"I Tread the Land That's Ne'er Been Trod..."

Prior to my travels south, I fully intended on posting frequent entries, but with journaling for the IPY-SCOTIA project’s website (go to http://web2.geol.sc.edu/barbeau/ipy/index.asp and click on Journals and Photos to see entries and images from December and January), I never really found the time to keep up with my own online “journal.” I was, however, able to keep up with my written journal, and will now share some of the highlights of my journey, thus allowing the compass needle to cease its spinning and to realign itself with ~0 degrees declination in the northern hemisphere.

---

After leaving Columbia the evening of the 11^th of December, 2008, Barbeau and I found ourselves a hop (to Dallas, TX), a skip (to Santiago, Chile), and a jump (to Punta Arenas, Chile) away from South Carolina. We arrived in Punta Arenas on the evening of the 12^th, after an epic journey of connecting flights, including a brilliantly beautiful daytime flight hopping southward along the snowcapped and cloud-crowned Andes, Earth’s exterior scars of subduction and melting, en route to the “most Austral city in the world.”

"Sandy Point," Chile

We spent a couple of days in Punta Arenas preparing for field work in Tierra del Fuego, taking in the sights of corrugated tin, stray dogs, and pastel painted houses on the hill, and visiting old (to Dave) and new (to me) friends on the Lawrence M. Gould and Nathaniel B. Palmer, the United States Antarctic Program’s (USAP) research vessels.

Lunch on the Gould with Captain Joe (Uncle Joe), Dan, Greg, and Lindsey.

View of Punta Arenas from the pier on the bridge of the Nathaniel B. Palmer.

Aboard the Palmer... "Do Not Freeze."

On the morning of December 14^th, we packed up our red rental Mitsubishi 4x4 with camping gear borrowed from the USAP and ventured north and east towards the narrowest part of the Straits of Magellan. The road wound us between low hills, occasionally zipping us through small towns, and along the shores of the Strait, affording us glimpses of haunted shipwrecks, oxidized by waves. At the narrows, we caught a ferry across the sound to the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, escorted by dolphins racing playfully in the wake that whitened the blue-gray water.

Shipwreck along the Straits of Magellan.

A view across the Straits to Tierra del Fuego from the ferry.

One of our many escorts across the Straits.

Soon after we filled our gas cans with extra diesel, the paved highways of the South American mainland transitioned into the far less frequented gravel roads of Tierra del Fuego. The Mitsubishi kicked up dust, tracing its way along the map I was navigating from, taking us ever southward through flat, scrub-filled plains dotted with sheep and guanaco (goofy looking llama-like creatures) to rolling hills with winding streams, until we started to spot snow-kissed mountains in the distance. Ten hours after leaving Punta Arenas, the truck was zig-zagging back and forth along mountain switchbacks in a fog-laden darkness that mud-coated headlights were too dim to cut through. Under the cover of darkness, we pitched a tent along the road next to Lago Deseado, and ate a dinner of chicken and rice courtesy of food dehydration, airtight packaging systems, and a dragonfly camp stove. Tierra del Fuego revealed its breathtaking beauty in the warm sunlight of the morning, and I ate cereal and drank orange juice in a camp chair, perched on the banks of a sparkling, cold, deep, wind-whipped lake nestled amidst green mountains, underneath the bluest of all blue skies.

Lago Deseado over breakfast.

Red Mitsubishi with switchback sign at Lago Deseado.

Waterfall en route to Lago Fagnano.

The truck climbed higher in the mountains to then descend upon what is probably the most spectacular lake in Tierra del Fuego- Lago Fagnano- brilliantly turquoise (see Gigapan photos taken by Team Barbeau: http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=14087&window_height=575&window_width=1007 and http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=14089 ). Stretching east to west, the well-worn Rocas Verde stare across the lake at the heights of the Tobifera and Cordillera Darwin, the lake- a watery delineation of the strike-slip fault that separates the South American tectonic plate from the Scotia plate. For a few days, home was a small yellow tin-sided and red corrugated tin-roofed cabin at Estancia Lago Fagnano (see http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=14094 ).

Looking south across Lago Fagnano to the Scotia Plate!

Field work consisted of a half-day hike up Monte Hope on the north side of the lake to collect sandstones, followed by a full day of hiking and sample collecting that included a zodiac ride across the lake in an epic quest to eventually reach the Cordillera Darwin by foot. We spent the 16^th of December scrambling up the sides of mountains, through langa-choked forests, over and around beaver dams, thrashing along thorn and brush-choked river banks, and moonwalking across turba-filled bogs in search of Cordillera granites. Finding ourselves still a considerable distance from the Cordillera after hiking and sampling for more than seven hours (~5 miles south of the lake), we reluctantly turned back north towards Lago Fagnano, so not to miss the boat that would return for us in another six hours. All in all, the trek totaled to 13 hours of what is probably the most physically (and mentally) arduous experience of my life thus far, but it was also extremely gratifying. There is something powerful about such a walk through such a wilderness… something primal and innate about navigating “no where,” and it’s a feeling I won’t soon forget.

Cordillera Darwin (snow-capped in the distance) from Monte Hope (1st field day).

Looking east from Monte Hope. Rocas Verde to the left, Estancia Lago Fagnano in the mid-right, Argentina in the distance.


Dessication cracks (mud cracks) and turba (orange) on Monte Hope.

Stomping grounds for field day 2. Snowy peaks = Cordillera Darwin.


An early morning rainbow I spied piercing the Scotia Plate on field day 2.


Yours truly, bagging a rock sample about 3 hours into the epic trek.



Beautiful. Cordillera Darwin.


Sitting on the Scotia Plate. Trusty ol' Vasques.


7+ hours in at the turn-around point and still smiling despite the discomforts.

On the 18^th of December, a packed Mitsubishi churned the gravel of Tierra del Fuego for the last time, fuel cans rattling in the truck bed, on the way back to the South American mainland and the small city of Punta Arenas. Back in Punta Arenas, I sent my parents an e-mail letting them know I was well, and awaited the next leg of my journey to the bottom of the world.

Sedimentary rocks of Tierra del Fuego. Me for scale.

(Next post: second leg of the journey- Antarctica)