What can I say but it really sucks down here in Patagonia.   Of course that is only the weather I’m talking about!  Everything else about Chalten is great.  Plenty of good people to hangout with, good climbing in town and no lack of food to eat.   We’ve only been here ten days but it seams like much longer, it also feels like we have to leave in no time at all (though we really have till the 6th of Feb).

I spend a lot of my time staring at my computer looking at every different available weather forecast on the internet, hoping that one of them is going to show good weather.  Right now they all show bad weather.  In a recent NatGeo Magazine article by Kenneth Brower I came across of very fitting quote describing the weather down here.

“…for these far southern latitudes circumscribe  the entire globe almost without interruption by land.  Low pressure areas are free to chase one another eastward around the bottom of the planet like a howling dog in pursuit of its own tail.”

The above quote is entirely true but occasionally the dog does get dizzy enough that he can’t find his tail and there is a moment of calm weather.  Here are some of the charts we look at to figure exactly when that is going to happen:

The low pressures system are completely free to roam at 60S

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The bags are packed  and passports are in hand…  and we are stoked.

Sitting in the LAX international terminal waiting for our 1:35am flight outta here.  We’ve got a brutal schedule ahead of us is the next few days but every hour sitting in the airplane , dealing with security and checking in is going to be worth it.   No US soil for Kate and I for two months.

We’ve lined up a pretty sweet schedule, one month in El Chalten trying to climb the granite needles of Patagonia and then one month in Venezuela bushwhacking through the jungle to try and climb an unclimbed sandstone tower out in the middle of nowhere.  I can hardly wait!