Summer Adventures in Patagonia: Cerro Castillo hiking

Headed south on Sunday morning hitching to Villa Cerro Castillo, a small town below the mountains of Cerro Castillo in the national park. As luck would have it the hitching was quite fast and when I got into town there was a ´traditional festival´on the go with bull castration, horses being broken in and 10 sheep on the spit for lunch. I was too late to see the bulls being done over, but watched some great rodeo action as the local gaucho´s broke in their new horses and queued up for the lamb which was handed out to all and sundry in great hunks of meat, no plates, with a sophapilla. Damn fine food.
The next morning was still raining but I decided to head up on a shortened version of the 4 day tral in the park to tweak out the highlights of the views of the main Cerro Castillo and the head of an awesome valley with a camp aptly named Camamento Neozelande. It was named after a group of kiwi´s who based themselves here in ´76 to climb a few of the peaks in the area. A solid few hours of uphill and I got to spend the afternoon with the weather clearing enough to see the peaks at the head of the valley, but still cold enough that it was sleeting in camp and the hills were covered in fresh snow. The valley that the campamento neozelande is in is quite stunning, circled to the west, north and east by these raggy spired peaks of the cerro castillo range and with morraine walled glacial tarns filling each valley, I was quite spellbound, spending almost an hour huddled in the sleet drinking tea and looking at them through the bino´s.
Camped that night under lenga trees with parakeets for company.
The next morning was still a bit cloudy and wet, but I headed off up to about 1200m in the company of a Swiss guy, Tom, who had arrived at camp the previous evening. We had a stiff climb for 2.5 hours up to the base of the main Cerro where the views of the peak were really close with a hanging glacier coming off the foot of the cliffs emptying into a laguna. The wind was so strong, the strongest I have ever had on a hike, that at times i had to crawl on all 4´s to get up the scree and boulder covered slope to the top. The wind and cold had turned the hard granite rocks on the slope into a field of weathered slices of rock, like onion rings, so it was like walking on rubble. We had a brief lunch in a tiny bit of shelter at the top soaking in the views, snow and wind before heading bak down to camp.
What was also so good about the walk was I got to see the peaks that Lucy and I had so enjoyed watching when we were biking from Chile Chico south along the southern shores of Lago General Carrerra. They had looked so stark and awesome from across the lake in that hot almost desert environment we were in that it was a treat to be able to get up close.