Category: cycling

Bikepacking Patagonia – day 2

On By Rick McIn best bike rides, cycling, hiking, travel2 Comments

Jan 15, 2019 – 64km

day 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5/6 |7/8 | 9/10 | 11 | 12/13 | 14 | 15 | 16/17 | 18 | 19/20 | 21/23 end

I’d hiked Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park in 2006. Surprisingly, there aren’t many trails.

So I bypassed it yesterday to get a bigger jump on the CA.

My first night in the tent was a perfect evening. No wind. Very warm.

It dawned a gorgeous day. Scenery great in every direction.

I tried to reorganize the system on the bike. It worked. A bit better.

My legs — cramped in the tent the previous night — felt surprisingly good on the bike.

I made good time … until hitting the first gravel of the trip so far.

Quality of roads degrades as you get further south. The last 600+ km entirely gravel.

I chatted with 3 other touring cyclists, all German.

One couple was just finishing the CA northward. They said they enjoyed the southern end least. ☹️

I stopped in pretty Cochamó (pop. 4000). Internet has only recently made it here. And it’s SLOW. I used the free service in the public library. And the faster free service at Municipal office.

I’d been to Cochamó before on my way to hike the Cochamó Valley in 2016.

It’s known as the Yosemite of South America. Rock climbers from around the world come to climb the valley’s several 1,000 meters (3,300 ft) granite walls.

The hiking is hard core. Too difficult, I felt. At a hostel I met an American who’s been going to Cochamó Valley since the early 2000s. His own project is linking ridges up on those cliffs. While there he’s been volunteering for trail building and rescue operations.

Unfortunately the valley is getting too popular. Unprepared people are arriving and getting injured on the trails. There are even more hassles now than when I was there. On my hiking site I try to discourage hikers from making the trip.

None of the restaurants in Cochamó looked appealing. So I ate only ice cream.

Roads were excellent continuing out of Cochamó. It’s very rural.

Fish farming is a huge industry here too.

Surprisingly, I seemed to run out of gas. It was general fatigue. Nothing specific. Legs were pretty good despite cramping the previous day.

I got the tent set up at 6:30pm just in time. Showers began.

day 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5/6 |7/8 | 9/10 | 11 | 12/13 | 14 | 15 | 16/17 | 18 | 19/20 | 21/23 end

Bikepacking Patagonia – day 1

On By Rick McIn cycling2 Comments

Jan 14, 2019 – 64km

day 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5/6 |7/8 | 9/10 | 11 | 12/13 | 14 | 15 | 16/17 | 18 | 19/20 | 21/23 end

It’s about 200km to the ferry at the bottom of this map. If you head south. South on the Great Southern Road.

Therefore I headed … east 🙄 towards Petrohué Waterfalls and Vincent Perez Rosales National Park.

Not the shortest route, but more scenic. It adds at least 100km.

But I did avoid Puerto Montt, nobody’s favourite tourist town. That’s the traditional start of the Carretera Austral.

Though I checked out of Casa Azul hostel at 10:30am, it wasn’t until 1:45pm that I finally rode away from Austral Bikes to start the trip.

I’m covered up because of slight sunburn day 0.

It took HOURS to get my Canadian phone loaded with data for the trip south. In fact, it was Juan Pablo at the bike shop who got most of it done. He came in special on his day off to help me out.

Why can’t someone figure out an easy way to get a local phone number abroad?

Of the 6 phone providers Entel is best in the south. Weirdly you can’t buy a sim card from Entel — they send you to a department store for that. Weirdly, the normal place to top up a sim card is in a pharmacy. Chileans call a sim a “chip” or “chip card”, similar to credit cards with chips.

#IHatePhoneCompanies

I’d planned to take an easy half day out to Petrohué. Juan Pablo challenged me to make it all the way to Cochamó as it would be the best stop. 🙄

Another beautiful day.

I stopped only once for a quick lunch.

Turning south on to a smaller highway left me with a tiny shoulder.

I actually preferred this road over the dedicated bike lane on the tourist highway. There was very little traffic headed south.

Keeping up my speed I would have made Cochamó by about 8:30pm.

Unfortunately my quads were cramping so I quit about 30km short. Set up the tent in a construction site about 6pm

An Andean Fox — as is so often the case down here — was lurking around my campsite after dinner.

day 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5/6 |7/8 | 9/10 | 11 | 12/13 | 14 | 15 | 16/17 | 18 | 19/20 | 21/23 end

Bikepacking Patagonia – day 0

On By Rick McIn best bike rides, cycling, travel5 Comments

Jan 13, 2019

day 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5/6 |7/8 | 9/10 | 11 | 12/13 | 14 | 15 | 16/17 | 18 | 19/20 | 21/23 end

Atypically, I did something smart.

