Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

The forecast for today was dismal - marginally less windy than yesterday but with rain expected to fall most of the day. Forecasts here have a poor reputation but if you know which things you can rely on and which things you can't, you can get a lot out of them.

Original plan for today was to do 5km along the base, drop pack, do an out-and-back up the Frances valley and then the next 8km to Paine Grande. Given the conditions I was having misgivings about this - the cloud was lowish and there didn't seem much point in going up the valley if there wasn't going to be much to see - but in the end the rangers made the decision for me by closing the valley track. This meant another short day and lunchtime finish; I'd set out early on the basis that the conditions were only likely to get worse.

The conditions weren't too bad for the first part - fairly light rain, and modest winds after the first couple of kilometres, helped by the fact that the Frances valley also generates a northerly outflow which offsets the general southwesterlies. Not the most photogenic of days so pressed on fairly quickly.

I was just starting to think that I was going to get through this without too many dramas when I saw a 2.5km to go sign (slightly misplaced as it happened - probably more like 3). A few minutes later I crested a ridge and got the full force - unobstructed westerlies, probably close to 100 km/h, and horizontal, heavy rain. With temperatures probably around 6-7 it's fairly close to the worst conditions I've ever been out in. My raingear wasn't really up to the job (though I'm not sure if much would be up to those conditions), and I was certainly happy to get through that section and get inside the buildings at Paine Grande - it was sufficiently bad that I think another hour out in those conditions and I could have been in trouble.

Paine Grande is accessible by boat and is not exactly your regular mountain hut (and includes people with gear I wouldn't have considered essential bushwalking equipment, like a hairdryer).

Most unexpected moment: being asked by a Chilean mountain guide how the State of Origin ended up this year. (He'd done a trip out to Australia during his off-season to walk the Hume and Hovell Track - I guess you travel to experience things you wouldn't at home - and found himself watching Game 1 in a Tumbarumba pub).

The configuration of the refugios meant there was always going to be one short day, either today or tomorrow. I had been thinking about doing the out-and-back up the Valle del Frances as an add-on today, but that wasn't an option as you're only allowed to start up there in the mornings. (I'm not sure why, but given that it's light until after 10pm, I wonder if it's because daytime glacial melt makes the stream crossings problematic in the afternoons?).

Not as many people out today - yesterday's route is a feasible walk for those only visiting for the day, but only the multi-day walkers were on today's route, which is essentially a "transport" leg around the southern edge of the range. There's still enough that you see people regularly ('Ola' is the standard initial greeting, though I suspect Spanish speakers are in the minority). There's a reasonable number of Americans and Europeans (you hear French quite a bit), and a few from our part of the world. (Having Macpac gear immediately marks you as being from Australia or New Zealand).

The forecast for today was poor (more with respect to winds than rain), so when I got up and saw it was OK, I decided to get the walk over as quickly as possible - with only 13km and not much climbing, that meant I was done by lunchtime. The main interest turned out to be the local winds. The overall wind forecast was for 90 km/h WNW winds, but in the early stages they were actually N/NE - as I was to appreciate, what's happening is that the flow splits in two around the mountain complex. One indication that things were different not too far away was to look at the lake below, and see the swells going in opposite directions on the northern and southern halves of the lake; an indication that things were soon to get far more interesting was the spray visible at the far end of the lake.

I rounded a spur and hit the southwesterlies on the southern branch of the split flow a couple of kilometres before the refugio. They were fierce, and squally (at least seeing the bands of spray on the lake below gave me a few seconds' warning of when a squall was going to hit) - it was difficult to stay standing in the strongest squalls, especially in more exposed areas. Wasn't too upset to spend the afternoon sitting around and admiring the conditions on the lake from a sheltered location. You could also see that there was rain not too far ahead, although it was sunny most of the day where I was (the ranges create a major rainshadow, with averages dropping from 2000mm to 800mm over a distance of 20km).

