One more thing I want to say is just gratitude for everyone who’s joined along the way. It’s been real. ☀️⛰️ And if you’re just seeing this for the first time, you can find out more about @nextgenmen ’s wilderness-based programming at nextgenmen.ca/expeditions 🧡 #ritesofpassage
The point of all that is not to say that we had a terrible time. The point is that in those moments of authentic challenge, you truly stretch your limits. And almost without noticing it, you become a new person—a person who is capable of more than you ever thought you were before. That’s one of the things I love about not just these trips but almost all the trips I’ve been on. I’ve learned so much about myself and what I’m capable of. And it’s an honour to be able to share that kind of experience with young people. 🫂 @nextgenmen #ritesofpassage #onwards
Documented the full wildfire evacuation story from our Rite of Passage Expedition on @exposure 📖 but here’s an excerpt: “Considering the smoke in the evening, the glow of the wildfire at night, and the approaching storm, it was a simple call to turn back and head for the Forks campground. After a quick march around Three Isle Lake, we stopped for an early lunch at the top of the switchbacks. At first, we were able to appreciate a view of the distant valley—but then smoke started rolling over the mountain pass.
In a matter of minutes, the clouds turned a dirty orange and the mountains disappeared into the haze. The smoke was so thick it stung our eyes and made our noses run. You could almost see it clinging to the boys’ bodies as they swung their backpacks back onto their shoulders.
The first raindrops started to fall as we descended the switchbacks. Before long, the wildfire smoke had given way to a storm in full force. By the time we made it to some semblance of cover in the forested valley below, the group was soaked. Even among the trees, rain pounded relentlessly from above, soaking into moss-covered rocks and forming puddles filled with pine needles.
“How much longer do you think storm will last?” I typed out on the satellite communication device, shaking water off the keypad in between each word. It felt like the end of the world.” #peterlougheedprovincialpark #hiketherockies #neverstopexploring
I imagined it was the same wind that had met us in the valley of Los Perros at the end of November, the same wind that had fought us above Glaciar Gray at Paso John Gardner. This wind had followed us down from Paso del Viento and along the edge of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, it had chased us through the Argentinian desert as we gamely tried to hitchhike north—and now it threw everything it had at us. ‘Make what you will of your puny muscles, your Gore-Tex and polarized sunglasses,’ it seemed to say, leaping from boulder to boulder like a leopard after its prey. ‘You’re in my territory now.’
Maybe I was getting carried away personifying the wind in my journal that night, but that’s truly how it felt. The air felt angry, vengeful. To say the landscape felt inhospitable would be an understatement. Cerro Castillo towered unmoving above us as the wind bared its teeth.
A few hundred metres lower in elevation, we came to a wooden sign held in place by piles of stones. “Con viento no cruzar,” it declared. “When there is wind, do not cross.” 😆 #ok #sure
“It’s a joy when I sit down and think of the good times that we have / And what we do to make it through when the good turns into bad / Well, I hope you’ll find it in your heart and know these words are true / And please don’t fuss because I must go do what I must do” #stephenmarley #iykik #patagonia
An hour or so and a couple hundred metres of elevation later, we started climbing the pass above the lake. The wind fought us every step.
Even in Torres del Paine, we hadn’t experienced wind like this. It had the unstoppable force of an ocean wave, knocking us off balance and backwards. It had the ferocity of a wild animal, scrabbling madly at our jackets and our hoods. It was rabid. Savage. With the mean spirit of a schoolyard bully, it slammed us one way and then another, hitting us when we were down, refusing to relent.
“It feels like a punch to the face,” I yelled in Sarah’s ear like you would at a deafening concert. We were still below the puento mas alto that would mark the high point of the pass. #patagonia #cerrocastillo
Each sunrise is a shot in the dark. An overnight forecast in the backcountry is only so accurate, and by the time you can see well enough to predict the weather yourself, you’re often already committed to the trail. You never quite know how the sun will interact with the altitude of the clouds—and the glacier-edged mountains of Patagonia in particular have a reputation for cloaking themselves from view, even when the skies around them are clear.
It had rained the day before. It was supposed to be a cloudy morning. But for a brief window of time, the sun streaked underneath the clouds and lit the towers of Fitz Roy on fire. 🌅 #patagonia #lagodelostres #cerrofitzroy
Usually, I feel the buzz of an early morning departure like it’s an adventure, the energy of anticipation pouring into me with the coming of the dawn. As I laced up my hiking boots to the red light of my headlamp in the Poincenot campground, however, listening to the endless wind rush through the trees around Río Blanco, all I felt was implacable determination.
Halfway in elevation to Laguna de los Tres, the rugged mountains looming large and black above us, and the light of the swiftly approaching sun burning red behind us, I wasn’t sure what I felt. I had hiked about 60 kilometres in two days and then woken up three hours past midnight, and I felt it. It was in the parts of my body that I wouldn’t normally notice: my hip flexors, the sides of my toes, the dwindling energy in my forearms. I did my best to keep up. 😮💨 #patagonia #lagodelostres #cerrofitzroy
Someday soon, the Poincenot backcountry campground in Los Glaciares National Park will probably get locked into institutional formality. Right now, it’s a loose collection of trails and sites sheltered under the trees near Rio Blanco, filled in by multicoloured tents and backpackers from all over the world. As we wrapped up another long day of hiking, we stared up at the cloud-covered peaks of Fitz Roy, wondering what daybreak would hold. 🪥👁️⛰️ #patagonia #lagodelostres #cerrofitzroy
As we reached the last pass of the trek, we looked back on the ice field one more time. Sunlight battled with clouds on the horizon, but we could see even more of the mountain peaks than we had the previous day, ice spilling over the far-off range, drowning the mountains in a sea of white and blue. “Last view of the glacier,” Zara quoted from the trip notes she’d transcribed into her journal.
Then we followed a false trail too far east and had to backtrack up to the pass a second time. “Actual last view of the glacier,” Sarah teased.
But as we wound our way up around Cerro Huemul, I fell behind the others, stopping again and again to steal glances at the wide-open horizon behind us. “Last view of the glacier,” I whispered to myself, then continued onwards one final time, the wind at my back like a forlorn friend wishing me back home. #patagonia #huemulcircuit
We departed El Chaltén at 5 AM, which let us cross the tree line early enough to take a detour to the viewpoint at Loma del Pliegue Tumbado, tacking an additional 12 kilometres and several hundred metres of elevation onto what was already a 16 kilometre day.
It only became tiring towards the end, when the snow-buried mountains of Fitzroy were swallowed by the edges of the cliffs above the valley and my body started sensing the nearness of our first backcountry campsite. As we crossed the wildflower meadows overlooking Rio Túnel, I found myself remembering that old saying about the sun on your face, the wind at your back, and the road rising up to meet you.
“The wind was pouring towards us from Paso del Viento,” I wrote in my journal that night. “But you know what they say about two out of three.” #patagonia #huemulcircuit
Even the edge of the glacier was stunning: solid ridges of ice covered with gravel from the moraine and edged with crystal-clear water, with the white peaks of Cerro Grande high above. It felt like we were on the edge of something immense. But it wasn’t until we started climbing the pass that I realized that even that feeling hadn’t done it justice—the blue-tinged textured waves of the glacier stretched untold kilometres to the slopes of the mountain range. And it wasn’t until we crossed the pass and were looking down upon the full breadth of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field that that I began to understand what immensity in this landscape truly meant. #patagonia #huemulcircuit
