Day 72
43,825 – 43,959 134 Miles today (21,259 Miles Overall)
El Chalten, Argentina – El Calafate, Argentina
We got up at 6:45 today to get our asses on the trail at 8am for the big hike to Fitz Roy. We had to load up our luggage and leave them at the front desk since we were gonna try to do the hike and get out early enough to make the ride to El Calfate so we can have an easy morning tomorrow. We stopped for a bit of coffee and some more snacks and we were on the trail exactly at 8am.
It was supposed to be a 6 mile hike in and 6 out. We had about 3500′ of climbing to do. The beginning of the hike was gorgeous. The trail carved around the mountains and after a few hours we saw the glorious Fitz Roy peaks and for the first time since we were in town they were not being covered up by clouds. The view was just beautiful. We moved along as fast as we could. We wanted to try to make it up in 3 hours since everyone said it takes 4 each way. I was sure we could crush this whole thing in 6 hours total so we could get back on the road asap to Calafate. We were smoking everyone on the trail. We ended up getting caught in a bit of rain and the peaks were gone. We were so bummed but decided to keep moving so we can have a nice long window to wait up there for it to clear.
Sameera was getting smoked on the hike because I was pushing her a bit too hard. For the last part of the climb I was behind her with my hand on her back giving her the slightest push up the whole climb we had to do. It helped her out quite a bit and she was chugging along nicely on the way up. We were making great time and I was super proud of her. We finally got to the top and I couldn’t believe how nice it was. There was a glacial lake up there with the peaks right behind it. The winds were blowing 30-45mph and it was cold as hell. My hands stopped working quite fast up there and all I was wearing was my down jacket with shorts. I didn’t have my gloves with me. We took a ton of pics up there in 15-20 minutes and got the hell off the summit because of how cold it was up there.
We rushed our asses down to the bottom of the mountain and made the hike in exactly 6 hours. My feet were hurting pretty bad for the first time in my life. I think I got myself some stress fractures from the walk down and maybe some of the way up. I haven’t done much in the last month other than ride and ride. I haven’t done anything else really so maybe my feet were not used to any of this anymore. We got down to the place we had lunch at the other day and shoved a bunch of food down our throats and got the bike loaded up. We hit the road to Calafate and got there at about 5pm. Way earlier than the 9pm we thought we would arrive that morning. We checked into the same hostel we had the other night and took a well deserved hot shower and skipped dinner. We were going to sleep in tomorrow and then watch the Argentina soccer game somewhere in town.
