Steph Davis
4:30 a.m.
I wake up listening. Dean stirs next to me, and we don't even have to reach full consciousness to hear the wind howling like a freight train. We go back to sleep.
6:30 a.m.
I wake up listening. More freight trains. I go back to sleep.
8:00 a.m.
I wake up listening. (Is this what motherhood is like?) Freight trains and concord jets. I go back to sleep.
9:30 a.m.
I wake up listening. Freight trains, Concorde jets, and helicopters. Dean and I go into our cook tent and brew up coffee. We brew up green tea. We brew up maté. We make some Tang. The tent shakes. Dirt forces in at every seam and zipper, dusting everything with a fine coating. There is dirt floating on our tea. We drink it anyway.
11:00 a.m.
I walk over to the Germans' shelter, ten feet away. Carlos Suarez, a young Spanish climber is sitting beneath it. He's just returned from a walk up to the Laguna de los Tres, and reports that it was incredibly windy. Not exactly news.
Carlos starts brewing up some tea, as we catch up on chitchat. Carlos is my age, an outrageously nice, good-looking, and well-known Spanish climber. I met him at the Polackos high camp on the west side, when we were both on our first trip to Patagonia, and I see him here every season now. Coincidentally, Carlos and I have come to Patagonia at exactly the same times in the same years, always too late or too early for any real stretches of good weather. We are also the same age, and have pursued similar paths with climbing, so we like to annually compare notes on what's going on in our different parts of the world.
There's plenty of time for such conferences here.
Carlos's main regret at the moment is that he spent all of last season climbing Royal Flush -- Kurt and Bernd's brilliant route on the east face of Fitz Roy -- but didn't summit in the end. With the four-day weather window in mid-January, he could easily have summitted on one of the standard routes on Fitz Roy, but he invested all of his efforts into the difficult climbing on Royal Flush at the expense of a summit.
So he feels slightly depressed about that, he tells me as he stirs the tea in a battered pot. "Maybe I am too traditional," he says, "but I feel the summit is really the important thing here. It was hard for me to feel free and enjoy the climbing on Royal Flush, because always I was worrying that we would not get to summit. And we spent so much effort on this route, and still I have not stood on top of Fitz Roy. I think it's better to make the summit first on a different route, and then climb something like Royal Flush, because then you are free in your mind to enjoy the climbing more."
We start reminiscing about all the awful seasons, and Kurt Albert strolls into the lean-to. He just got up, and is looking for his tea. "Kurt," I say, "remember that first year Carlos and I came when we first met you, how awful the weather was?"
It was five years ago. But as we begin discussing exactly which winter it was, Carlos comes up with some mathematics to support his theory that it was actually seven years ago. With the aid of scratches in a piece of wood, Kurt uses a fence diagram to prove that it was actually four years ago.
"You see, the years are the cracks, and the time is the fenceposts. Four fenceposts! I don't care about the time, I seek only the truth!" he insists merrily.
I decide to ride the middle ground, sticking firmly with standard subtraction, and maintain that it was five. Who knows? Who cares? In this upside down world where winter is summer and north faces are south faces, we're probably all right. The conversation was entertaining for at least forty minutes--that's the important part.
We drink tea. We make more. The wind begins to slow a little. We hear the helicopter-blade whir of Dean's long highline, a sign that he has unbound it from its wind-restraint and is walking on it. We make more tea. "Let's walk over to the sun!" Kurt says. Why not?
1:00 p.m.
It truly is sunny in the front of Rio Blanco campground. We stand around for a while. "Let's go see Fitz Roy," Kurt says in German-accented Spanish. We all trot along the footpath along the slope to the south, and soon the summit of Fitz Roy appears. It has the most amazing giant lenticular cloud any of us has ever seen hanging over it, like a massive white zeppelin looming above. We are all deeply impressed.
"Lenticular," Kurt says.
"Si, lenticular," Carlos agrees sincerely.
"It could mean more wind," Kurt says.
"True," I say.
"But it could mean the end of this wind," he says.
"Who knows?" Carlos looks at his barometer. "Ah, it is going up slightly."
"You never use a barometer," Kurt says to me.
"Why? It changes every five minutes," I reply.
"Yes," Kurt says, "it's probably better. It just makes you nervous to watch the barometer all the time."
We walk back to Rio Blanco.
7:00 p.m.
It's getting more and more calm. Dean and I start getting antsy. "We should go up to Paso Superior tonight," he says. "Yes," I say. "Maybe we should rest now and leave in two hours, if it stays calm." We go in the tent and lay down.
8:10 p.m.
I lie awake listening. The wind is almost a breeze. No freight trains or any other forms of loud transportation going on up there. "Maybe we should sleep until midnight, then go up," Dean says. "Okay," I say.
8:15 p.m.
I lie awake listening. "Maybe we should just wait for an hour, then go up," Dean says. "Okay," I say.
8:18 p.m.
Dean and I spontaneously get up, start the teapot and begin packing our packs. We brew up coffee. Dean pours it into our plastic coffee cups. We look at it. "Should we drink it?" he says. "Well, if we drink it we're committed. We'll never go to sleep. We have to go up." "I know," he says. We eye the cups. "But then again, we're all keyed up now and we'll never sleep anyway, so we may as well drink it," I say.
We pick up the coffee cups. I watch Dean raise his, and just as it is about to touch his lip we hear the wind hurtling in from the northwest, like a train that's late. I start laughing. "No way, that's too ridiculous," and don't drink. We run out of the tent, clutching the cups, to check the sky. There are lots of those nasty dark "bird" clouds, and the wind is picking up. The highline, even bound up, whirs. "No!" "At least we're all packed." Dean defiantly swills the last of his coffee. I pitch mine onto a bush. "Well. Let's just wait a little."
10:12 p.m.
I lie awake listening. Dean is off examining Fitz Roy. Our packs lie under a tarp, perfectly packed. The wind is rushing in steady waves.
11:00 p.m.
I lie awake listening. I can hear trains off in the distance. "Maybe we should just go up anyway right now," Dean says with no real conviction. A jumbo jet dips above the tent.
3:00 a.m.
I wake up listening. The wind is howling.
—
Dean Potter and Steph Davis, MountainZone.com Correspondents
