The Carretera Austral, part 1.

There’s a road through southern Chile, northern Patagonia. It winds down past lakes and glaciers, cliffside bordered valleys, through historically small communities cut off by wilderness from the rest of the country, and the world. This road is called the Carretera Austral. It’s inevitably billed as one of the premier cycle touring routes in South America. Pinochet ordered the road’s construction in the 70s, one of a number of improvements that he introduced to Chile. Paul and I dropped onto this route a few days ago, game to make actual progress south on a dirt road.

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Monkey Puzzle Trail.

Up the road, drop on singletrack to the shortcut bridge and up again back to a road. Finally riding once more a route that someone else researched and recorded, we know what looms ahead. The four to five day jaunt organized as a track through Chile’s Lake District. Turns out the road dirt is more like soft sand, the elevation profile a series of inverted v’s where you power up a short punchy climb only to descend and then do it all over again. Then you reach the volcanoes, where the up down up tapers off until the down doesn’t exist and its all climbing.
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To Copahue.

Cold. Not bitterly so but boardering that edge where it’s a touch chilly without a wind jacket yet clammily sweaty with it. Earlier, we woke up to a sun that peeked out of the clouds, morning warmth one minute scattered shivering the next. Now the sun’s given up and settled behind a thick overcast sky. This will continue all day. We’re en route to the next scheduled border crossing pass, this one at Volcan Copahue. Some friends attempted this crossing at the beginning of summer, they met snow impenetrable. We’re here 4 or 5 months later, a hint of snow peeks down from the highest peaks but mostly everything is bare now.
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