Reluctantly left Bariloche behind and had a pleasant drive day throough the Argentine lake district before the scenery tuurned to the famed vast expanses of Patagonian steppe. On arrival at our campsite by the standing stone and a dirty river we got stuck ina sand ditch 5 metres short of the parking spot. We got digging again but consistent with the last two times we got stuck this strategy did not work. We were hapy enough as this time we had got stuck within easy walking distance of great climbing.
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| Errnie stuck again |
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| Digging out the axle |
On the 1st day we went only to the entrance of the large gorge where the sector entrada hosted 7 great sport climbs from 5 up to 7b. On first appearance the honeycomb rock looked awful but on climbing it it was very solid and juggy.
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| Climbing at the alero cave |
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The second day the police turned up with a big truck and pulled Ernie out of the sand and we went to probably the best sector at Buitreraa. El Alero was a huge cave full of huecos, jugs and then a short headwall. There was some great unusual climbing to get out of the cave before romping up the steep but juggy headwall.
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| The entrance to the Buitrera gorge |
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| Despite the bridge Dave and I decided to wade across poo river |
On the third day requiring a rest from steep sport and a change of scenery Pete and I teamed up to tackle the impressive standing stone. We had little information on the route apart from a roughly drawn topo from the last hot rock expedition that passed through. Pete led the first pitch after we found a belay through zooming in on a photo of the crag up a chimney of discouraging rock. 3rd pitch was a stoonker on lovely rock before i lead up a nice chimney, supposedly the crux of the route (6a+ on trad). It then all turned downhill. The rock turned very friable and pete bravely led up and round a very unstable chimney while i had to dodge the dislodged rocks which hurtled back down the chimney. Although there were only 2 pitches left we took 4 pitches to weave our way safetly through the choss and onto the summit of the standing stone where we got good views of the surrounding desert and got to write in the summit book. An easy 5 abseils and we were relieved to be down.
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| Pared piedra (The standing stone) |
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| Start of the good third pitch |
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| On a belay ledge above Petes horror pitch |
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| Mountaineers pose on the summit |
That night we had the culinary highlight where stu and I cooked vegetable kebabs over the bbq and combined with Chris garlic bread made for a great but late dinner.
The last two days involved exploring deeper into the gorge which rrevealed a whole load more climbing potential and we had to spend a day finishing climbing projects on El Elero which with all the quickdraws hanging off it had been made to look loike a christmas tree!
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| Exploring the deeper areas of the gorge |
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| Some local wildlife |
As we departed it was time to get really excited as our next destination was the world famous Fitz Roy range of mountains 3 days drive away.
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