porterillo argentina

I´d heard about an area called arenales from some climbing guides i met in cordon del plata. Arenales is known for rock climbing but they said there were also some beautiful untraveled 5000m peaks in the area. i did a quick scout on google earth and panoramio (as close as it gets to cascade climbers down here) and saw an awesome looking valley over a pass that looked manageable. as usual the logistics were a pain, half day of busses, 2 hitchs and a bunch of walking to cover what could be a 2 hr car trip. i made it to a small steel quonset hut packed with argentine climbers at dark. i had dinner with 3 guys my age from Buenos Aires who were headed up a beautiful looking 6 pitch 6a (10a/bish?) route on a clean granite spire the next day. they invited me to join but without shoes and arness i very reluctantly declined. can´t carry it all.

the next morning i hiked further up the valley and was pleasantly surprised to find another more rustic hut at 3100 m (refugio dr scarabelli). i have a betamid and a bivy sack to choose from but neither are much fun to sleep in in the incessant winds here so any windbreak is like gold. i stashed my stuff at the hut and did a recon tour up the valley. it was a long way to good snow but the terrain there looked well worth the approach. I woke early the next morning and climbed a peak at the head of the valley (on or close to the chilean border). I was a little disapointed to realize i definately wasn´t in the valley i had researched, but this one looked just as good. I later learned that this was an important pass to chile used by san martin in the liberation of chile, and in later conflict in the 1940s. Unfortunately the skies over chile were cloudy and though i was quite close to cajon de maipo (site of late oct adventures i hope) i couldn´t see any of the peaks. i scouted some lines for the next day and skied pretty good stable chalky powder in a couloir down to the valley floor. that evening a snowstorm rolled in from chile and i happily took shelter in the hut. the next morning i was a bit worried about avalanche danger from the new snow and bright sun (probably a cop out, i don´t think there was enough accumulation to matter) and retreated down valley to the climbers hut. i stayed one more night at arenales and with food and motivation running low packed up for the trip back to mendoza.

after 20k of hiking down the road i was wishing for cascadian stream crossings and brush, a case of the grass is greener i guess. finally an ancient ford downshifted and slowed backfiring to a stop. i threw my skis and pack under a tarp in the bed and climbed up in the cab. A small man of about 70 was at the wheel and i had barely shut the door when he simultaneously started talking to me in rapid fire spanish, reached under the seat for a fresh bottle of vino tinto and piloted the truck across the road into the opposite ditch. Unshaken, my new companion regained the road and took off at a managable pace of 20mph or so. we drove mostly in the road and the right hand shoulder though we made an occasional return to the left hand ditch when the conversation slash monologue got especially exciting. I opened the new bottle with his ancient swiss army knife, corkscrew half straightened from use and we established that: 1) his name was oscar, 2) he was a carpenter/ builder (i had a pocket dictionary for this one) 3) i was invited to his mothers house for lunch and mas vino. occasionally oscar would pat the ancient cracked dash lovingly and say something along the lines of ¨40 anos, auto relico¨. The correct resonse in this situation was to say si, si and look distractedly out the window, or take another drink. on the 2 occasions i expressed enthusiasm about the relico, oscar mashed the ancient column shift down into tres and matted the accellerator lever (pedal long gone). the engine would roar and we would take off at a terrifying 50-60mph until the next corner, construction crew or livestock in the road slowed us down. As promised, we stopped in vista flores for a delicious lunch with his mother and then i begged off to catch the bus back to mendoza.