Land of Tempest by Eric Shipton

Author:Eric Shipton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing
Published: 2016-01-27T05:00:00+00:00

– Chapter 12 –

The Approach

I awoke at 1 o’clock to find heavy rain beating against the tent, and the canvas flapping angrily in the wind. It seemed incredible that less than four hours before I had been sitting on the shore enjoying the stillness of a perfect evening. But such unpredictable changes in the weather are only to be expected in Patagonia, so with a curse of resignation I buried my head in my sleeping-bag to protect it from the fine spray coming through the roof of the tent. I drifted back to sleep wondering vaguely how far Covadonga had progressed across the Gulf of Penas before the storm began. At 4 o’clock I woke again, to find it raining and blowing still harder. Above the noise of the storm, I could now hear the roar of the stream, which sounded so close and so loud that I wondered if after all the ten foot banks would be sufficient to contain the swollen torrent. I opened the door of the tent and looked out. It was already light, and as there appeared to be no immediate danger of a flood, I went back to bed.

We had intended to be off to an early start that morning, 5 o’clock I think was the time agreed upon, but now, in these conditions, it seemed a bit pointless, so I dozed on until 6.30 before rousing the others. We lingered over breakfast, vaguely hoping that the weather might moderate, but by 8 o’clock we could delude ourselves no longer; the holiday was over and we must turn out to face the harsh reality of our self-inflicted torment. As we splashed about in the mud, our hands numbed by the wind and rain, we realised again how lucky we had been to have had the opportunity of sorting things out in fine weather. Four sacks, each containing four 2-day food packs, had been strapped to our Yukon carrying-frames, and all we had to do was to shoulder our 60-lb. loads and start marching.

The cloud ceiling was down to about 1,000 feet, but through the driving rain we could still see the base of the mountains at the far end of the plain. Beyond the sand-dunes and moraine hillocks grouped around the shore, we reached a stretch of flat country, covered with tussocks of coarse grass. To our great relief the ground was firm, for we had been quite prepared to find here a wide expanse of bog, like the one that we had encountered at Puerto Eden, which would have taken us a very long time to cross. After three-quarters of an hour we found ourselves confronted by some low hills, formed by a series of roches moutonnes, or outcrops of rock worn smooth by glacier action, over which we had to climb.

When we reached the highest ridge of the hills, we looked down upon a lake about 4 miles long and nearly 2 miles wide, which was damned back from the sea by the trunk of the glacier.

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