UNWANTED REST AND FORCED RECOVERY

9:30AM. Sun’s up and our entire bodies are sore lumps of meat and bone. Eyes barely remain open and hardly focus…last night’s cross-fit marathon on rock had drained us of all strength. We’re burning loads of daylight but can’t muster enough will to move a single muscle. Falling in and out of sleep now and then, around 2 o’clock PM, we finally got out of the tent and head south west.
We had about 6 hours of light left to travel 15km to our next waypoint – cerro Ramon de Girard – not so much a nunatak but just a large pile of rocks, spat out from the glacial plateau.

Getting down from paso Marconi and switching over to our skis lifted our spirits a bit.
Conditions on the ice were far from perfect, but moving at 4k’s per hour through this vas expance of alpine beauty was quite the happy place to be in.
Menacing crevasses and tricky snow bridges weren’t slowing us down much as we skied towards the looming walls of Cordon Mariano Moreno. Magnificent faces with long, complex and inviting mixed lines, a blue sky overhead and not a single whiff of wind…even better than the best weather we could hope for.

Skinning our way through this frozen paradise, we soon found ourselves bathing in the golden light of the setting sun and soon enough, dove into a moonlit landscape of raw ice and harsh beauty.

We were, quite literally, at the end of the world and truly alone. And it was so worth it!