Well it is 4 January today and since leaving Bariloche we have had wind, sleet, rain and snow and now some sunshine as well.

We have been in FitzRoyNational Park, El Chalten for the last four days with three nights camping (per photos). Cerro Fitz Roy is an amazing mountain, a massive granite soaring into the Andes and one of the most challenging climbs for serious climbers in the world. We only trekked to its base, which was challenging enough and breath taking in every way.

I cannot describe it and will not even attempt too, but to see these granite massifs rising straight up thousands of meters above you , in the top of the Andes is awe inspiring. You will see some photos where the granite is red, it is simply where I caught the massifs in the dawn light. We trekked up to the lakes at the base of the glaciers that drape the base of Fitz Roy on the 2nd day from our camp.

The trek was made difficult by the winds that blow strong enough to flatten tents and wipe you off the mountains. Fortunately they were a little tamer than that for us on this day, but still had us ducking for cover or going to ground as we worked up the shoulder of a mountain giving us access to Fitz Roy itself.Our third day was less dramatic, or at least less scenic, with rain that started at midnight in our tents and went continuously through the next 36 hours...wet wet wet...and we had a four hour hike to get to our next base camp, so we could see Cerro Torres.

Much of the day we were in our two person tent trying to get sleep and warm. None the less, the rain did go away and in the morning we were instead greeted with snow as we got closer to Cerro Torres Glacier. At this point Ann and a few others took perhaps the sensible option and returned to Chalten, to four walls and hot water. The rest of us opted for a further 7 hour hike to get onto Terro Glacier.

We crossed the start of the Fitz Roy river on a rope taking us across the glacial grey water in the snow...that was good fun actually, before the hard slog started as we worked our way up to the snow line and above the glacier before descending down to the ice itself. We then donned crampons and had a two hour trek to bring us up to the middle ice of the glacier, where we had a crack at ice climbing with ice axe and crampons etc...which was a hell of a lot harder then I recollect it being when I last did it as an 18 year old!

Once to the top of the wall it was an abseil back down. Unfortunately while (fortunately) still attached to the rope, I slipped and fell several meters into the crevice immediately below our climb. Recovering my dignity while swinging wildly on the end of the rope several meters into said big blue hole, I had to do a little more climbing and use ice axes to get me back out....it was a bit heart pumping....although one of my fellow trekkers at least had the humour to call out "would you like me to take your photo now David!" We left the glacier in the middle of a snow storm, that even the local guide told us he had not seen the like of at this time of year ever before..i.e. in summer! It was almost a white out and was getting pretty cold.

Cerro Torres is behind the glacier, a piece of perpendicular granite that stands some 3100 meters...and we never saw it once because of the weather. That said, yesterday in El Chalten was a fine sunny day and we could see Cerro Torres easily from this level. Anni and I walked to a view point and took some photos, which you can see, with Cerro Torres momentarily revealing itself from its shroud of cloud. Torres is considered one of the top three in difficulty climbs in the world, apparently well ahead of K2 or Everest, for technical difficulty. The key reason being both its vertical walls....there is no "shoulder" and the fact that it is permanently frozen. The top 50 meters of Torres is solid ice and climbers are only able to summit Torres be tunnelling through the Ice.....the snow on the out side makes it impossible to climb directly.

Torres regularly claims lives of climbers who get part way and then simply freeze to death. We returned to El Chalten last night and from there came back to El Calafate. El Chalten was established by law in 1987, for the simple reason to address a boarder dispute with Chile. Today it is a climber and trekkers town with a feel of the mid west of the 1800´s or an old prospectors town. Surrounded by the Andes on three sides it is wild and windy and in winter must be bleak.

The mountains are all over 4000 meters and crowd in on the town which sits in what was a glacial valley, so is also surrounded by steep moraine.Well, more to come yet....will update rest of this blog as time allows. We are well and tomorrow morning we head further south to Torres Del Paine National Park for a further three nights of camping....although we are told this camp while still being in tents at least has showers...our last had no showers and you are not permitted to wash in streams, rivers or lakes etc as the water is absolutely pure from the glaciers. Behind Fitz Roy runs the Patagonian Ice Shelf, a river of ice that runs for over 400 miles and is 22,000 square kilometres of ice! Wow!