us a little kick - are we airborne? - followed by the metallic clang as the cars comes back down to earth and the axle slams the crest of the embankment. The car keeps on rolling.

Wasn’t the first time this had happened, we already left the HVAC system’s hot water line on the side of the road a hundred miles back. High-centered the thing right around the same time. We knew the bald tires were on their last legs and I was holding my breath waiting for a flat. Passing a variety of broken-down Hiluxes added to the feeling of walking into Mordor. This hit was particularly jarring but I don’t know what was said, if anything. I do remember it was awfully quiet as we continued down the highway at a conservative 25 MPH, all of us now wide awake.

We pulled off onto the first ranch road we could find and threw our sleeping bags on the ground. The stars shone bright, and this far away from any source of light pollution we could make out the Magellenic Clouds. Someone lit a spliff.

Tomorrow the sound of Siete Venas’ song 'Homenaje’ would power us through the home stretch as we rolled into El Chalten - “ay yi yi yi!” - joy unbridled on the coolest stretch of road in the world, three days later we would be digging a tent platform out of the full meter of fresh summer snow at Piedra Negra, and the day after that would start with headlamps and be filled with the sound of crampons on granite and brittle thin ice. But tonight would be a quiet one, with only a crisp breeze drifting across the pampas and another selection of Patagonia dreams to file away for safekeeping.

Though perhaps not all in one piece, we made it.