Think of the last time you were aggravated. Maybe you were waiting in a locked, hot car waiting for someone to finish shopping. Maybe you were sweating profusely and there was no option for cooling off. Maybe you were in a headlock, or stuck upside down against your will. This isn’t what most people imagine when they think of opening a new trail in the rainforest. But there I was, confused, aggravated, stuck, sweating, and upside down in a tangle of bamboo. And then it dawned on me. This is what I came here for.
Let me walk you through the steps I took in opening this trail.
There is an art that exists before opening a trail. Before engineering the trail and deciding where it should – and should not – go. And that’s information gathering. The art consists of tromping through the valley on foot; smooshing around the marshes; practicing your laser-dodging art gallery robbery techniques to walk through the entangling thickets of bamboo; hop-hiking up falling tetris fields of talus without falling yourself; and making note, without breaking much, of where you’ve been and where the trail should go. This artistic process endures claustrophobic-inducing conditions without the ability to repair. That is, you cannot yet begin cutting until you are sure you have found the best path. It is your duty as a trail engineer to cut the best path. Otherwise, other, better paths may be cut, damaging yet more vegetation. So, in order to assure a single path outcome, much adventuring must be had.
The goal of this path, for me, was to get to the Pass, or as I came to call it, El Paso Querido del Caso Perdido. As an aside, I think that’s a very gringo-y name for the pass because it’s a rhyming play on words and I not only don’t mind that it resonates a certain element of tragedy, but I rather like it. (It translates to The Loved Pass of The Lost Case.) But, to be completely honest with you here, the trail was not merely to reach the pass: my dream and nightmare since November 2009 has been to climb El Monstruo, the giant 1300-meter tall granite wall on the other side of the pass. It is my goal to climb a first ascent up it. Opening the trail was my way of getting there while giving something useful and worthwhile back to the global climbing and trekking community. As things turned out, I was not to climb El Monstruo this past 2009-2010 season. Now, instead of being a summer goal, it has become a lifelong goal of mine; I hope and expect to begin this immense on taking within two years’ time. Cross your fingers and hope to climb!
Once I began exploring the valley, finding giant boulders to camp underneath, streams to cross, and different types of forests – some of alerces, the redwoods of South America, some of bamboo, and some of dead bamboo – it started opening up to me. It became clear, step-by-step, bit-by-bit, that my history would be more intertwined with Valle Trinidad than I had expected.
For instance, departing from the refugio on my first day hiking and exploring, I distinctly recall telling everyone that I expected to reach Cerro Laguna without cutting anything. I returned late that night having barely reached the backside of Pared de Gorila at the mouth of the valley, barely finding the path that already existed to that point! Trekking on pre-existing trails in Cochamó is exhausting enough, let alone forcing your way forwards off trails! Keeping notes on how much progress I made daily helped me to accurately forecast progress and estimate how long it would take me to reach various landmarks. This held true for not only exploring, but also blazing and subsequently opening as well.
Tate Shepherd, my newfound valley friend helped me a lot to open the trail. We made a tremendous 12+-hour effort to reach the Pass together before December ended, before we began cutting. The views were amazing. The valley impressed us, as did the next and adjacent valleys. When he got the chance, he took a week off of work as guide. I was so happy to show off the work that I’d done since he’d last scene the unopened, barely-blazed trail. We camped under the bivy boulder with Matt and Asa, two guys from Boulder, Colorado. They had some ready-dinners in packets, something like Jamaican Beef Stew. We cooked some pasta with salami and some prized, rare-for-me leftover meat from Horacio and Tatiana that Tate had brought up. Mmm! I remember how nice it felt to finally share the Bivy Boulder with not one but three others, feeding a fire and exchanging times.
Consider trail engineering as the deepwater soloing of trail work, requiring the bare essentials with respect to gear. Trail opening, then, would be the bouldering. All you need is a fold-up saw, machete, and empty water bottle. Rubber boots and rainwear are also highly recommended. It’s lightweight, nonstop work. Bread with jam has never tasted so good. Cold, fresh water hits your hands as you dip your water bottle in the stream to fill up, your eyes catching the giant trees and huge patches of bamboo that you’ve been tossing about, off the path. It’s not a first ascent, but it is a first, and seeing people experience it for the first time is a grande opening. I get excited just like the first time I walked it. J.B. knew just what to say to me when we met for the first time in person. I remember seeing him walk up to me and my buddies Josh and Vishal, sitting on the Food Rock by Cerro Laguna. This guy with a cap and dirty, ripped pants walked up to us. He asked if I was Nate. I said yes. He said he had a complaint about the trail: there were some twigs that wrapped around his feet in some sections. I couldn’t’ve chuckled more happily.
