Laguna Negra Traverse Day 2

The middle day of our Refugio Lopez to Refugio Laguna Negro traverse was... well... a doozy.  The "trail" was marked on the map but calling it a trail was a vast exaggeration.  Really, boulders along the way had red markers which we used to connect-the-dots for 8.5 grueling hours up, over, and around the mountains.

We started off going straight up Cerro Lopez and immediately discovered what we were in for:

This picture speaks for itself.  Shannon having "fun".

About halfway up, we hit a little alpine tarn.  While we worked really hard all day, the views like this made up for the work time and time again.

As we finally reached Cerro Lopez' ridge, we had stunning views in all directions.  First to the watery world of Bariloche.

And in the other direction to a world of alpine rock.

The next segment would be the toughest of the day as we descended more than 1,000 feet of loose scree, shale, boulder, etc.  It literally felt like the mountain was crumbling underneath us.  This section banged up our legs pretty well resulting in some... choice words.  At the bottom we were very happy to look back knowing we wouldn't return that way.

We descended the chute in the center...  dicey...

Our path forward looked spectacular as we would dip a little lower and then climb over the next ridge passing through the high saddle left of center in this photo.  Views like this kept us going and excited.

Fast forward a few hours and a lot of sweat and we arrived at that saddle and soaked it in.

Then traversed across yet another boulder field.  This gives you an idea of how the trail looked for about half the day.  That red marker to the right of Shan lets you know... yup... this is it...

Finally, we bumped over one more ridge and happily saw LAGUNA NEGRA!  We made it!

Or did we!?  It turns out the lake is big, lined with cliffs and the refugio is on the opposite shore.  This traverse tested our mental limits one more time with a heart-breaking battle around the lake complete with rope aided cliff passages.

So close... yet so far... the refugio is the red building in the... distance.

Finally we DID arrive and got settled into the very full refugio.  With it's lake-side location and an easy access trail (we'd use this the next day) many youth from Buenos Aires were relaxing and lounging at the hut.  We caught up with new friends we'd met in Lopez the night before (Pablo, some Europeans) and had a great time playing some dice games, having a bottle of wine, and listening to a guitar concert under a beautiful starry sky before collapsing in the loft of the full refugio.  A great way to finish an exhausting day!