Well here's a summary of our expedition to the Campo de Heilo Sur (South

Ice cap) in Patagonia, Chile.

The trip was pretty incredible. Myself, Bart Matthews(ABQ), and Kyle Bohnenstiehl (Flag) drove from Las Vegas to LA where we met Karl Feaux(Boulder). From there we flew to Miami and then on to Santiago. Dave Salas, my old friend from Flagstaff who now lives in Santiago, picked us up in a van he rented and took us directly to Vina del Mar which is a reknown? beach town on the west

coast. There we got a quality sunburn and watched the scenery along the beach. Then we returned to Dave's apartment on the 21^st floor in the northern end of Santiago. The next day we hopped into a rented van and with Dave at the wheel we ventured southward down the main (and only) road stretching along the coast on our way to the coastal city of Puerto Montt. We stopped in several small and large towns to see the sights and experience the culture of rural southern Chile. Instead of states, Chile is divided into 9 regions and we were headed into region 8. The people were very friendly to us and we must have really stuck out like a sore thumb. The trip enabled us to see a good part of the countryside, and culture.

Once we reached Puerto Montt we sampled the awesome seafood and then we hopped on a 737 and flew to Coyhaique which is in the northern

part of Patagonia. There we bought $400 worth of food including 11 whole salami’s and 20 pounds of cheese to supplement the 20 meals of dehydrated food and pasta. We purchased 30 liters of white gas for our stoves and arranged for a driver and pickup truck to haul our party to Cochrane and then on to Puerto

Yungay. After 12 hours of being slammed around the little truck and seeing

some incredible terrain-perhaps a lot like Alaska, we arrived in a

desolate military camp at the end of the road where it met the sea. This small group of civilians and young enlisted men serviced a ferry for the military to the other side of the bay where there was a base.

Later the same evening we arrived in camp we met a Chilean General who was on his way to the Military installation across the bay. He was very courteous and helpful; ordering the Lieutenant and his men to feed us and put us up for the nite. In addition, the general even set up a boat ride for us to Caleta Tortel with the Caribineros (police) from Tortel. The next day the police gave

us a free ride and Kyle showed them our GPS. They were very interested in the GPS units and in our capabilities.

The Chilean police are totally straight laced and reliable/trustworthy.

Tortel is a neat little village on the coast with no roads in or out of

there. Instead of streets they have boardwalks. Electricity is generated by a water wheel harnessed to a perennial stream and waterfall. Patagonia is chock full of breathtaking waterfalls; some of which are over 2000 feet high. Upon arriving in Tortel, we asked the harbor master about finding a boat skipper to take us to the terminus of the Jorge Montt glacier. He directed us to this

old fellow named Juan who had an even older boat powered by a 2 cylinder

diesel.

We spent that eve at Juans place where his wife prepared Pollo con papas

(chicken and boiled potatos) with fresh baked bread; all of which was

excellent. After Nescafe and bread/jam the next morning we putted our

way to Juan's cabin on the coast. Apparently Juan had a small cabin on

5000 acres and a couple horses near the glacier. However, the iceberg dodging on the way to his cabana limited his visits to his small ranch to 3-4 times a year. After 5 hours of putting thru calm seas and around icebergs the size of houses, we reached Juan's very humble cabana. There we unloaded our zillion pounds of gear- probably close to 800lbs with 30+ days of food and fuel. Juan’s sons loaded the 2 horses with as much gear as they could carry and donning our packs loaded w/personal gear we started hiking towards our first camp which we designated as basecamp. After crossing mud bogs, rocky ridges and a swift, freezing cold river we arrived at a small lake where we setup our encampment. That evening we enjoyed a mini keg of beer and toasted to a successful, safe trip into the unknown. For the next 3 days we humped in loads of gear, sans horses, back and forth across rivers, up steep slopes of loose talus and mud, and finally onto the tongue of the Jorge Montt glacier (camp 2). It rained the whole time.

This is where we got the first glimpse of the route to the ice fall barrier and beyond to the ice cap itself. Last winter had left very little snow for us to ski upon, leaving us with the grim reality that we would be hauling everything on our backs instead of across the snow. For 12 days we hauled gear back and forth between camps. Crossing hundreds of snow bridges with underlying, bottomless crevasses was a daily chore. At various times each of us punched thru snow bridges, dragging our roped partners across the jagged ice until the fallen teammate's 80 pound pack wedged him in the crevasse or a partner was able to arrest his fall from above. We call this fun...

