Two lenticulars at first light
06:11, above the refugios. Sunrise put the whole lake district in silhouette and lit two lenticular clouds directly over the range. A lenticular is not weather you look at, it is weather you read. It forms where a strong, stable wind is forced over a summit, and it means it is blowing hard up there whatever the air is doing around you. On the big Andean volcanoes a lenticular cap sitting on the summit is a turn-around sign, not a photograph. These two were beside the line rather than capping it, the air on the slope was still, and we kept going. That was the call, made on the spot with the same information you can see in the frame. It worked. It is not a rule — the honest version is that we looked at it, decided the cap was not forming over us, and accepted the risk. The ice axe in the foreground is the other half of that decision. Lanín in early November is a snow climb, not a walk.