The squalls got even fiercer in the evening, and eventually broke one of the refugio windows - something which I think would require a gust well into three figures. Glad I wasn't in a tent.

Unlike the other two refugios I stayed at (which are accessible by road and boat respectively), you can only get into Los Cuernos by walking (or riding a horse) at least 12km, which makes for a generally different crowd. Included amongst it, though, was a girl of about 3, which means either she walked 12km or someone carried her 12km - I'm impressed either way. (Someone of my acquaintance did one of the big NZ tracks - the Routeburn, if I recall correctly - at a similar age; he refused to be carried, which was the original plan, and walked every step of it himself).

Start of the Torres del Paine trek. Got the early bus from Puerto Natales out to the park and got there about 10.30.

First stage was to do the walk to the main lookout for the Torres del Paine themselves. This is essentially an out-and-back of about 10km each way, climbing from about 100m to 900. The last 300 is a steep scramble finishing with a crossing of a scree slope - dropped the pack before doing that bit, which made it a lot easier.

There was cloud around and occasional showers (falling as sleet at the highest levels), but enough breaks in it to get a view of all three of the towers (though not all at the same time). They rise almost 2000m sheer from a glacial lake - the viewpoint was on the other side of the lake - which is as spectacular as it sounds. There was a reasonable amount of wind around, though not as fierce as some of the days here.

It's a long time since I've walked (most of) a day with a pack (especially when some steep hills are involved) - not that heavy as packs go (the availability of food at the refugios meant not having to carry as much of that as would be expected for a multi-day walk), though I still carried camping gear as an emergency back-up. Found out about a few muscles which have been under-employed (quads particularly).

Headed out early in the day from Punta Arenas with a target of the hills west of town, setting out into a light rain shower (the first rain I’ve run in since WMOC), which cleared within a few minutes. Through the suburbs for the first bit – exiting town along Avenida Presidente Salvador Allende, which I think can be reasonably assumed to have been renamed at least once in the last 25 years – then onto a dirt road up towards the base of the local ski resort. This was a long and sometimes rather steep climb and pretty hard (and slow) work. Had thought there might be some forest tracks to run on at the far end but the entrance gate to the area was closed, so turned around at that point (would have been another 200 metres or so climb to the top of the hill).

I’d set out with original thoughts of 1.45-2.00, but was struggling a bit today – Achilles never really warmed up, and was starting to feel a bit of hamstring tightness towards the end too, so was happy to call it a day and not do an extra 10-20 minute loop through the suburbs to get the distance up. Hopefully a few days away from running will settle this down a bit. Reasonably happy with the way I ground up the big hill even on a day when things weren’t going smoothly, though I’m well aware that it was less than half the size of the Pluvi…

Moved on to Puerto Natales, the final jumping-off point for Torres del Paine, in the afternoon. Much of the rest of the day was devoted to getting relevant supplies for the trek, not as easy as it looks even though getting bookings in the refugios (huts) means I won’t have to factor in camping (except as an emergency option) or as much cooking – both Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales are full of outdoor shops but most are devoted to clothes rather than other useful items. I head off tomorrow morning and will be out bush for four days, so don’t expect to hear from me in that time. (I’ve occasionally mused on the subject of how many days my AP log would have to go un-updated for without notice before someone reported me missing….).

A sheep was being raffled in the shopping street of Puerto Natales. I didn’t buy a ticket.

There was a certain amount of local pride yesterday with the news that Chile is now ranked by Transparency International as the 21st least corrupt country in the world (only one point behind the US) – certainly every travel guide I’ve read has a comment along the lines of “don’t even think about trying to bribe the police in Chile”. As I don’t plan to go to any other countries from here, this means I should have made it through South America without having to pay anyone any bribes, something I thought might happen at least once (most likely in Paraguay, which was in the leading 20 at the wrong end of the list). Australia’s dropped from its usual top-10 position to 12th; presumably the activities of Eddie Obeid and associates have been unhelpful in this respect.

