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Look carefully at this picture, for it captures some of the least seen, most picturesque peaks on Earth. On the left is the Paine Grande, rising about 10,000ft from near sea-level. At front centre are the black-tipped Hornos del Paine at about 8,700 feet. And in the background on the right, peeping through above a last wisp of cloud, are the breathtaking Torres del Paine -
three needle spires of granite reaching to the heavens. So sheer are
they, that their bare sides - rising thousands of feet above the San
Rafael Glacier - defy the constant, clinging snow. It settles,
instead, precariously on the head of the central tower.
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Towers, Horns and Pinnacles, mirrored in Lakes of Colour.
It does not seem possible that so vast a
massif of granite can be chopped up like butter and twisted into spires
of such varied and awesome shapes. Rock, carved into towers, horns,
pinnacles and abysses. Lakes, filled with different coloured waters in
gorges and basins scooped out of the earth.
All of "God's work" done by ice, eons ago. The Torres del Paine must stay in any visitor's memory forever. Approaching the 'national park of forty peaks' one remembers the eagles feasting on a hare beside the road. The rhea, surprisingly shy miniature ostriches, running away from the bus.
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Zorro gris (Grey fox), surprisingly tame as they sniff for food wherever humans have stopped.
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The guacanas, surprisingly indifferent to everything except themselves as they wander like fleet-footed camels across the foothills, nibbling at the strange, sparse vegetation.
One remembers the mountains beyond, veiled in dark layers of cloud with only the snow-peaks and the 'Horns' visible. Will I ever glimpse them? This question is in each of our minds as we fly hundreds of miles from the fjords, negotiating low cloud in an old prop plane. We land well out of sight of the Andes, then board a bus to drive across the empty steppes through constant dust for hours, just in the hopes of a glimpse!
Rounding a bend in the road, where guacanas scatter from our path in all directions, we see the dark line of mist-covered mountains ahead.
"Will we see the Towers?" everyone asks.
"Only if the wind comes," says the driver.
The wind does not come.
But suddenly, as we arrive at the very foot of the peaks, the clouds evaporate and the sun shines down on the startling waters of Lagune los Cisnes reflecting a whole range of crags above.
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On the water, beyond the mirror images of snow-peaks, floats the great flock of black-necked swans that give give this pool its name. (A nearby lake is called Laguna Los Flamencos - |
but we have no time to look at the pink water or its waders). Further down the road are more lakes, each a different colour. Then we see all the colours of a rainbow. It arches in the spray of a huge waterfall that tumbles from a concealed valley - no doubt much bigger than the Drakensberg's dramatic Mont Aux Sauces - and pour into another lake of yet another colour.
The Paine Grande, biggest of the mountain chain but leaning back sufficiently to hold its cloak of snow, is on the left. In the middle is the first section of the Hornos del Paine, its black horns twisting above giant twisted walls of light-brown granite .The Horns bear fewer wounds than the Towers, assaulted for millions of years by stone bullets and daggers of ice.
Behind these bulky Horns lurk the Torres del Paine, to be savoured later. The central tower peeps through an abyss between the horns. The three towers are granite spires, sheer rock stretching into the clouds, each tip pointing at the sky from a height more than three times that of Cape Town's Table Mountain!
Cerro Torre
The central tower has been scaled twice by South African climbers, who pioneered its eastern route in 1991. The second team came just before us in 2004. . . and took two months to achieve their goal. World-class climbers spent days and nights on the rock-face, hanging in their gear, swaying in the wind, pelted by stones blown off the peaks.
A climber's ambitions, which so many cherish, seem no less strange than the powers of ice.
"With its raw and savage beauty, Cerro Torre embodies a call to all climbers to be true to themselves" wrote Andy de Klerk, after making the first South African ascent 13 years previously.
In 2003, when Mark Seuring first came to the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares he felt that "there was no mountain I believed I could not climb. . .until I stepped into a clearing and saw Cerro Torre. . . My jaw dropped; my soul crawled deep into the void left by my evoporating courage."
It was that challenge, to stand on the summit's unstable snow mushroom, that brought him back with three climbing friends - Alard Hufner, Marianne Pretorius and Douard le Roux - to where I happpened to be hurrying around the edges that same summer.
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View of Cerro Torre from Bridwell Camp among the glaciers of the valley behind Hornos del Paines.
- photo by Marianne Pretorius, published in SA Mountain Club's 2005 Journal ___________ |
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Mark Seuring gives an account of their expedition in the 2005 annual of the Journal of the Mountain Club of South Africa. Here are just three sentences to give you an idea of their exhilaration - and perils:
"The Banana Crack traverses left from the relative comfort of the ridge and onto the . super-exposed South Face. Suddenly the whole world drops away, leaving us dangling from a single point (leading to) the infamous 90 m bolt traverse."
After a night on the rock-face Mark and Alard go for the summit. ""Three metres from the top, I find myself stuck, both arms with axes pushed all the way into the snow, but sticking out and feet straggling to find purchase."
To get around the dangerous, floppy snow he has to retreat and atrtack again up an perpendicular ice-wall. That wasn't hard was it, they tell themselves as they survey the translucent ice cap below, and the shark tooth of the giant Fitz Roy tower beyond the dizzy heights of nothingness between the soaring pillars.
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Marianne on a 'nice ledge', high on Cerro Terre.
- Photo by her climbing partner, Douard le Roux, in SA Mountain Club Journal
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They spend the night on the Central Tower, below its peak, and abseil back to camp next day. A scary memory remains: "Finally our weight rests on the integrity of a single ice-screw in a 70deg snow slope".
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Merely being in the presence of such regal mountain peaks is an experience all of us, besides active rock and ice climbers, are privileged to experience. The Towers of Paine provide an unrivalled climax to any traveller's journey. . . But my journey promised another climax. And another.
Next destination: Cape Horn.
See 'Rounding the Horn' for extracts from books by famous explorers |
