wandering, not lost

After a great couple of trips to the Falklands, South Georgia, and Antarctica, I couldn't just leave straight away... I've really come to enjoy Ushuaia and the whole environment of Tierra del Fuego... craggy mountains, peat boggy lowlands, wind-sculpted trees, and some very interesting history. A couple years ago I read an excellent book called The Uttermost Part of the Earth, by Lucas Bridges, son of the man who was essentially the first lasting European settler to the region. The book is his memoir of life in the region-- he became a pretty impressive man himself, not to mention his father-- which covers the beginnings of white settlement here, which is also a chronicle of the end of days for the region's original inhabitants-- several different groups of indigenous peoples. The first European settlers were missionaries but instead of thrusting a Christian god onto the heathens come what may, it was more of a working and supportive friendship that came from the Bridges family. I highly recommend it, as a highly readable history of this region, of a portrait of indigenous peoples, of the good and bad that can come from the mixing of cultures, and if none of that is intriguing enough, then it is also simply an entertaining adventure story, really. Well written, dry humor, just excellent. After reading the book, I discovered that there is a hiking route that follows an historic road created by the family at the turn of the 20th century to transport their livestock from the Beagle Channel side of Tierra del Fuego to the Atlantic, which then became the main commercial and communication route for the growing settlement of Ushuaia for 30 years before the current highway route was surveyed and built. I was enchanted with the idea of getting to walk in the steps of history and experience a bit of the history I read in Bridges' book. The route has been there ever since it was created but of course is being taken back by nature... eaten by the peat, as a friend says... plus destroyed due to changing river courses, the impacts of those landscape engineers-- beavers (introduced here to be hunted as a source of income and they sure have done well for themselves especially as they're not being hunted anymore!), and of course cattle, damn bovines. So it wasn't exactly pristine nature I was in all of the time, but it sure was beautiful to be out on my own for three days, finding my way through the obstacle course that are river valleys in this region. Super glad I had a GPS and the track on there to follow, otherwise it would have been more of a slog finding my way... it was hard enough even knowing where I should be going! And so, I bring you the Lucas Bridges Trail, or Senda del Ona. The Ona, or Selknam, were one of the original inhabitants of the area, mountain people, and they used part of this route for their hunting grounds and moving from one valley to another, as I understand it. I did see guanaco as I crossed the pass (the resident camelid species, related to llamas and alpaca but they are at higher altitudes and latitudes) which was cool-- a nod to the persistence of at least some of the area's original members.

this is me at the start... if you squint at the directional arrow above my shoulder it says 46 km to Harberton, my destination... and you can see the profile of the route in green on the sign... "perfil altitudinal"... slow ascent, steep flattopped pass, then gradual descent... but again if you squint you can see that there's a little uphill blip at the end... a bit of a rude awakening it was, having to cross nine short but steep hills just before the trail's end... but I'm getting ahead of myself... here I'm just happy to be beginning! Was lucky enough to score a ride from a friend to the trailhead on the Aguas Blancas side, the same fellow I learned about the route from-- he's active in improving and establishing hiking trails in the region and had a lot to do with improving and establishing the signage for this route, he lives in Ushuaia and we worked together as expedition guides a few years ago. He also loaned me all the camping gear I used, thanks Luis!

the starting view down the trail...

first meadow and stream crossing of the trip, such a gorgeous day... I was so lucky to have excellent weather... would have been more like a nightmare if it'd been raining the whole time. Probably would have just skipped it and flown up to Buenos Aires instead! So glad that's not how it turned out.

lovely gurgling streams...

me so happy to spy this awesomeness of a peat moss mound across the river... such incredible colors!

and so the beavers begin... ponds and dead trees = beavers. it would have looked so different back in the Bridges' day... but tried not to get too sad about it. Dang humans and our messing about...

so of course... plants. Lovely forest violets!

and dog orchids... everywhere.

aside from beaver affected areas, there was still plenty of dead and down trees and trunks and branches... just what happens with wind and shallow soils. But here the logs across the photo at bottom are actually remains of the road-- corduroy or rip rap they placed to firm up a muddy area. You can see that the road continues, there's a gap in the trees. These are the kinds of remains of the road that can be seen from time to time... but much has disappeared to erosion, etc.

yea, and then sometimes the trail looked like this. no trail. well, the original was under a beaver pond further downhill so this is the current option... crunch your way across the slope, skirt the pond walking on the dam (pretty solid actually!), and watch the GPS for hints as to the easiest way to make your way through the obstacle course!

peat moss! so it grows in huge mounds and lumps and if you have to walk on it, well I feel bad but it's so springy and soft, and it creates some amazing substrate for other things to grow... good thing I didn't take my macro camera or I'd never have gotten anywhere with all the photos I'd have taken...

but I did take time to sit and listen and daydream looking up in the forest...