Later, some of the only trekkers to visit the recently opened upper valley that season gave me another compliment. They were three Chileans, talking about how new the trail was; they’d been there a few years back and it hadn’t been there then. They said it looked like someone had brought a chainsaw all the way up there! I smiled, and thanked them, telling them I had opened it…with a foldup saw!
But don’t let these reviews make you think the trail is a breeze. It crosses talus fields. It hops streams. Bamboo will grow over certain parts of the trail as sure as rain will fall downwards towards the earth. And you must be careful as with practically all trails in Cochamó, when opening or using the trail. Bamboo is dangerous. When cutting bamboo, it sharpens the bamboo as a spear or lance, and if you aren’t careful, your next cutting motion may find you impaling yourself with a previously cut piece of bamboo. When hiking sections of cut bamboo, it is possible to walk into bamboo that grows at the same angle as your line of sight, making it hard to spot. I’ve been stabbed in the ear this way; it’s very difficult to see some of the bamboo. Another hazard is the low-lying, cut bamboo. Since many parts of these trails become muddy and thus slippery even with trekking boots, falls are commonplace. These falls become dangerous when surrounded by low, cut bamboo as one can also spike themselves on these stuck, green, natural knives. Luckily, Cochamó attracts a tough, well-informed breed of adventurers and accident incidents are few and far between.
Another consideration for opening the trail was its end use. One of my pet peeves while carrying huge packs of camping and climbing gear is to have clothesline branches that make me contort or worse yet unexpectedly catch my pack and send me to the ground. So, while opening this trail I took it upon myself and the occasional team to open it wide enough and with enough head room for tall pack-wielding trekkers and climbers to easily navigate without being super-encumbered by the trail’s overly curious neighbors. Thanks to improved clearance and freedom of foot movement, what would otherwise take at least five hours without the trail can now be done in just one…with a huge pack of gear.
So how do you ensure that users use one path rather than creating more? I’m of the mindset that it’s better to do something once and to do it correctly rather than to have subsequent iterations, each attempting to improve upon the previous, erroneous course. Trail opening with its inherent vegetation loss is no different. In order to ensure that one path is done correctly so that others are not created, which would increase the amount of vegetation cut, good trail opening moves beyond the first step of cutting the path to be user-friendly. Even if the trail is a wise choice for navigating the valley and its walls, it is not going to be used if it is not easy to follow and obviously marked. Therefore, it is important to indicate the trail well to prevent cases of lost trail users unintentionally and unnecessarily trampling other vegetation. For this reason I carried rolls of brightly colored pink and orange non-adhesive tape, which I tied around trees’ limbs’ visible points when possible, such that trail users can easily locate the next marker long before the last marker goes of sight. Even at night. In fact, to test how well the trail follows and flows it helped immensely to use, cut, and mark the trail during night sessions. If it can be followed easily at night, day traffic should be a breeze.Secondly, updating maps and information databases, such as those maintained in “the bible” of topos and maps in the refugio, decreases the likelihood that alternate trails will be opened, intentionally or not.
I don’t know what else to say about opening the Valle Trinidad Trail, except that it is a work in progress. I still think about the day in, day out process of opening the trail. I love seeing results come to fruition and friends and fellow climbers and trekkers being able to navigate with ease and hustle through what was previously a huge burden and hassle. Moreover, it was a remarkable blessing to be able to create a path where once there was not. The bond between my blood and that of Valle Trinidad and its history runs that much thicker for the trail. 
Before moving to Patagonia I used to think the 30 minute hike to get to Exit 32 climbing in Washington was a hike. Then I realized that having a 3- or 5-hour trek to get to the climbing destination wasn’t a chore, but a gift. Cochamó took this new mentality and raised it even higher: the adventure isn’t just the summit and the view you have when you’re there; the adventure is in how you got to the summit, the trail of trials and tribulations, and the changes in views both external and, perhaps more relevantly, internal. So it is that I rejoice over the opportunity I had to make a trail that lead to a valley where I then had first choice in what climbs I wanted to open. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Huge thanks go, of course and as always are due, to Daniel Seeliger and Silvina Verdún for their out-of-this-world support and charismatic encouragement, and to all those who helped to literally carve this part of history: Tate, Ed [2nd picture below, helped me cut trail for an entire day while educating me on scientific names], Matt, Asa, Claire, Paul [Pictured below, Claire and Paul, battling wetness and illness, fought bamboo like true warriors after the rain thwarted our goal to climb], et al. 
May there be more to come!
Please stay tuned and enjoy upcoming posts on some of the routes that were opened once the trail was in a respectably commutable condition.
