How to get there:
The closest town is Coyhaique, located about 50 minutes (40 kmj north
of the peak. The trailhead is located along a fairly straight road, one may
park on the side of this road. The location is S45.83647, W72.25536, elevation about
380 meter. There is a fairly big (locked) iron gate on your left (mountain) side of the road.
Route description:
From the trailhead on the road one will immediately
notice the big gully coming
down all the way from the horizon (main crest). The route will first ascend this gully, a
vertical gain of 1460 meter.
First, climb across the iron gate. Continue uphill following grass while turning a few
isolated groups of trees. As you get higher, move slightly right in order to continue
among taller trees where the bush is less of an issue. Higher up, you should see a weak
trace of a trail leading to a clearly visible cairn. You may already have passed through a
tunnel through some dense bush. This upper cairn marks the entrance to a second
tunnel that has been cut through very dense vegetation. This tunnel will get you
to the creek or drainage in the middle of the big gully. The trail now continues directly
uphill taking advantage of the small creek that has a sufficient number of rocks
to prevent the vegetation to close this access. The vegetation gets thinner as you advance uphill.
Finally, the gully consists of talus and scree.
Ascend a very long way uphÃll
to a small local col on the
main ridge. This ascent is about 1460 vertical meter. Most of the way, this ascent may be slightly easier
when going up on the right side of the gully.
Descend a few meter to the snow on the other side of the col. The first obstacle on the main ridge may
be passed by staying on the snow.
Go back into a new col immediately before another big hump on
the ridge. Contour a bit around on the left side,
you will find a chimney that
may be climbed (YDS class 3).
Exit this chimney, traverse more left and descend in order to bypass this obstacle.
One could possibly also pass this obstacle on the right, staying on snow, first descending then ascending somewhat
steeper snow.
However, since the bypass described is pretty straightforward, we did not investigate this option.
From here, follow the ridge onwards,
bypassing each obstacle on your left side. These traverses will often be across steepish,
loose talus. You will soon see the summit, some distance away.
Continue until reaching the final uphill,
zig-zag up here. Finally, just a few meter away from the summit, you climb a short (YDS class 3) section
before arriving at the summit.
A track is posted on Peakbagger.
Comments:
We stayed in Coyhaique, we had visited the trailhead the previous afternoon in order
to collect some prior information. the next morning, we arrived shortly after 0800. We drove
past a man riding a horse a few meter before we parked on the right hand side of the road just
opposite the iron gate.
As we prepared for departure the man arrived. We greeted him and indicated
our purpose, pointing to the long, steep gully above. He smiled, jumped off his horse and produced
a key to the gate. In this way, we did not have to climb it, and obviously, our crossing of
the land had his approval.
We continued uphill avoiding local bush, it was easy to locate the first "bush tunnel" that facilitated
our progress uphill to the cairn that marked the entrance to the second "bush tunnel" (going left).
This passage got us to the creek (no water right there). It was now clear that we could advance uphill
on top of the creek, only a small amounth of water in a few places. Next started the very long and steep
slog up the big gully. It never seemed to end, but finally, in the col, we could look down on the
opposite side. The snow traverse (left) was almost flat. We crossed the next obstacle on its left side,
the climbing was pretty straightforward. The rest of the route was technically easy, but loose rocks on
steepish slopes required caution. Finally, at the summit at 1505.
The ascent had taken 6:35.
Good views, I also noticed that an approach from the north that I had studied,
had a major difficulty.
We stayed at the summit about 10 minutes before starting our descent.
From here, we also got a good view of the long ridge
we had followed from the col where we topped out of
the big gully.
Pretty much a reversal of our ascent. It was indeed nice to be back in the chimney, then onto the
final snow descent back to the top of our gully.
Descending the gully was somewhat easier as we tried to find as much
scree as possiblle. Back at the car about 5 hours after leaving the summit. Total
trip time just under 12 hours.
Thanks to Michael for good company on a long, but successful climb in Patagonia.
