Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/787068
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 169 Mark called a brief timeout, and we trekked two miles across the valley to meet Adrain Cataldi at an old stone corral for a feast of stuffed zucchini, milanesa, and smoked boar before returning to the Malleo and fishing until dusk. Looking up at the volcano as we stepped from the river, I noted a few woolen clouds beginning to gather around its summit and along its snowy flanks, and I glanced over at Mark, who was looking at them as well . . . rather intently it appeared. "I don't like the looks of that at all," he said, more to himself than to me. The man obviously knew his mountain. For sometime during the night, the volcano disappeared. I awoke to the sound of steady drizzle. And though a few small patches of open sky were feebly contending with the overcast for ownership of the day, by the time we got to the Red Gate we were engulfed in mist and spent most of the morning fishing in the rain. Heaven like an ascending prayer. But alas, after decades of imagining myself being here, the sensory overload was overwhelming, and my memories of that first day on the Malleo are somewhat fragmented. I hardly recall slipping into my wading pack and net, or working with Mark to choose a fly, or even pausing to look down at my wading shoes before taking those first tentative steps into the river. And, oddly enough, the memory of my first trout from the Malleo is vague at best. But I do remember the constant presence of Lanín as it filled the sky to the west and south—sometimes a glorious backdrop to my upstream casts, sometimes hovering close over my shoulder as I made a long downstream mend. Finally, with the sun climbing high, following some of the finest days of fishing I had ever experienced 45 miles across the broad pampas at Tres Rios Casa de Campo with its owner Lucas Rodriguez and his partner Mark Lewis. Lucas had accompanied us from Tres Rios into San Martin de los Andes for lunch, and Mark, Adrian Cataldi, my longtime sidekick Robert McClenagan, and I continued on to fish the Rio Malleo. We arrived at San Huberto and the 20,000-acre Estancia Loncoluan in mid- afternoon. As evening approached, Mark took me out onto the estancia for a look at the river and the broad valley through which it flows. And though thick clouds completely obscured the volcano, I saw enough of the Malleo to fill my spirit with anticipation and make sleeping that night difficult. I awoke early the next morning to a clear, starry sky and slipped outside alone beneath the Southern Cross to the equipment compound to set up my fly rods and make certain my gear was properly organized. Breakfast was served promptly at 8:00, and Mark, Robert, and I left the lodge at 8:55, heading up the valley. And as we crested a hill, there it stood—Lanín, the elegant essence of everything a mountain should be, a singular expression of altitude and ice, rising majestically 12,293 feet into the blue Patagonia sky, its snow-laden flanks and soaring summit bridging earth and