October 23, Day 19: Villa Cerro Castillo to Coyhaique
Today's ride starts with a straight-up 1000m climb. I guess Villa Cerro Castillo is right at the bottom of a valley; there's about 500m of climbing just to get to the turnoff to Puerto Ingeniero Ibáñez. Yesterday when I came through I was tempted to go straight on to Coyhaique - the route to and from Villa Cerro Castillo adds a bit of distance and quite a bit of height, so skipping it is tempting. If I'd matched today's pace I would have got there about 9pm, which is a long day but not unreasonable.
Anyway. Today's climb is unusally long and high. But it's not especially difficult: it never gets too steep, so there's always lower gears to use if needed. There's a bit of traffic; some buses and trucks labouring up in a low gear so I give them space. There's plenty of steep cuttings with rockfalls in some places. Later on there's a bit of snow in sheltered places. The road doesn't get quite up to the snowline but it's close.
I suppose that means that the climb was a bit uneventful? There wasn't any wind worth mentioning, which is now genuinely good news to me. The views are worth mentioning - clear views over the valley behind, and I got progressively closer to the implausibly vertical rock columns on the mountaintop I saw yesterday. Eventually they fell out of sight behind another less wild mountain, and all I can see are more realistic mountaintops which is a bit disappointing.
Having reached the peak, the elevation profile says there's a bit of a dip, then a long downhill, and as far as I can see this will be a nice simple low-effort day.
From left to right: sign at the start. Bit of snow around the stream. At the peak, nearly at the snowline. Must be on the downhill. River, empty road, nice scenic cycling!
So let's move on to where it's not. It's pretty much when the downhill flattens out, in a valley so lush and green you could film a remake of the Sound Of Music here. And despite the rather nice environment, the headwind showed up. Not strong enough to be impressive, but enough to be annoying. I should be zipping along these nice flat roads but instead I'm having to push just to keep a reasonable pace.
Then there's the traffic. I've had the roads to myself for most of the trip. But once on the main road there was so much I need to keep strictly to the white line on right, and that's not so easy. There's a small asphalt shoulder which I use, but the catseyes are a problem: they're set in a footlong recessed trench. Only small, but I'd prefer to go around rather than over them. And there isn't much space between the trench and the gravel. So if there's traffic I'll thread through the thin outside gap, but the gravel is right there and if I were to run a bit wide it's going to get exciting.
I wandered wide only once, and instead of flat gravel there happened to be a deep tyre tread, so deep it had walls. I was going a bit quick so all I could do was take a deathgrip on the handlebars and plow along it until I'd slowed down enough to settle the bike and then get back on the road.
So the afternoon was spent dodging catseyes while fighting with an unhelpful headwind and keeping clear of traffic. Nothing too difficult, but it's careful work and needs a slow pace.
From left to right: had lunch at a spot like this. Maybe these roadside poles with green/yellow/red stripes are there for deep snow? Red stoplight for roadworks. The east side of the pass. Rocky surrounds near Coyhaique.
But the sun was out which does make everything bearable. And now it's a nice green landscape instead of grey-brown desert, so it's not unpleasant. Also, having done the maths, Komoot estimated the day at 6.5 hours and despite the headwind and lots of photos and all that catseye threading I finished a bit under 7.5.
So if the rest of the Carretera Austral was like this, I'd think I'd be OK with it.
