Panorama Photo

The Cochamò valley is also commonly called the "Chilean Yosemite". By marching half a day from the end of the road on a marshy trail, you reach the meadows of La Junta shown here. From this site, by trails that require some mountaineering skills, you can reach some of the surrounding big granitic summits, as the Cerros La Junta, Capicúa, Gorilla, Trinidad and Arco Iris. The extremely cold light should give you an idea of what is late autumn in this far corner of the Patagonian Andes - indeed, perhaps the most amazing place of the whole Chilean Patagonia. The site is very known to local (but not only local) rock climbers, much less to the occasional tourist, since its location forces to a detour from the mainstream Carretera Austral, and since the access by foot is quite demanding.

I quote the following from the informative site www.cochamo.com :

More than a 150 years ago the first gauchos helped carve this trail to bring their cattle from the Argentine farm lands to sell at the coastal Chilean slaughterhouse in Cochamó. During the decade that the meat company thrived, they maintained the trail with bridges, a telegraph that ran to El Bolson, Argentina, and kept it clear and wide enough to run an oxen-pulled cart. Since then the trail has seen huge erosion combined by livestock traffic and run-off. Only since the last decade has some has some more significant improvements. Today, the trail is still used by the local cowboys and tourists.

11 HF, Canon G1X, 28 mm equiv, f/5.6, 1/500 sec.
www.panoramio.com/photo/127390126