Not everything in Argentina was rough, and here is a little yang for the yuri.

We rented a car from a horrible company called Wagen.  Don’t worry, I’ll get to the girl part.  The car’s battery died very quickly, leaving us stranded in El Chalten, which is the hub from which many trails spawn out into the Andes.  We had to wait a whole day for the horrible company, once again, called Wagen, to come out and replace the battery after their very unhelpful employee made us jump the car, to little avail.  If you are ever out in Argentina and you need a reliable car, don’t call Wagen. Even worse, they would not give any partial refund. You could get stuck out in the wild with no chance for help.  Luckily we were close to a phone, and that phone was close to an aspiring model to help my camera wile away the hours.  Okay that sounds stupid.  But it’s kinda true.

While in El Chalten, we stayed in a charming little hotel.  At night, I would stay up late and process photos, drink coffee, and listen to music.  This is what I always like to do after dinner.  Maybe that sounds lame.  Anyway, the nice Argentine family that ran the hotel took notice of me and I got to know them.  The mom that ran the hotel had a 20-year-old daughter named Natalia who had a unique look but had never modeled before.  It’s a small town way down by Antarctica and they don’t have many model/photographer resources down thataway.  Anyway, since we ended up with an extra few hours, I asked if she wanted to go out and shoot.   Natalia’s English wasn’t so great, but I was able to draw things out in the dirt like calling a play in flag football.  We ended up with a lot of good shots that I will add over the next few months.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Model, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

We left while it was still dark to reach this spot by the morning. The glacier is already a deadly blue, but the morning light gets into the nooks and crannies and makes the blue reflect around like an argon laser.

It was really cold when I took this. And raining. And windy. I had a panoply of towels, rags, and other drying agents in various pockets, constantly wiping down the lens. I also had the sweet lady D3X inside of a clear plastic bag to protect it from the whipping rain. Every 30 minutes or so, I could hear an ungodly creaking and ripping of ice as another cleaved off into the water below. I understand if there was going to be a huge piece cleave off that the splash could actually make it all the way to me. I both wanted it to happen and didn’t want it to happen at the same time. I think my indecision made it not happen.

Also — interesting news? I am working on a little short film from Patagonia. It will be about 8 minutes long… I don’t know when it will be done. It seems to be taking longer than expected!

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

This is a shot from one of our campsites.  I set up the camera with the intervelometer to automatically take a shot every 30 seconds as we set up camp and did our best to stay warm.

Here is the cast of characters from left to right.  Sitting on a bump on a log on the left is Yuri.  He is in the process of getting a jackboot to the face.  I tease Yuri, but he is actually a very nice guy and I like him.  That doesn’t mean you want to room with him or share a tent, mind you.

Second from the left is me.  Don’t you like my hat?  I got it on Etsy.

Third is Irina. I hope I spelled that right. She was our chef and handled most of the cooking, keeping me well fed and warm. She also came out on a few photography adventures too and was always there to lighten the mood by making Russian animal sounds. For example, did you know that Russian frogs don’t say “ribbit ribbit” and Russian dogs don’t say “ruff ruff”? This is only a small sampling of the campfire discussions. You can try to guess down in the comments what they say…

Fourth/Fifth is Yana and Dima. They had no trouble keeping warm. Their sleeping bags could be zipped together. Dima tried to be helpful and suggested that perhaps I could do the same thing with Yuri. After saying that, he reared back, laughing like Brezhnev, and then drinking like Yeltsin.

On the far right is Vulva. Again, I can’t quite say his name properly, but it’s very close, within the delicate region of “Vulva”. He was a very cool dude, richly festooned with silver Buddhist paraphernalia from his various expeditions to Tibet and Nepal.

They are all great people and I enjoy my time with them tremendously.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

Daily Photo – I’ve Made it to the Edge of the World

This was shot in the final hours of daylight, near the southern tip of Argentina and the edge of Chile, just a glacier’s throw from Antarctica.

In the morning, we woke up at 4:30 AM in -7 degree cold. I hardly slept 30 minutes the whole night. I was in a tiny 2-man tent with Yuri. The noxious fumes of our tiny prison reminded me, if you will, of the inside of a tauntaun that had spent its life consuming cognac and cigarettes. Furthermore, his snore had the sonorous bass and carrying power of a humpback whale with none of the beauty.

I started on one edge of these rugged peaks and moved around to this side, to get the view from the glacial lake. The spiked mountains there are Cerro Torre, and I was very lucky to see them without cloud cover. I understand they are covered up 90% of the time, so to have crystal clear air was fortunate. The glacier there, which presents on the right but really goes back behind many more mountains, is called “glacier grande”.

I did a lot of other things this day too, including a 45-minute 1500-foot ascent up an icy trail that was not really a trail at all. Dima and Vulva (Vulva is one of the other Russian gentleman who joined us on the trip — it’s hard to pronounce with a strange V-W sound, but he seemed to respond when I called him “Vulva”) went up the mountain with me in the pitch black, using only headlamps. I’ll have more on that story later because it was pretty sketchy. But, alas, we were able to see Fitz Roy as the sun turned the tips pink. After that, we began the long additional 10km hike that brought us to this location. I stayed here watching icebergs float by until the last morsels of dusk remained.

Last, I hope you like the new theme – it should come online sometime today. There are still minor little probs — the comments will get better, etc… but we will ease into it. The new design was done by one of the top graphic designers in the world – a Frenchman named Fabian Barral. He used images from my passport to create the look and feel. I think it’s great — let’s hope you do too!

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, LucisArt, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

Our hike is starting to get closer to our quarry. The destination inside the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares are the isolated peaks of FItz Roy.

Every few kilometers the terrain can change drastically. Because all the land around here is recently glaciated, the soil is very fresh and full of life. The strange mountain formations make for unpredictable weather patterns and cloud/fog formations across the landscapes. Even better, we are here in the middle of autumn, so many of the leaves are turning.

It’s always a welcome relief to take off my pack, set it down, and then wander about for some photos. I grabbed this one along the way to share with you all.

I noticed that the Wikipedia entry for Monte Fitz Roy said, “the weather in the area is exceptionally inclement and treacherous”. No shit. Wait until you see the shot I upload tomorrow. It was taken after 16km of walking in a single day after waking up to -7 degrees at 4:30 AM from a tent that contained the heavily scented noxious scents of the one and only Yuri.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel

This is the start of what would be a 40km backpacking trek through the Andes. And I mean THROUGH the Andes.

I have come with my friend Dima, who is ex-Soviet miltiary. He’s tough. At 23, he led a 3-week expedition through Siberia to find the rare Siberian Tiger. Now he is 43 and he hasn’t slowed down any.

If you look closely at this photo, over on the middle right you can see some very sharp vertical peaks. In there is Fitz Roy, one of the hardest places to reach in the world and even harder to photograph. That is our destination.

Filed under the categories: Argentina, El Chalten, Nikon D3X, Patagonia, Travel