Kind of bummed that the main event didn´t happen in Chalten, I hopped on a bus back up to Bariloche, in hopes of climbing some classic rock routes in the Frey with an old friend and current Chilean Bohemian Matteo Fiori.
He wasn´t set to arrive until several days after I got back to Bari, so I decided to take a little solo trip into the mountains: move fast, light, and cover some new ground in one of the biggest and most beautiful of Argentina´s national parks, Nahual Huapi.
I bivied my first night high on Cerro Lopez´ridgeline, with an amazing evening spent watching the moon rise over the lakes far below. The next morn I summited Lopez and continued along the traverse.
Sometime around midday the tabanos (massive oversized horseflies) became so bad that I was just running through talus, taking little time to scout corniced sections, and generally being totally bugged out. There was zero chance of me being able to handle being surounded and chewed up by these things for another 2 days.
So I bailed off the ridge, and headed down to the nearest refugio, at Laguna Negra.
The Mangfred Sagre Refugio at Laguna Negra is the most beautiful of all the refugios in the park I think, and I was happy to be able to hang out inside for a little bit and get my psyche back before pushing on and doing another 16 km for a total day distance of 32km, mostly on the ridge.
Fun terrain, incredible views, I´ll wait for the tabanos to go away before going back to complete the section I avoided though!
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