Steve Z Adventure Photography

It’s the end of the line. It’s been a great run, but this is the final post in the 2012 Patagonia Blog Saga. Don’t worry, I saved a great post for the finale.

Much of the landscape of present day Torres Del Paine has been defined by forest fires. Lightning does not occur naturally in this area, so all fires have been started by humans, most recently in 1985, 2005, and December 2011. The Mirador Cuernos hike travels directly through the recently burned forests.

Other than the charred vegetation, you will immediately notice the extreme wind that we were battling during this hike. At one point it ripped the sunglasses out from under my hood and flung them down the mountain. One minute they were on my face, the next minute they were gone. At times we had to squat down low for fear that we would be thrown to the ground. Boulder is a windy place, but it doesn’t have anything on Patagonia.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. This is the most scenic landscape that I’ve ever seen in person.

The wind was blowing strong for most of our week-long stay. When you have waves crashing on the shore of a lake, then you know it’s windy. At one point I saw waves large enough that they had an actual tube. I’d say that it was large enough for a cat to catch a tube ride, if they actually liked water of course.

Salto Grande falls flow from Nordenskjöld Lake to Lake Pehoé. They actually are much larger below the rapids showing here, but this made a better photo so here you go.

Thanks for tuning in for the grand saga of our Galapagos-Patagonia tour. My next international trip isn’t too far away, only two and a half weeks to go until a mountain biking adventure in Haiti. For a sneak preview, check out the promo video.

For our Patagonia visit, we stayed at Tierra Patagonia Lodge which is located on the northeastern shore of Lake Sarmiento. Every day we watched the sun rise and set over the peaks. I was even able to watch the sun rise in my underwear!

A short 20 minute hike from the lodge brought me down to the shores of the lake, where I indulged in some long exposure captures of the mountains reflecting in the water.

There was a line of giant pumice stones all along the beach. My feet are now silky smooth.

The wind was often relentless.

Here I am not being sad that I’m missing out on some powder days at Vail.

If you’ve been hanging around for any length of time, you know that I have a thing for cool clouds. These formations are some of my top favorites.

During the course of our week in Patagonia, I captured quite a few images of native animals. I previously published photos of Andean Condors in their own blog post since that was such an incredible day.

We saw a couple flamingos when we were in the Galapagos, and it seemed perfectly normal to see them in a warm tropical setting. I was definitely not expecting to see them in an inhospitable climate such as this. Here is a flock getting battered by 60 mph winds in Torres Del Paine National Park.

These horses are not wild, but we did see some wild horses on one of our hikes. The wild ones ran off when we were spotted a half a mile away across impassable terrain.

This is my favorite character from the trip. While on a horseback ride our guides spotted this juvenile Austral Pygmy Owl in a tree on the estancia. I was amazed at how close he let me get without flying off.

Probably the least exciting photo is this herd of some wooly sheep. But how can you have a Patagonia animals post without sheep?

There are plenty of rheas roaming around the plains. They are quite wild, and also tend to run off when you try to photograph them. This isn’t the Galapagos where the animals have no natural predators. The puma are plentiful here.

The most common animal in this region are the guanacos. They are so common that they would probably get boring, if it wasn’t for the fact that they are so damn cute. How about those lips?

And now we reach the point in the blog where we get to see the dead stuff. I have literally never seen so many bones and skeletons lying around. As we were riding our mountain bikes we would literally run over bones that were lying around on the trail. The puma eat very well here.

Our favorite hike while in Patagonia was at Grey Lake. We started out walking along the shores of the glacial lake to an iceberg viewpoint. We weren’t blessed with great sunlight, but even through the mist the turquoise blue glaciers were impressive.

After our morning hike along the lake, we set out to climb the steep 2000 vertical foot trail up to the Mirador Lago Grey.

Just before reaching the summit, we entered a forested area rich with green foliage. Another hiker told us to watch for parrots, but sadly we didn’t see any.

The summit viewpoint was capped in bald red rocks. The wind was howling of course, but the view of Torres Del Paine National Park was incredible.

