At the time, Sandy Walker’s trip to climb Monte San Lorenzo in Chile was the most remote place she’d ever travelled to.
For the January 2012 adventure, organized by the Alpine Club of Canada, Walker was one of two camp managers working with ACMG mountain guide Jim Gudjonson to lead nine participants up the peak.
To reach the mountain, which sits astride the Argentina/Chile border in southern Chile and, at 3,706 metres, is the second-highest peak in Patagonia, Walker and her partners in adventure flew to Santiago, and then on to Coyhaique, the capital city of the region. From there they travelled by van for eight hours to Cochrane (pronounced the same as the Alberta town).
The next leg was a full-day drive by four wheel drive to an outfitter’s ranch on a very rough rocky road that resulted in two flat tires. From there most of the group members walked to the mountain’s base camp, while Walker and two others rode horses along with gear and food supplies.
“It was a lot of effort to get to that part of the world,” Walker said. “But it was well worth it. I really wasn’t quite prepared for how beautiful it was. When we came around the corner and saw the mountain for the first time, it was like, ahh – wow. How are we going to get up that? It was such a beautiful sight.”
On Wednesday (May 22), Walker, a Canmore resident, will share many of her favourite images from the trip at a presentation hosted by the Rocky Mountain Section of the ACC, taking place at the Canmore Seniors Centre.
The San Lorenzo area isn’t visited very often, Walker said, with the chances of actually reaching the summit even less so in a region notorious for extremely powerful winds.
“We were so lucky,” Walker said. “We had clear blue skies and no wind. Often in that area the wind is so bad you really worry you’d get blown off the mountain.”
The unusually favourable conditions facilitated a straightforward climb as the group ferried their gear up to a higher camp, then the following day up to another higher camp, from which they launched their climb to the summit.
With Gudjonson leading the way through complicated glaciated terrain including deep crevasses and impressive snow formations, the team made good time and passed a team of U.S. climbers en route.
“The snow and ice formations from the col to the summit were astounding,” Walker said. “We had to walk through these and negotiate our way around them. They were two or three stories tall, created by the wind blowing snow around.”
When the ACC group – who ranged in age from 22 to 67 – reached the summit, they looked down to the col where the U.S. climbers would turn back due to exhaustion. Before doing so however, they had written in the snow, “Congrats Canada.”
“I was so impressed with the camaraderie, there were no sour grapes that we’d summitted and they didn’t,” Walker said.
Later on, the ACC group passed them on the descent and, reaching camp ahead of the U.S. team, the Canadians brewed up tea for when they arrived.
Afterward, since the climb had taken less than the number of days anticipated, the group enjoyed their extra time by visiting a new national park established by former Patagonia clothing company CEO Kristine Tomkins, which had just opened two weeks earlier.
Walker’s show takes place on May 22 at the Canmore Seniors Centre, starting at 7 p.m. Admission is free.
