Excerpt
MY PATAGONIA
An otherworldly range of mountains exists in Patagonia, at the southern end of
the Americas. It is a sublime range, where ice and granite soar with a
dancer’s grace. From the mountains’ feet tumble glaciers and dark
forests of beech. The summits float in the southern sky, impossibly remote.
Climbers who gaze upon these wonders ache to unlock their secrets. Hard, steep,
massive, these might be our planet’s most perfect mountains. To court
these summits is to graft fear to your heart, for all is not idyllic beauty
among the great peaks of Patagonia. They stand squarely athwart what sailors
refer to as the “roaring forties” and “furious
fifties”—that region of the Southern Hemisphere between 40° and
60° south latitude known for ferocious wind and storm. The violent weather
spawned over the great south sea charges through the Patagonian Andes with
gale-force wind, roaring cloud, and stinging snow. Buried like a rapier deep
into the heart of the southern ocean, Patagonia is a land trapped between angry
torrents of sea and sky.
The horrendous weather more than makes up for the fact that the mountains of
Patagonia do not count extreme altitude ... read full excerpt from: ENDURING PATAGONIA ebook
