BD employee Chris Thomas checks in from Argentine Patagonia

Our Warranty Manager and all-around cranker, Chris Thomas, is down in Argentine Patagonia for the next three weeks with climber/photographer Ben Ditto, hoping for a weather window in order to make an ascent in the Cerro Torre or Fitzroy massif. Below is an email that Chris sent to Peter Metcalf (our CEO and President) shortly upon his arrival in EL Chalten, the launching point for ascents in the area.

From: Chris Thomas
Sent: Saturday, January 16, 2010 5:03 PM
To: Peter Metcalf
Subject: El Chalten

Hola de El Chalten! Hope you’re doing well Peter. Just thought I’d send a quick update. Three long but relatively straightforward days of traveling to get here, and now it’s go time!

We arrived here on Thursday morning to absolutely SPLITTER weather. Although it stormed a little bit in the afternoon, the semi-helpful forecast predicted a chance for decent weather on Friday. Despite being travel weary and exhausted, we thought we’d be foolish to waste a good weather day, and started to pack for a single push attempt from Chalten to the summit of Poincenot immediately. The plan was to leave at 11PM, but by 9PM we’d barely eaten dinner and realized we were missing some critical supplies from town… and hadn’t really slept in a few days. Not exactly ideal circumstances for launching a 30+ hour attack on new terrain. We hadn’t even located the approach trailhead yet. So… grudgingly, we decided to sleep in until 5AM the next morning, and just haul a big load up to Paso Superior, a small pass near the base of Fitz Roy, Poincenot, Guillgamet, etc.

We spent all day yesterday hauling 50 lbs each of supplies up to the pass, which took a LONG time. We’re both pretty sore today. Although it was painful to be simply carrying a big backpack of supplies instead of going light and fast climbing, it’s good to be well established up there for the next weather break. In my earlier alpine climbing years I probably would have gone for the climb and not the load carry, but I feel better prepared now that my youthful enthusiasm has been tempered and complimented with experience, some of which were major ass kickers! We’re now very well strategically placed for shot at a big route.

It’s pretty nice to have an internet connection here – when the weather is good, we go climbing. When the weather is bad (most of the time…), I can work on BD projects and communicate with the people I need to at BD, BD Europe and BD Asia. Not a bad set up for the time being…

The forecast isn’t very reliable, but it looks like we might get a chance on Tuesday. You don’t really get a commercial grade forecast here, but NOAA publishes “Meteograms” for the area, which give expected change in barometric pressure, dew point, wind flags, temperature, etc. From that you can extrapolate a rough idea of what to hope for about 24-36 hours out, and a more loosely based guess at a 3-4 day forecast. The plan will be to hike up to Paso Superior (6-9 hours, depending on snow conditions) in the storm on Monday, bivy in a snow cave, and hope that the forecast was correct and climb on Tuesday. Depending on the weather, we’ll either go for Poincenot or Fitzroy.  Fitzroy is really big and cool looking (picture something 50% bigger than El Cap, but on top of a glacier and surrounded by the pointiest mountains you could imagine), but Poincenot is beautiful, too!

This place is truly incredible – even more beautiful and energizing than I had expected. I can’t wait to get out of town and back up into the hills! Conditions are reported to be difficult this year – lots of snow and very few hard freezes – avalanche hazard and unconsolidated snow have shut down many attempts - but I’m not really willing to take other’s word for it, we’re going to go up and have a look for ourselves. Wish us luck!

— Chris