Cerro Madsen

We awoke to Fitzroy starting to clear. It still had not quite made it all the way, but we could start to see the very top. We were going to have the entire day to wait, though, as our goal on this day was to climb a much lesser peak nearby, Cerro Madsen. Madsen was still rather mountainous, but not jagged, full of glaciers, requiring massive technical rock climbing skills. In fact, the description that we had was that it was a rather easy hike and should just be a walk up. We were hoping the view would be spectacular from there.
The hike started with a trail up to Laguna de Los Tres, which was a cirque lake up a steep trail. This trail was very busy the day before with people coming up from Poincenot. We had it to ourselves early in the morning. It was steep with many short switchbacks and lots of loose rock. It took some time just to get up the steep hill that led to the lake . Once we were there it was worth the effort though. The lake was similar to the one the day before sitting right under the glaciers of Fitzroy.

The last little wisp of clouds was hanging on, but you could see the full breadth of the mountain. It
looked like a giant mitten with the thumb very close in, but just absolutely massive. I wondered about the people climbing this as it honestly just looked so foreboding. We weren't here to admire that mountain, though, at least for the next few hours. We had a goal to make it to the top of Cerro Madsen. Without any discernible trail continuing from Laguna de los Tres, we just charged our way up the large boulder field. It was semi-steep, but we moved rather well.

I was often in front of Dad, so I got to stop and take a look down in the valley below. We could see the entire route we had taken the day before from Laguna Torre to Poincenot that crossed the two side by side lakes. This area was similar to Yosemite if the glaciers had not yet retreated in Yosemite. You could really see the dramatic difference that snow and ice could make to a landscape, carving it out in odd shapes. We continued to charge up the scree as we hit a ridge and just kept going. Eventually, though, it got steeper and steeper.

Then we ran into some snow. I was not expecting this and we had both decided not to bring our ice axes because of the extra amount of weight and bulk to carry halfway around the world. Right now, I was wishing that I had it. I am not a good angle estimator, but let's just say it was steep. It was steep enough that I did not want to go sliding away. Dad kicked some steps since he had the better boots and I followed. We were successful and made it across the snow with some care, but only to find a steeper scree slope to follow.

We had some lunch and contemplated our fate. We could not trust the route description that we now had because what we were doing could easily be classified as class 2-3 rather than class 1. We had a comfortable perch for lunch, but did not want to take too many risks the rest of the way up. When we started moving again, the terrain stayed steep and we had to make some choices. Frankly we could not even tell where the top was located because it all just looked like a loose mess. Finally, we split up to see if either one of us could find a better route.
I ended up in one place and Dad ended up in another. My route ended up being not as good as his, but I got a good view out to the glaciers across from Cerro Madsen. Dad's route got him higher and closer to the top. Still, he was able from there to look out to what he thought could be the top of the mountain. It was across a steep, loose, nasty slope that he determined would be too challenging and possibly stupid with how bad the rock was to get there. There had to be some other way to get there, but by this point in the day, neither of us was willing to find it.

We still had lots of daylight left, but we figured this was not worth it. I think Dad was more determined than I was to make it to the top of this peak, but even he had to throw in the towel at some point. We wandered our way on down. When we hit the snow field, I was a bit nervous to give it a try. It was especially steep right at the beginning of it. I tried to slide over to where our footprints were and had to try really hard to keep from continuing that slide all the way down the mountain. There were a couple of points that I thought that I could lose control.
I decided to follow our old footprints, while Dad chose to continue down the snow field. I was happy with my choice as the snow had softened up a bit and allowed me to dig in a bit deeper. I just used my right hand as an ice axe and swiftly I was back on firm ground. Dad seemed to have an easy time on the snow field. When we were both on dry ground, we looked up to talk about how frustrating it was to not make the actual summit. We continued down to get a view of Laguna de los Tres again. This time the lighting was a bit better and we ended up getting some good pictures of the turquoise blue waters from the glacial melt water.
We only met one other party. A group of two that was going up as we were going down. They seemed to be moving good, but I don't think that they made the summit either. On our hike down the trail from the lake to Poincenot, we realized just how great it was to spend the day hiking away from the crowds. There were hundreds of people hiking up to the lake as we were going down. Someone had lost a member of their party and was yelling there name on the way up. Somewhat sad to see something so busy.

Speaking of busy, camp was also that way. We had people camping basically right outside the door of our tent. I wasn't a big fan of that, but I was a big fan of the view we finally got when the last wisps of clouds cleared. I could understand why so many people wanted to spend their days and nights in this most amazing piece of natural beauty.