C • Corruption in OZ 2

Very early start this morning, which meant that the timeslot available for running today was in the evening after arriving in Punta Arenas - thus collecting a new country (Chile).

Thought it might be a bit of a struggle after all day on the bus and without a proper lunch (though living on muesli bars during the day is something I'll be getting used to in the next few days in Torres del Paine) - you can't take fruit, vegetables, meat or dairy products across the border which rules out most of the things one might put in a packed lunch, and you can't buy Chilean pesos (at least officially) in Argentina so I didn't have any money to buy anything on the other side. Had a bit of a scare with foot soreness in the first kilometre, but settled down and it was a reasonable run for the most part, on a fairly easy course along the waterfront. 10 degrees, stratus cloud and not much wind felt like Melbourne in mid-winter (except that it doesn't get dark until 10.30).

This run may yet get immortalised - the Google Street View car went past at one point.

I've seen some mixed reviews for Punta Arenas in its time (John Colls, after being stuck here for a couple of weeks trying to get to Antarctica, described it in the Yarra Valley newsletter as being like spending your holiday in Footscray, which prompted Barry McCrae to stand up for his former 'hood in response). It seems pleasant enough though the central city is a bit dead in the evenings. There's a range of hills to the west which looks like it has potential as a long run target.

(While on the subject of bad reviews, Lonely Planet is no longer as good as it was - probably browbeaten by upset local politicians in various parts of the world - in giving frank assessments of places which aren't worth visiting. In that light, their assessment of Puerto Montt, which I fly into after leaving here, suggests my plan should be to get out of the place as quickly as possible).

The trip from Ushuaia was largely covering ground already covered on Sunday, although at a rather higher speed - our bus driver seemed to be under the impression that Ruta 3 was a one-way street judging by his disregard for the possibility that there might be traffic heading in the opposite direction. We covered the 290km to the border (including some winding mountain roads early on) in just on three hours. It turned out to be pointless as we ended up waiting 90 minutes for the ferry.

As I expected, last night's system ran out of moisture before it could produce any snow in Ushuaia (in fact it was a gorgeous sunny morning). It was clearly very cold overnight inland, though - in the big valley about 25km out of town, there was ice on farm-dam sized ponds by the roadside, which from my Canberra experience means -5 (at least).

C • Punta Arenas 4

This morning's plan was to head up into a valley which goes north into the hills behind Ushuaia (eventually curving west to form the other side of the range immediately behind the city).

The plan was duly executed but the setting wasn't quite what I thought it would be (I'd had some forewarning of this from some reading yesterday). The city's very rapid employment growth in the 1980s and 1990s wasn't matched by the (official) release of new land for housing, which meant that people built anywhere they could (which here, means anything that isn't vertical or a bog) - most of which doesn't appear on maps. The Valle Andorra, with its relatively level base, was a prime example of this. It's not really a shantytown in the normal sense because many of the people who built there would have been people with decent jobs who simply couldn't get formal housing at any price, and many of the houses are substantial real estate (though it gets more rough and ready out the back). At least they have electricity these days.

The city government is now embarking on a 'Plan de Urbanizacion' (i.e. turning these areas into proper suburbs) and, if you believe the signs, putting several tens of millions of pesos into it, but for now, the combination of peak-hour traffic and dirt roads didn't make for a running environment as pleasant as I'd originally anticipated. Further on, the road traffic thinned out but the number of dogs increased to compensate (though all but a couple were well-behaved). Reached the spot where the road ends and the walking track starts to be greeted by a sign which said the track was closed, but by then I was only a couple of minutes short of my planned turnaround time so was happy to turn around, especially as my Achilles was struggling.

Most of the rest of a day of the if-you-don't-like-the-weather-wait-5-minutes variety was spent exploring the national park, the accessible bits of which are focused on the coast west of town (though just because a track is coastal doesn't mean it's flat) - the coastal scenery (still very nice) being a bit of a change in pace from the big glaciated mountains. Some of the trees seemed to be creaking alarmingly but they're regularly exposed to much bigger storms than this so I wasn't too worried about being squashed. Didn't get into the right bits of the park to see the havoc wrought by beavers, introduced mid-century in a seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time scheme to develop a fur industry and now a major pest.

