Steph Davis
If any place on earth has a personality, it's Patagonia. Walking along the trail to Rio Blanco Base Camp the day before yesterday, I couldn't stop smiling as the wind and rain ran around me, playfully pulling and slapping at me. I felt like Patagonia was welcoming me in its capricious way, "You're back! It's good to see you (heh heh heh)!"

Coming back to the presence of this place is like coming back to a very intense friend. I feel a powerful relationship with the places I love most--Indian Creek, Estes Park, Yosemite, Fremont Canyon. As with any relationship, there are moments of love and moments of hate. I feel the most intense relationship of all with Patagonia.

I first came to Patagonia five years ago, wanting desperately to climb the beautiful granite towers despite my almost complete lack of experience with snow, ice, and glaciers. After three months of the stormiest season in recent history, I'd gotten more experience than I wanted and only a few actual climbing days. Going home was a relief.

Bedraggled and worn out, I swore I'd never come back. But after one winter back in the States I started to miss the intensity and the raw power of Patagonia. Now I can't stop coming back here. A season in Patagonia is hell on your free-climbing fitness, but somehow it's always worth it.

Many people come here once and never want to return. Incessant wind and storms, days and days of load-carrying, being blown around glaciers, being cold and wet and never climbing, can all be torture for a motivated climber.

But the rare perfect days are surreal. And there's something humbling and incredibly moving about getting to know the spirit of Patagonia. Here, more than anywhere, I am forcibly reminded that nature is supreme. At home, technology, pollution and development seem to be rushing at me from all sides. Dean and I live nomadically in vehicles, and refuse to enter the age completely.

Yet there's no escaping the chaotic and unstoppable spill of "progress" as it crawls over the wild places we love, and over our freedom to roam in them. A new age is at hand in the States, with seemingly insane philosophies about how to "use" nature, accompanied by rules that will not allow a simple life.

I can't run alone in the mountains with my dog, yet construction crews daily plow through with tons of asphalt and gridwork to create more roads and RV camp spots in these places. Low impact use is forbidden, I guess because you can't charge as much for it.

Here in Patagonia, I am comforted by the undeniable force of this environment. The thought of people ever being able to harness it or even get comfortable here is laughable. Here it is obvious that humans are puny. Nature does its own regulation here, and we live by its rules. That feels good to me.

Some climbers get addicted to the wild, willful power of this place, and the totally raw and pure lifestyle it enforces. Patagonia teaches that life is much more about the process than the goal, and demands a zen-like attention to the moment. I know that a season of hard work without any summits is a definite possibility, but it will still have been a good season.

Almost all of the "regulars" are here, climbers from all over the world whom I first met at the base camps five years ago and continue to see every year. Kurt Albert, Bernd Arnold's longtime climbing partner, showed up yesterday with stories of his summer adventure, kayaking and climbing in Baffin Island.

"Bruno is here at Campo Bridwell, and Carlitos and Carlos. Rollo is in Paine. And the other Americans? Who is coming?" he asked.

It's strange that Charlie Fowler isn't here this season, but he just returned to the States from months in Asia and decided to stay in Colorado this winter. Jim Donini and Greg Crouch aren't here, but they've been known to appear suddenly without warning. There's plenty of time. The weather has been terrible for months, and the summer season will go through early March.

— Steph Davis, MountainZone.com Correspondent