Instead of dashing off instantly on a (potentially) 4 week cycling trip as soon as I got the bike … I took a test drive day instead.

There’s a super popular cycling route Puerto Varas to Petrohue. along Llanquihue, the second largest lake in Chile.

It’s a dedicated cycling lane on good pavement.

I rode out to Venado Beach. And back.

That was enough to know I loved the rental bike. 🙂

On my return I realized I’d left two items on the Lifeguard stand base at the beach. So I turned around and cycled back to the beach. That added another 2 1/2 hours to my test drive.

One item was there. But somebody had picked up my expensive Apple EarPod chicklet case. It’s useless to them without the EarPods. And my EarPods are now useless to me.

I’m forced back to headphones with wires. 😠

I stopped back at my rental agency Austral Bikes in Puerto Varas.

Happy to meet Diana who had answered in English clearly explaining costs and details. She was by far best online of any of the companies I had contacted.

Cost was US$445 for 4 weeks. In addition I’ll pay for boxing and shipping the bike back to PV end-of-trip. That might cost another $40. If I don’t use all the days they’ll credit me 50% / day back.

I’m very happy with the rental bike her son Juan Pablo provided. It’s a brand new Silverback with 26 inch wheels, recommended for the gravel roads yet to come. Basic. Durable. Hopefully reliable.

The Carretera Austral runs about 1,240 kilometers (770 mi) from Puerto Montt to Villa O’Higgins through (sparsely populated) rural Patagonia. …

This area is characterized by thick forests, fjords, glaciers, canals and steep mountains. …

day 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5/6 |7/8 | 9/10 | 11 | 12/13 | 14 | 15 | 16/17 | 18 | 19/20 | 21/23 end

hmm … Canada or Chile in January?

On By Rick McIn cycling, travel1 Comment

This is my 4th trip to Chile. And my 4th visit to Puerto Varas. It’s a tourist town of about 40,000.

I’m planning to rent my bike here. It’s the best jumping off point for the northern end of the Carretera Austral.

I was 30 hours in transit door-to-door from Calgary. But there’s not much jet lag as most of that was south.

offline in Patagonia

On By Rick McIn cycling, hiking, internet, travel1 Comment

I expect to be (mostly) offline cycling & hiking with only irregular internet access from mid-January through mid-March 2019.

First up is a bikepacking trip of up to 4 weeks, around 1500km.

If you email me I’ll reply at earliest opportunity.

NicholasGault.com

cycling Patagonia

On By Rick McIn best bike rides, cycling, travelLeave a comment

I’m planning to do 1500km plus in Chile early 2019. About 4 weeks.

Here’s the best trip video I’ve seen so far. Giorgio Frattale and Francesco D’Alessio from last season.

Click PLAY or watch it on Vimeo. (9min)

The endless and arid steppe, the wonderful and jagged peaks of the Andes, the huge fresh water basins with their incredible colors, the awesome glaciers that fall into the deep depressions of the Cordillera, the extreme and changing wheather conditions, the incessant and exhausting wind, make Patagonia one of the few place in the world able to convey the feeling of being on the edge of the Earth.

I won’t be carrying a packraft, however.

my plan to bikepack the Carretera Austral, Chile in 2019

On By Rick McIn best bike rides, cycling, hiking, travel2 Comments

During my two months in Patagonia 2018 I did a fair bit of research on a future cycle hiking trip.

I arrive Santiago Jan 11th and might rent a bike in the big city. They’d transport it to and from both trailheads.

The Carretera Austral is far more popular now than when I did it 15 years ago by bus / hitchhiking.

The Carretera Austral runs about 1,240 kilometers (770 mi) from Puerto Montt to Villa O’Higgins through (sparsely populated) rural Patagonia. …

This area is characterized by thick forests, fjords, glaciers, canals and steep mountains. …

Among the world’s finest road trips, the Carretera Austral – or “Southern Highway” – is a 1240km route through Chile that’s mostly about half unpaved. Winding through millennia-old forests, it visits dusty Andean hamlets and turquoise rivers spawned from landlocked glaciers. …

Cyclists should have the skills and materials to repair their own gear, and should plan on taking a solid month for the entire endeavor. According to Italian cyclist Tomas Balzk, the hardest part was not pedaling the terrain, but ingesting enough calories. …

Lonely Planet

Cyclists-on-the-Carretera-Austral