IT rained and rained and rained some more. Our "new" MSR dragonfly ultra-light stoves became a major pain in the butt. The stoves would become blocked after each use, causing us to have to totally dismantle and clean them before each meal. The routine got to be old after cleaning them 70+ times. Finally, after too many days of carrying sleds, skis and ski boots, we were able to use the damn things for their intended purpose. A new set of muscles were abused pulling the sleds while roped up to a partner, but we were happy just to get the packs off our backs.

Kyle did an amazing job as team leader and his energy level was inspiring. I had a very difficult time. Being a low-fat, skinny guy hurt me immensely. Usually after 2 hrs of packing in gear or pulling a sled, I would literally be out of gas. Lunch was often quite minimal, leaving me with very little fuel to finish off the day. By 5 pm I was usually wasted and stumbling around, which can be dangerous when wearing crampons and crossing steep, narrow ice fins or leaping across crevasses.

Yet overall none of us really complained much. IT became an accepted thing to be exhausted at the end of each day and surprisingly our spirits remained high most of the time in spite of the dreadfully wretched weather conditions. We still wanted to climb Cerro Laotaro and achieve our objective of mapping it’s summit. On day 15 we navigated thru the much feared Ice fall with our sleds behind us like beasts of burden, enabling us to surmount the main ice cap itself and we were pleasantly surprised. The skies cleared and the view was magnificent! The smooth snow and gently sloping Ice cap wandered southward as far as the eye could see. Flanked on both sides of the cap were jagged peaks capped with snow and rime formations, which looked like giant mushroom tops. We were all excited and shouting with elation at achieving this milestone in our journey.

That night we celebrated with a shot of rum for all. We discussed our plans, realizing that we would run out of time before we could reach our objective, so we decided to head in a SE direction intending to traverse around a cluster of unexplored peaks and perhaps climb one. This is the point when the weather began to turn sour-again. On day 16 we made very swift progress in thick ice fog using GPS as a navigation tool. It was an eerie experience skiing across terrain which you could not see. The usually distinct line separating earth and sky was absent due to the ice fog. I often caught myself from falling over due to a lack of distinguishing between ground and sky- my body could not maintain it's equilibrium; a very eerie feeling. Towards the end of the day the wind began to pick up and visibility dropped like a rock. Near 5pm Karl and Kyle, ahead of Bart and myself, struggled to navigate around a larger crevasse area when all of a sudden Kyle punched thru a hidden snow bridge-sled, ski's and all. Karl, in the lead, immediately hit the deck to arrest Kyle. After floundering for several minutes Kyle muscled out of the crevasse and motioned for Bart and I to get out of the area. At this point the wind was whipping pretty hard and we decided to hunker down before visibility dropped anymore. In 50+ mph winds we synchronously put up our two tents in 20 minutes flat, and prepared for a doosey of a storm. IT was a very sobering experience and anxiety was high that night while we huddled in the 3 man Mountain Hardwear tent for dinner. Later that nite I couldn't sleep due to the flapping of the tent in the wind. I fully expected our tents to collapse in the 80 mph gusts; shredding the nylon, snapping the poles and creating a yard sale all the way to Argentina. Never before have I been afraid because of the weather, but I was that night.

By morning the storm continued to howl and the snow wall built the night before to deflect the wind, had collapsed under the hurricane force winds. Without the wall our tents would have collapsed for sure. As it were, the cookware, foodbags and stoves stored in the front vestibule of the tent were buried in spin-drifted snow. We decided it would be lunacy to go out into the blizzard so we deemed it a "rest" day, sitting around reading and sharing idle discussions. Our playing cards were soaked, of course, so we made a feeble attempt to dry out some clothes while we sat and waited and waited..........

The next day we decided we better head back to camp 8 while we still could, given the poor weather. We made it back to camp 8 and remained there another day due to the weather again. Ever have to do #2 in a 60mph blizzard? I don't recommend it! From camp 8 we hauled our butts back to base camp in 7 days of brutal skiing/hauling loads of unspeakable weights in continuously poor weather.

At base camp down at the lake, summer? had struck and it was pleasant to have green grass and shrubs surrounding us plus clear skies -it was strikingly beautiful and peacefully calm. At this point food was running out so we made our way down to the coast to Juan's humble cabana with one massive load of gear. It was new year's eve day and probably the most suffering I have ever experienced in my life.