first views of mtn peaks that I might be climbing near (turns out not, but still inspiring in the moment) and a great view of a natural normal valley floor with no beaver engineering just peat bog, the way it should be...

forest scene... big trees, not much understory at all.

again, was super lucky to be hiking in fine weather, streams and rivers were low... barely got my boots wet the whole time. Was essential though to have a hiking pole, for balance and to test out muddy bits for degree of foot/leg sucking potential...

more sphagnum awesomeness! just growing like dr seuss land lumps and humps up on the sides of the valley away from lots of water, very cool

mtn berry plant growing through the moss

more trail remains, but being consumed bit by bit by the mud and peat...

alpine primrose! reminds me of the scotia primrose up in Shetland, but this one's bigger and white. fun to have global green friends!

so, this is a small scale example of the process that has created the famous stone runs on the Falkland Islands. the process of particle sorting by frost and melt action... shoves the rocks and bits aside slowly slowly until there are bands of rock and bands of soil... you can see linear patterns in the rocky areas above treeline in the above photo if you zoom in real close... stand by for more examples later on. Neat to see it here on such a small scale after seeing the massive examples on the Falklands. Talk about deep geologic time...

got a titch windy on the pass, but really wasn't so bad all things considered... got away with being lazy and didn't even break out all my layers!

what is this?! sea thrift, as an alpine plant?! used to seeing this along the coasts of the UK and Falklands... but apparently it's a cosmopolitan thing here in TDF... or could it be a subspecies? fun!

an example of a more developed stone run, with bands of rocks and bands of soil that had developed a covering of vegetation....

as I came over the pass, I spied several guanaco that eventually saw me and bounded away... then I saw another on the ridgeline and it kept an eye on me, silhouetted the whole way as I went west and it went east...

the wee speck at the right-side junction of the peak and the ridgeline is the guanaco...

more nascent stone run strips...

an example of one of the trail markers that I'd see every so often, a comforting sight. this was also just after the first real rain shower I experienced... on the second day, and it was interspersed with what I call "snow rain"... it wasn't light fluffy snowflakes, it wasn't icy sleet or hail... but wee small snowballs 1mm across that fell with more of the weight of rain but with the lesser density per volume of air of snow... does that make sense? it was cool. especially as it lasted all of 10 minutes max, then the sun came out again.

second night's camp, a nice soft nook of Nothofagus (beech) leaf duff. It was a pyramid shaped tarp, held up here with a hiking pole and staked to the ground... first nights camp it was held up by a line thrown over a branch overhead. Pretty slick, and lightweight. Again, thanks Luis!

this is an icon of the TDF forest, pan del indio. it's a fungus that grows out of a canker in beech trees, and you can eat it. kind of crunchy and squishy... king of like a fig with a crisp outside and jucier inside and not really any taste.

this girl is happy to be out.

the home stretch... hiking across the pastures of Estancia Harberton, cleared by hand and fire a hundred years ago or less, now grassland with lovely buttercups and atmospheric old rotting tree trunks

and here I am at the other side. done! and an aside... please forgive the overabundance of selfies... all for you mom and dad!

Estancia Harberton, deck view from the below house-- which was home to the ranch foreman for many years. best view on the place, I'd say.

Treated myself to a stay at the estancia for a night instead of trying to hitch my way immediately back to Ushuaia... I'd come to work at the museum here a couple of years ago-- an amazing place with an excellent variety of marine mammal skeletons on display after having been washed up on beaches in the region then cleaned and articulated by an army of interns over the years...

sunset from the hill above the house... the marguerite daises aren't native, but gosh they sure are lovely!

a walk around the peninsula the next day... amazing shoreline lichens!

incredible high altitude clouds streaking above the cumulus... and a flock of gulls for a bonus!

After getting back to Ushuaia, I still wanted to do more hiking in the area, and there are a couple you can do directly from town which was convenient and fun to just start walking up into the "backyard" so to speak. Quite the backyard... the Cerro del Medio hike just kept going up and up and up... legs were more tired after this walk than after the three day backpack! Awesome to cover the same altitude gain in one hike that I did over the three days too... saw the same and more alpine plants, was awesome.

realized that so many of the neat plants in the Falklands are actually alpine plants here... they've just moved down in altitude in the islands... but life is just as tough there because of the wind. Not the cold, Falklands is rather temperate because of the marine influence... but the wind just beats everything to heck. Cool perspectives on larger-scale ecological adaptations.

some cool geologic phenomena happening here... not exactly stone runs, but some sort of thaw/bleed out of meltwater and stones creating these mini-blowout slumps and drainage patterns... what think you, trained Geologists?

gosh dangit! alpine maritime thrift! ?!?! so cool.

called chocolate flower... and it really does smell like chocolate. like the chocolate daisy in west texas. this isn't a sunflower family member though... will have to look into what makes that smell...

gorgeousness. aside from the idea of melting/disappearing glaciers. but the lake was lovely... and it had at least one species of swimming bug in it, what a surprise!