“Backpacking in Patagonia” By Roger Drake

In 2011 my 30 year old son Peter proposed to me that we look for an adventure in South America.  I responded that I’d long been interested in the Fitz Roy group of mountains in Argentinian Patagonia as well as the Torres Del Paine area in Chile.  We planned a backpacking trip there with the addition of Tierra del Fuego, not far away and geographically interesting.  The trip began New Year’s Eve and lasted 3 weeks.

I was no longer young enough to keep up with my son, but he appreciated that I spoke a little Spanish and wasn’t afraid to communicate with the natives with my (much) less-than-perfect language skills.  We headed for the Torres del Paine first, but found a large part of the park closed by wildfire.  After waiting a couple days we were able to visit the area of the incredibly vertical Torres themselves, but had to miss the rest of the park.

From there we crossed the border to Argentina by bus and got to see the spectacular spires of the Fitz Roy area of Los Glaciares National Park, including the nearby Cerro Torre group, attempting but turning back just short of a modest summit below the main peaks.  We also trekked to a seldom visited area just to the north of there, where we got to experience the legendary katabatic winds of Patagonia.  I cut the hike short one day because I was seriously worried about being blown off the trail and over a cliff into a frothy lake.

For the last part of our trip we flew to Ushuaia, the “End of the World”, on Tierra del Fuego.  Here we got to see marine wildlife in the Beagle Channel and backpacked another three days before bussing back to Puerto Natales in Chile to start the flight home.

My son has been hiking, backpacking and climbing with me since he was 2 and we always enjoy our time together.  We’re both a bit competitive but of course we have to keep that aspect under control in the outdoors.  I’ll be talking about that a little in the presentation.

BIO

My first camping trip was in the Olympics in 1955 and I’ve been camping, hiking, backpacking and mountain climbing fairly regularly ever since.  I had 27 years working for the National Park Service as a utilities operator, so I was usually in a good spot for exploring the outdoors.  I bicycled Seattle to Miami in 1969, and once spent a month walking through the Swiss Alps, but my Trip of a Lifetime was with an Everest Expedition in Tibet to do an environmental project.  I grew up near Poulsbo and retired here in 2006. I enjoy community service work and most of my hiking now is for the purpose of staying healthy.