Spotted a remark today from someone to the effect that he wouldn't want his teenage daughter anywhere near legislation proposed by the Sex Party (who may or may not have the balance of power in the Victorian Upper House). Teenage daughters have a long and honourable history in Victorian political discourse and it's probably about time they made a return appearance (although the previous example turned out to be well into her 20s).

Did a bit more reading on the 1978-79 Beagle Channel dispute. It seems that Argentina's military made plans (which became public after the fall of the dictatorship) for a full-scale invasion of Chile - meanwhile inviting Peru and Bolivia, both of whom had century-old grievances of their own with Chile, to join the party. They apparently thought they could take Santiago in a few days (which if nothing else demonstrates that 1982 wasn't the first time they made a highly ambitious assessment of their own military capabilities).

One of the Argentine generals of the time created quite a stir many years later by saying that if the war had actually happened (it's still debated whether any troops actually crossed the border before the invasion was called off), Chile would have won it. Apart from anything else, one imagines the US would have got involved (if only to restore the status quo ante); while the Pinochet regime had become something of an embarrassment to its erstwhile American backers by 1978 (their blowing up Allende's foreign minister in a Washington DC street was unhelpful in this respect), and in any case under Jimmy Carter the US was starting to get out of the business of backing any dictator who could demonstrate a sufficient detestation of Commies, a general war in South America certainly wouldn't have been in US interests.

All that said, the Argentine grievance was legitimate - Chilean control of the disputed islands and their territorial waters left the port of Ushuaia without usable access to the open sea. (The settlement eventually brokered by the Pope involved Chile retaining the islands but the waters being declared international).

These days the two countries seem to get on fine (except in football). The old rule that democracies never go to war with each other (or the variation, that two countries with a McDonald's never go to war with each other) was a casualty of the various 1990s conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, but still holds more often than not, and certainly all the heat went out of this dispute once the two countries became democratic. (Actually, it's exceedingly rare these days for two countries to go to war with each other anywhere these days; conflict takes other forms).

Some further reading (this time, on the webpage of the international campaign to ban land mines) revealed that, after some initial foot-dragging (possibly because deep down they didn't lose too much sleep over the odd splattered smuggler), Chile is about halfway through the task of clearing its old minefields, though it's expected to take them until 2020 or thereabouts to finish the job. I'm guessing that Tierra del Fuego, where they don't pose much of a threat to anything except the odd errant sheep, is a fair way down the priority list.

10x1 minute in a park at the west end of central Ushuaia - half gently uphill, half gently downhill. This (to be precise, the end point of the even-numbered reps) set a new PB for run furthest south, which will probably not be surpassed (at least on this trip) as my plans for tomorrow involve going north(ish). Decent conditions with not much wind. Session itself was reasonably mundane - not as lively as last week's equivalent.

The major activity for the day was to go up to the vicinity of the Glacier Martial, in the mountains immediately behind the town (the highest peak is at about 1300 metres with the glacier base at around 850). I didn't quite get to the glacier base because getting there would have required crossing a section of 45-degree snow slope which I wasn't comfortable doing on my own without equipment, but still got to take in the spectacular views, both of the town from above and the mountains from below. My timing was also good - after a partly cloudy but dry period with high cloud bases, it started raining just as I was finishing a post-walk hot chocolate at the cafe at the bottom, and closed in for most of the rest of the day.

Warm-up and down. Decided on the way out to check out the place from where my bus on Wednesday is supposed to be leaving (Ushuaia doesn't really have a bus station and most buses leave from outside the relevant company office). It was as well that I did - it turns out that the bus company office moved last week, and (as I confirmed later in the day), so has the place the bus leaves from.