We left 5 liters of wine and german chocolate in a small suitcase with Juan when we departed for our trek. Yet Juan told us that he was going to take the gear/wine back with him to Tortel for safe-keeping, fearing the cabana might be looted in his absence. So when we arrived new years eve and found the wine and goodies still there we were elated! Party time! As you could imagine it didn't take us much to get a bit tipsy in our battered state. But I went to bed that night with a smile on my face.

Juan told us we should expect to see him after the new year, thus we expected to see his little boat putting into shore Jan 2nd. But after 3 days of waiting we began to get very hungry and a bit depressed. By the eve of the fourth day we broke into the moldy, rancid lard left behind and forced down some lard "soup". I went to bed @7:30pm that nite hoping to fall asleep and disregard the hunger pangs. After tossing and turning I heard that familiar diesel put-put @9:30 pm. I told the guys I heard a boat and they thought I was hallucinating again until we opened the door and with binoculars spied Don Juan's little craft weaving between the icebergs. Upon his arrival we drank wine and gorged on the spine of some animal that evening and told him of our epic adventure. We finally went to bed @ midnight. We awoke at 4 am the next morning (1/5) and loaded the boat just before the tide went out and by 10AM we were back in Tortel-civilization, sort of. From there we arranged a charter plane to take us to Coyhaique. After waiting for the small plane to pick us up at the tiny airstrip adjacent to the Rio Baker, the weather turned worse with rain and high winds. We thought the plane wouldn't come when all of a sudden we heard the sound of a small aircraft struggling to make it's way to us. This jockey did one loop to set up his landing and promptly sat the 6 seat, single engine Piper Cherokee down in a heartbeat. He got out of the plane looked at us, walked over to the luggage and shook his head. Kyle convinced him all the gear would fit and he reluctantly packed the plane-to the hilt.

IT was cramped inside with Kyle, myself, and Karl in the back seat and Bart in the co-pilot seat. The pilot fired up the plane and with no preparation red-lined the little aircraft and headed down the runway. I thought for sure we wouldn't' make it off the ground but we did with @30 feet to spare before plunging into the Rio Baker river. The plane was thrown around like a rag doll in it’s attempt to gain enough elevation to climb over the first of many steep mountains, and Karl became sick, but not after getting an incredible view of the north Patagonia Ice cap and the lake district. Karl became sicker as we progressed and we became worried about him. He was exhibiting more than just motion sickness and he soon became hypoxic, apparently suffering from altitude sickness. He scared the hell out of us and we thought for sure he was going to blackout or worse, suffer a blood clot. We coaxed him thru the plane ride and somehow made it back to Coyhaique in 1 piece. We were all very happy to be back on solid ground after 5.5 hours on choppy seas with diesel gas and fumes lapping out of fuel cans and then a very rough ride in a small plane.

We found a hostel in wonderful Coyhaique and each of us showered for the 1st time in over 30 days. You become 1 with your grime after a while, but man did we stink. We partied like rock stars after gorging ourselves with beer, french fries (papas fritas) and burgers. We slept like the dead that night and the next day we flew out of Coyhaique into Santiago where David picked us up again and took us back to his apartment. We were still very tired yet we didn't hit the sack until after 11pm. We spent the next 2 days playing tourist in Santiago and finally flew back 10pm sat January 8^th. We arrived in Los Angeles via Miami after 14 hours of flying on packed airplanes. After getting our luggage at 10:30AM, Bart, myself and Kyle drove on to Vegas to deliver me in a daze, yet safely, back to my house. Then, amazingly, Kyle and Bart drove another 5 hours to Flagstaff.

I have failed to mention something very important. I was granted use of an Iridium global phone by the communication group at RSL for the purpose of beta testing the new phone system. However, after 2 weeks into the trip our phone account was terminated. We were dropped like a hot stone, cutting us off from the outside world for 4 weeks. December 11 was the last day we had called into our webmaster to update our progress and status for friends and family checking in on our web site. I was assured from Motorola that the phone would remain in service beyond the original 1 month test period thru Jan 9th. Apparently Motorola dropped the ball, leaving us without any emergency rescue communication source. I still have not been given a reason why we were cut off like a bad habit. This lack of communication with the outside world stressed our family and friends thru the whole holiday season. I still await an explanation from Motorola.

More info and photos of the trip can be found at www.nagis.com