72 Hours To Bariloche

Four flights, a 45-minute sprint through Atlanta, and one muddy ditch in Patagonia. We took the Layover Pants and Jackets from LAX to the crags of Bariloche, where we climbed with a flock of condors overhead.

By Ethan Herrera

The clock starts in Los Angeles, California. Somehow maneuvering through the notorious LAX was the easiest part of the trip. I think at one point Cam even said something along the lines of “this airport is quite lovely, huh?”… Oh little does he know.

From LAX we went to Atlanta, Georgia for our quickest layover. With less than 45 mins., going from terminal to expressway to a whole different terminal, speed was definitely the name of the game for this layover. The zippered pockets on our Layover Pants and Jackets were definitely the MVP’s. It allowed us to walk with a purpose with the occasional “stress-jog” without having to think twice on anything popping out of the pockets.

Now our second flight… all I will say about the flight is the facts. It was 10 hours, we got the middle seats and we were pressed up next to the bathrooms. Yeah.

Ten hours later and a lot of bathroom flushing sounds later, we finally made it into Argentina. Before arriving in Bariloche, we had a 23 hour layover in Buenos Aires. Having never been to Argentina, I thought having this wicked long layover was actually perfect. Gave me the time to walk around and be a tourist before arriving in Bariloche with the mission to climb. Getting to talk to the locals, see all the street art and drink all the coffee we could find. We got a small hotel close to the airport and got ready for our early morning takeoff the next day.

Now that morning, I may have slept in a little bit, possibly making us almost miss our flight to Bariloche. Allegedly. But we made it, starting our final push into Bariloche. Finally.

Landing in Bariloche, the mission immediately begins with our first stop, grabbing empanada’s. The Layover gear is still holding strong, but we were really about to put it to the test going from terminal to trail. On the trek to the crag, we hit some pretty muddy road conditions. We eventually gambled a little too much and slid into a ditch with zero hope on getting out. With no service and not a person in sight, we had hit our final and unexpected layover. Luckily, all it took was about ten minutes of feeling hopeless, until a random truck was coming down what we were trying to go up. After a quick rescue of towing us out of the ditch, the mission was back on.