Located 120 kilometers northeast of Puerto Natales is the Sierra Baguales, imposing, and defiantly oriented in an east-west direction, perpendicular to the Patagonian Andes.
Clinging to the territory that thousands of years ago saw it form, it emerged from the ground until it reached the sky, to show its peaks where it houses the treasures collected from the past, those that write history. Just like a bagual, this mountain range is indomitable, stoic, wild and admirable, its terraces, steps, and vertical walls make Baguales one of the most visually powerful mountain ranges in Patagonia.
Baguales is a landscape that went from hidden to distant and from distant to an explorable one. Today it is an extremely attractive place for researchers, archaeologists and geologists due to its strong character as a landscape of memory, like a memory trunk it guards its hidden and ancient elements with suspicion that speak of a history of millions of years written in the floors, their skirts and their tops.
Georeading
These aggressive belts mark the water division, that is, where drainage divides into two and in this case, where the influence of the Pacific weather terminates. Until this longitude, the fallen water, either as rain or as snow, is carried by the Westerlies, or winds from the west, until they hit the barrier of the Andes, where are forced to initiate their return trip to the Pacific Ocean.
Scarce precipitations make their way through the mountains and continue their travel towards the East. Because erosion is stronger where water is present, the water division silently migrates towards the East while eroding the Baguales peaks and reshaping our country borders.
The massive barrier that barricades the winds are the basaltic rocks crowning the peaks of the Baguales mountain range. Dark and rich in magnesium, with a fine crystalline texture, these rocks form a sharp razor towards the west, guarding and protecting the contents of the Baguales range.
Beneath this basaltic cover lies the most complete record of Cenozoic life in the form of marine fossils such as crustaceous and sharks, followed by a complete collection of leaves displaying the diversity of the forests of the past: eucalyptus, nothofagus and araucarias cohabiting in the ancient landscape over tens of millions of years ago.
A brief transgression of the Atlantic Ocean is recorded at the top of the sequence, after which abundant mammal fossils document the return of the terrestrial environment. Without a doubt, Baguales will continue to surprise us.