How to get there:
The nearest town is Esquel. From here to the national
park entrance takes about 35 minutes by car.
There is a formal park entrance
with a gate and ranger station. A single day entry ticket is
about USD 30. A new entry the next day is discounted 50 percent.
The trailhead is only a couple
of kilometer after the park entrance. This location
is at near 600 meter of elevation, S42.95483, W71.59425.
Route description:
The route follows a fairly well marked trail
called Sendero Cocinero, from the
road and up into a nice high bowl at elevation 1480 meter with location S42.95768, W71.63669.
A main issue with this trail is that it may be closed by the park rangers. The information
posted says that a permit is mandatory. However, such a permit is likely impossible if the trail
is closed.
When you arrive in the bowl, turn left and ascend the slope. It is fairly easy to pick the best
route to the terrain higher up. After an initial ascent on grass, the route enters a gully, the
lower part of which has some YDS class 3 scrambling. Above this slightly steeper section, but
well below the horizon crest,
turn left and do a long, horizontal traverse left. The first goal
is to reach a col on the main crest, ascending a little near the end of this traverse will get you
to this location, elevation about 1800 meter.
Turn the ridge and continue with a slightly descending (descend about 50 meter) traverse.
The mountain with the summit area
comes into view for the first time.
The terrain
here is talus, quite loose and unpleasant in some (shorter) sections. After completing this, the route
moves onto a mix of rocks and patches of snow. Ascend to near a new col on the main crest with elevation
near 1940 meter. (location: S42.95564, W71.65063) The upper part of this ascent is on a glacier, but the
slope is quite moderate.
Next, do a traverse near the upper side of the glacier. A possibility would be to traverse as far as possible,
then access the rock and climb to new main col on the crest. However, this looked hard and we ascended the
snow that extended pretty high well before that location. There is a deep crevasse (bergshrund) separating the glacier
from the rock. Care is needed, when we were there, the uppermost tongue of the glacier touched the rock. This location
made it possible to get onto the rock in a safe way.
From here, a slightly outward sloping rock ramp provides access
to the main crest. There is friction here, but also exposure. When wet things may be more unpleasant. A 30 meter (YDS class 4)
pitch will get you to the main ridge. There is a rappell anchor attached around a solid rock pinnacle up here. This shows that
this route has been used before our arrival.
The remaining part of this route has not been explored.
The first part looks like continuous scramble. Then a possibly
more difficult part in order to (possibly?) access the final snow slope leading to the summit. See comments below.
A track is posted on Peakbagger.
Comments:
We stayed in Esquel, but drove to the park entrance in the afternoon in order to
explore the access. Pretty expensive (for being Argentina) to visit this park. We learned
that the access trail was closed. We told them that we would continue our visit the next day
and were informed that we would get half price admission for the following days (usd 15).
We drove to the lake and looked at possible
trailheads along the way. It is unfortunate that
there is a trend in many countries to make access to local peaks increasingly more buraucratic
and complex. When you travel from Norway all the way to Patagonia in order to climb several
mountains, there is no option to just follow local regulations that would spoil the entire trip.
The next morning, the park entrance area was empty, we could drive in without any additional
ticket. We parked a few hundred meter from the trailhead and hiked partway along a local road.
After crossing the river we eventually hit the Cocinero trail and decided that we should follow
this "pretty nice trail".
We continued uphill following the trail, higher up, we cross the creek and ascend a hillside in order
to bypass a problem area higher up. Next, the trail continued into the lower part of the small
valley that leads to the upper basin. We arrived in the nice basin and knew that the remaining part
of the route would be more difficult and challenging.
Ascending up to the area below the main crest went fairly well. The traverse left was easy, but
perhaps longer than expected. We turned the main crest and immediately observed that the next traverse
across steep and unstable talus would be less pleasant. However, we made steady progress across, then
uphill on much better terrain including a final snowslope to reach a new and higher col on the main crest.
A big tower on the crest did not look easy to pass. It seemed pretty clear that traversing high on the small
glacier, below the main ridge would be most reasonable. The challenge would be to find a way back up on the main crest.
As close to the final summit as possible. We therefore traversed all the way across. It was difficult to make
a good judgement of the rock before we got there. It did not look impossible, but certainly steep rock.
After giving the rock a careful look, we both agreed that we should explore a possible alternative access point.
We descended back down on the glacier, then ascended up and onto a tongue that went quite high. The
bergschrund (more precisely, the gap between the glacier and the tock) was nontrivial and very dangerous. We
continued towards the highest snow with considerable caution. Fortunately, the snow connected to the
rock right there, with a deep crack on either side. Moreover, a rock ramp provided a possible route
to the main crest. The ramp looked fairly easy, but the exposure was not a nice view. We decided to
rope up, then Michael led a 30 meter pitch all the way to the main ridge. We only had a 30 meter rope,
so rappelling safely back would require some more thinking.
Unfortunately, the route ahead looked non-trivial. In particular, how to reach the final snow slope
was very unclear. Some black clouds were also coming our way. Time for some critical decisions.
A pretty large anchor for rappelling had been established right where we had arrived. Thus, we now knew that
a previous ascent had used this same route. The time was around 1300, it had taken us about 3 hours
from the upper basin to here. At least one more hour to reach the summit. It would have been fun and very
interesting to continue exploring this last part of the route. However, the decision to turn back was
fairly obvious.
I absailed back down on a single rope. A bit more than half-way down, I stopped and attached a sling to the rock
in order for Michael to have some safety near where his 15 meter rappell would end. I got myself safely back onto
the glacier while watching Michael getting safely down. He made several tries to get the rope to detach the sling,
but without success. I told him to leave it behind. We next reversed our route back to the basin.
The clouds kept their promise and it started to rain.
Still a long way back down to our truck.
The rain stopped and we were making good progress.
Back around 1830, our trip had taken almost 12 hours.
Thanks to my partner Michael for great company.
