Page Type:
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Route |
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Lat/Lon:
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41.10527°S / 72.49616°W |
Route Type:
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Mountaineering |
Season:
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Summer |
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Time Required:
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Most of a day |
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Difficulty:
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Moderate Snow |
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Grade:
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III |
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Overview
“Can you have a big climb on a mountain less than 3000 m high?” For the topography snobs in the audience, the answer is “yes” if it happens to be on a Chilean volcano that whose base is at 150 m! The Volcan Osorno is a big, big mountain, with all the attendant challenges in terms of route-finding, weather, snow conditions, and physical exertion.One has to have a permit from the Chilean forest service (CONAF) in order to get on the peak. CONAF has a building at the bottom of the route where a CONAF employee regulates who climbs the peak and issues permits.
Getting There
The journey up the peak began in the nearby tourist town of Puerto Varas, thirty or forty km up from the big city of Puerto Montt. Chile is blessed with an outstanding public transportation infrastructure, with numerous competing bus companies all sporting nearly-new equipment. The bus line from Puerto Varas to Escondido, on the Lago Llanquihue, is where all their old minibuses go to die. We loaded our packs on top of a heap of grocery boxes, duffel bags and enormous suitcases and rattled our way around the lake to the estacion carabineros in Escondido and awaited our transfer.Volcan Osorno is known to most Chileans as a smallish ski resort with a couple of chairlifts and a lodge at the 1300m level. The skiing club of Puerto Varas, Teski, has established a second lodging on the mountain in the form of a modest but comfortable refúgio in the style of Swiss mountain huts. There’s a small but well-stocked bar, bunkrooms, and a dining area with tremendous views of Lago Llanquihue. We arrived by car, courtesy of the refùgio staff, in time for a recon of the trailhead.
See the External Links below for a link to Teski Refugio Volcano Osorno.
Route Description
Volcan Osorno is surfaced, not too surprisingly, in great heaps of loose black pumice. The trail, up the path of an abandoned ski lift, was difficult walking and we were glad to reach the snowfield at about 1600m. Not knowing if this was the end of the glacier or merely accumulated winter snow, we roped up. This proved to be premature as we later saw a guided party walking above us unprotected. The snow started out decently firm, but quickly deteriorated into slippery mush as the day got warmer. Just past the top of the resort’s upper ski lift, we abandoned the snow and moved over to the bare rock above. Clouds and wind now—we got out our shells as we moved up into the cloud deck.We reached the bottom of the glacier at around 2000m and saw two guided groups roping up. Visibility was nil; from pictures we knew only that the route continued east and northeast along the volcano’s broad southwest ridge. For a long while there wasn’t much to see except clouds, the snow slope in front of me, and my boots. Visibility was so bad that Sheryl, fifteen meters behind, disappeared occasionally. I could feel the summit above, the steeper slopes to the side, but they might as well have been on the moon for all we could see of them. But by 2200m, there were occasional glimpses of the sun’s outline through the clouds and we started hoping for clear weather on top. The snow was rather soft with a hard crust about 30cm down; its surface was as smooth and uniform as creamy peanut butter and pitched at a constant 35 degrees.
Eventually, the last wisps of cloud parted and we saw…not the summit, but great field of seracs, proto-seracs, and their debris, scattered over the last 200m to the summit, which was yet invisible above. We eventually made our way through the seracs, placing a couple of pickets. In 10 to 15 min we moved up onto the gently sloping summit plateau.
At our feet, Osorno’s vast glacial headwall dropped 500m to the south bowl. We had a bit of lunch and chatted with a guided party of three that arrived ten minutes later. We descended the normal route (climber’s right) through the seracs. The seracs are 10m high and underlain by poor snow and crevasses.
Essential Gear
Crampons, ice axe, rope, pickets, and ice screws (not needed when we climbed, but guides did have a couple on them)External Links
http://www.teskiclub.cl/Teski Refugio Volcan Osorno 065-566622 info@teski.cl