Rio Electrico

We awoke to see Monte Fitzroy with its best lighting yet. With the fresh snow that had fallen on it in the last few days, it looked even more formidable than usual. We had to leave it and our large number of groups camping right on top of us. We made sure to not be too quiet even though there were a group of Israelis camped right on top of us.

Our trail would take us away from Monte Fitzroy to Piedra del Fraile up the valley of the Rio Electrico. We would walk along the trail below the glaciers and mountains. We walked like we were going back to Laguna de los Tres, but instead stayed near the Rio Blanco. This took us through boulder fields and also through the forest above the river. We were soon upon the Piedras Blancas Glacier. We walked up the river that took us to Laguna Piedras Blancas. It just doesn't get old to see this crystal clear water with hanging glaciers pouring into them in the form of large waterfalls.

We stayed some time at the lake and threw some rocks. This one was so much more quiet and so was the trail in general as we were now off the main tourist track. We would see a handful of people on this day, but most of the people did the loop from Laguna Torre to Poincenot then back to El Chalten. This lake was quiet even though it was just a half hour side trip from the trail.
We wandered back down to where we had stashed our packs. We took the river course until we came upon a short cut route. We decided to take that which cut off a bit of time that it would have taken to walk down the river course of the Rio Blanco and meet up with the Rio Electrico. The trail was not in fantastic shape being muddy with some exposed roots, but we were able to track it down. We ran into another father-son group that were hiking together.

The views were good along the trail with different colored mountains showing up. There were some with reds and yellows in them along with the grays and whites of the granite and glaciers. We took our time hiking on this day because we had plenty of it. The trail went up a hill then back down until we ran into the original trail. We took a lunch break along a small creek coming in and soon we were going up the Rio Electrico. This was a large impressive river with big white water coming through. We found our way through the trees until the valley opened up. We saw some really impressive waterfalls with a glacial valley behind it.

We were now in Piedra del Fraile, an enormous open valley named after the large glacial erratic (a boulder) that sat in the middle of this valley. Next to this boulder was a settlement with rooms, a dining hall, and camping spots. We now had left the National Park and were in private land. So, of course, it was now going to cost us an arm and a leg to stay there. We were now below Cerro Electrico which was not as impressive as Monte Fitzroy, but definitely still impressive with the polished white granite. It was also insanely windy. We found a camping spot that was out of the wind, but could hear it whipping all around us. There was a fence built to block out the wind. We also only had a few other neighbors that wandered in as the night drew upon us. The rest of the day, we just took it easy, playing cribbage and reading books. Cribbage was played in the dining area because the wind was so intense that the cards may blow away. I was still holding a rather commanding lead in the cribbage games, but Dad was starting to inch closer and closer. I was starting to miss my family a lot by this point in the trip, but I really cherished the time I got to spend with my dad out in a place that others did not often tread. We would have one more day here in the Fitzroy region to explore, so we had that to look forward to the following day.