And to the west, we could see the rippled Grey Glacier pouring into the lake. We stayed as long as we could in a rocky hollow that offered protection from the battering winds, before descending back into the valley, knowing that we had just experienced one of the best viewpoints in the world.

This is a very special blog post. Watching a condor fly 50 feet in front of you is a raw and powerful experience that cannot possibly be transferred through words or images. But I’ll do my best.

On our second morning in Patagonia we left our home base at Tierra Patagonia Lodge and headed out for the Condoreras Hike. This trek took us up and along a ridge frequented by Andean Condors. We lashed down our hoods to protect us from the cold and blustery winds that are the norm here in Patagonia. I really had no idea what to expect as our group hiked up an animal path to the barren ridge. I was happy just getting out and snapping scenic photos of the Torres Del Paine, capped in an overnight summer snowfall.

I think I may have heard the quiet whoosh of the wind passing along the incredible 10 foot wingspan even before I saw the first condor. It was an unforgettable sound.

Despite gusts of wind that threatened to blow me right off the 800 foot cliff, I was drawn to the edge. The Andean Condor is the largest flying land-based bird in the world, and they have been found to live over 100 years (in captivity). They are truly awe-inspiring to behold.

And then I came along an adult male sitting on a ledge 30 feet below us. Here you can see the detail in their bizarre buzzard heads. Mr. Condor, I salute you, your featherless head, dangly comb, and stylish neck warmer.

By halfway through the hike, the condors had flown off to parts unknown. Once again we waited for “sucker holes” of blue sky to shine upon us so that we could obtain valuable Facebook profile photos.

As we hiked down the ridge the sun came out and warmed our chilled bones, our spirits and cameras filled with powerful memories of condors in flight.

It’s Monday morning and I’m back home in Colorado, and ready to continue blogging photos from my big South American adventure. When we last left off, we had left the Galapagos, spent a luxurious day in Santiago, and were en route to the Tierra Patagonia Lodge in Chilean Patagonia. Both of our LAN airline plane flights were photo worthy, as we straddled the spine of the Andes mountain range.

As we flew south out of Santiago, we soon encountered a moon-like landscape. The 12,428-foot Cerro Azul is an active volcano in the southern volcanic zone of Chile. There is a lot of snow across the Andes, especially since we are at the height of summer in the southern hemisphere.

This is actually a pretty crappy picture, but I’m including it just to show the Lakes and Rivers zone of the Andes. This is the region in between the volcanic region and the southern Magellan region where we are heading. This area receives much more rain and snow, and has lush green forests, similar to the American Northwest.

Chile contains two giant ice fields, which constitute the 3rd largest in the world after the northern and southern ice caps. Here we have some images of the glacial formations of the North Patagonia Ice Field. This is really just the edge of this immense expanse of snow, since our plane is flying over the middle of it.

These three glaciers were impressively long, and created a lake containing thousands of icebergs. I’d love to know what the name of this glacier is, and see images captured from a boat on that lake.

Now we have reached the truly exciting part of this blog post. In this image we have Torres Del Paine National Park, Nordenskjöld Lake, and Sarmiento Lake. We will be staying at Tierra Patagonia Lodge, on the northeastern edge of Lake Sarmiento.

I took another shot of the upper right corner of Lake Sarmiento, cropped it in even more, and now we can just make out the Tierra Patagonia Lodge. The building has an amazing architectural design, and is a semi-underground building that blends into the landscape. Here we can only see the reflection of the long S-curved glass windows that provide a spectacular view of the Torres.

Here we have some close up views of Torres Del Paine National Park. I gazed at these mountains every day for a week, dreaming about the views from the top of these spires, which were not even climbed until the 1950′s and 1960′s. This airplane view provides a small glimpse of a different perspective of the terrain that lies in the upper reaches of the park.

These are the iconic spires of the Torres.

This week I will continue blogging our hiking and biking adventures from the park and the estancia ranches of southern Patagonia. Thanks for reading.