|
At about 1 A.M., we woke up and went outside to look for stars in the southern sky. I was hoping to see the Southern Cross. But the little town of El Chaltén has too many street lights that burn all night long, generating glaring light pollution. We could see some stars, but were unable to make out any constellations. We would have had to walk out a good distance from El Chaltén to have any chance of viewing the night sky. When I planned our stay in El Chaltén, I anticipated that there would at least one day, or perhaps more days, where bad weather would ruin any hiking opportunities. So I added an extra day to our El Chaltén visit to allow us a chance to make up for the rainy days. But we had marvelous weather throughout this trip (which was certainly a delightful surprise!), and so by this day, Melanie and I had already hiked the trails that originated in El Chaltén. There were a couple of shorter trails that we hadn't covered yet - hikes out to the Mirador Condores and Mirador Aguilas (Viewpoints of Condors and Eagles) and another short hike to the Chorillo del Salto waterfall. After the big miles we hiked yesterday, it was nice to have a short easy day. It was overcast all day, not the bright sunny skies to which we had grown accustomed. It looked like it might even rain, but the most we felt was drop or two in the evening. I was a bit disappointed when we hiked up to Mirador Aguilas and Mirador Condores that we saw neither eagles nor condors. We climbed up there relatively early in the morning, but apparently the birds were already roosting for the day. At Mirador Condores, we asked a woman to take a photo of us with FitzRoy in the background. We chatted with her for a bit, we discovered that she was also from the Seattle area (Greenlake). In the afternoon we took any easy walk out to the Chorillo del Salto waterfall. This a nice waterfall in a beautiful setting. Because it is so easy to reach (it is the one trail from El Chaltén that doesn't involve any elevation gain), it is a popular spot for visiting. We stayed there for a nice visit, then walked back to town. We changed our bus ticket to the morning bus back to El Calafate (originally, we were scheduled to take the late bus back to El Calafate, but we felt we had already seen most everything that we could.) and then ate an early dinner. We took an after dinner walk across El Chaltén, back towards the ranger station - I was still hoping to see some condors. We did spot many humans on the rock face, there were a lot of climbers still on the cliff, despite the relative lateness of the day. Then I did spot a big condor take off and fly a brief loop before landing again on the cliff - once I knew where he had landed, I was able to zoom in with the camera and get a couple of long distance shots of the big iconic bird. Panorama Photos
MapsThe map of our hike 
VideosIf you do not see the videos, but instead see a message that says: "Error: Video playback aborted" it is possible that the content is being blocked by your web browser. You may see a message at the top or bottom of your page that says "restricted webpage from running scripts or ActiveX controls". If you see that message, click on the ALLOW BLOCKED CONTENT box and that should allow these videos to run.
To display the photo images on this webpage, I am using a freely distributed java script called Lightbox v2.7.1 written by Lokesh Dhakar. You can download this program by clicking on this link. All the text and photographs on this webpage are my own creation, but the textured background is taken from a site, EOS development, that offers non-profit users free use of their graphics. Click the icon below to visit their site.
|
Click on any thumbnail to begin the slide show at that photograph Photos from Mirador and Waterfall
|
