Alpine climbing in Chile?

[thin_air_aaron]

Headed to Chile with a buddy mid December and was curious if anyone on here has done any climbing or knwo someone who has? Our ambition far outweighs our expertise but looking for alpine style climbing potentially on one of the volcanoes down there. Thanks

[crazyjizzy]

The world famous Lambone (Matt Lambert) formerly of this site, now at here went to SA last year. He may be of some help.

[cj001f]

Ever heard of Torres del Paine? Volcanos - which ones? Northern ones or the short boring lake district slogs? For that matter, where in the 4.600km of Chile will you be?

[bigwalling]

Corvallisclimb knows the area pretty well!

[corvallisclimb]

Lambone paid my friend to take him kayaking!

Edited November 29, 2005 by corvallisclimb

[alexbaker]

aconcagua- not much skill required, just shitloads of ambition and determination.

[cj001f]

aconcagua- not much skill required, just shitloads of ambition and determination.

Not in Chile

[Camilo]

Not in Chile

True, but close enough.

Here's a worthless but cool fact I learned when I was down there this year: The border between Chile and Argentina was determined by the watersheds of the Pacific and Atlantic, so along the ridges of the Andes. In the South, though, there's a big area where they couldn't determine the exact divide so it's just a gray area on maps. Exciting stuff, huh?

[cj001f]

The border between Chile and Argentina was determined by the watersheds of the Pacific and Atlantic, so along the ridges of the Andes. In the South, though, there's a big area where they couldn't determine the exact divide so it's just a gray area on maps. Exciting stuff, huh?

Heh. I forget which of the Argentine heros it was (think its Perito Moreno) who rechanneled a river to the atlantic giving them a bigger section of Patagonia near Los Antiguos. Such an Argentine action - moreso than the statues and odes. And then theres the modern wars over Fitzroy, Tierra del Fuego & the Beagle Channel. Funny stuff.

[dalius]

Yeah, that fight over all that land in southern Patagonia is ridiculous. The Argys and Chileans really take it really seriously down there though. When I was down in Ushuaia I wanted to go climbing in the Cordillera Darwin (Chilean mtns. just across the border, in the middle of nowhere), but ran into tons of red tape from the Chileans and the Argentines didn't even want to acknowledge that the range existed. So freakin' stupid. I belive they're still trying to figure out how to divide the Southern Patagonia Icecap.

 

I spent about a year down there and saw a fair amount of the andes from Tierra del Fuego to Bolivia. The most spectacular is definetely everything from the S.Pat.Icecap south, though north from there to the Lake District is quite beautiful as well and has tons and tons of mountains (not just volcano slogs). I've got my eyes set on the Darwin Range someday, or maybe some stuff near the Icecap. There's so much unexplored stuff down there!

[TBay]

here you go...Volcaneering

[corvallisclimb]

Guess whos buying up lotsa land in Patagonia, and almost owns land from the sea to Argentina?

Edited December 11, 2005 by corvallisclimb

[dalius]

I know Doug Tompkins (guy who started North Face) has been buying up land there for a long time (mostly in northern Patagonia, just south of the lakes district - *amazing area*). He actually does own land at one point all the way from the Pacific to the Argentine border (and then some in Argentina as well). Chileans have been freaking out about him for a long time - there always seems to be some sort of conspiracy theory on him in the paper, talking about how is buying land for this or that (everything from new Jewish state to nuclear waste dump- some hidden agenda). They can't get it around their heads that this guy actually really thinks this area is worth protecting. It's got loads of virgin temperate rainforest - insanely lush and rugged and wet. I believe he's transferred the land (or is in the process of) into some sort of non-profit organization set up to protect it from logging, etc. Hopefully the Chileans will eventually come around and see that this move is better than logging the hell out of and destroying the area.

 

That who you thinking of?

[corvallisclimb]

ya, i was just wondering if any one else out there knew what was going on down there.

[cj001f]

the Patagonia Land Trust is more than tompkins - Yvon Chouinard is a member as well as some other muckymucks. They've a number of properties (notably the land that became Parque Pumalin, and Estancia Yendegaia, the large track just westof Ushaia - but there are a number of other gringo land owners in Patagonia now - Benetton, Ted Turner, etc. The Argentines seem much more accepting of conservation/park land than the chilenos, probably because their economy is still in the shitter.

[Hargrove1]

try stonedance.com I will be down there Jan 9th through May 31st climbing

 

Ben