What happens when you combine the omnipresence of digital photography with an iconic mountain setting? When happy-snapping is notionally cost-free and a succession of hillscapes keep developing?

Answer: 197 images.

Cleanliness might not necessarily be next to godliness, but it is close to some compulsive disorders. 197 pictures. Time to tidy up; there’s always time to tidy up, its time to wield the secateurs. The first attempt, the first pruning, the removal of the ‘out of focus’, leaves 197 images. That’s the problem with ‘phone cameras, their depths of field are so deep, even the stirred swirls of my shoe are in focus. The next cropping should have removed the duplicates, the triplicates, the multiplicates, but little seems to be falling into the trash bin, and I’ve still got 197 amazing pictures left. There’s just so much fun to be had fiddling with even the most basic of post-production apps, I just don’t want to give up on any shot.

Looks like it’s time to employ the ultimate arbiter, and ask as to what is their purpose, beyond creative endeavour, what’s the end use? Is it blogpost, ego stoker, aide memoire or fodder for an i-cloud?

It’s part homage, part veneration, part obeisance. Torres del Paine has been lying deep down, but ever-present, back before someone coined the term ‘bucket-list’. (Stream-of-Consciousness alert, or simple lexiconic enquiry: a bucket once was a receptacle for receiving discarded waste… so when did an iconoscape become rubbish?). This place has sat since world mountains and Scottish hills were my consuming interest, when my collection of classic literature had titles like Doctor Patey’s ‘One Man’s Mountains’, Ms Moffat’s ‘Space Below my Feet’ and Comrade Whillans’ ‘Portrait of a Mountaineer’. Of which the latter will require re-reading to confirm if my memory is accurate; did Whillans and Bonnington really haul a diesel generator and a Black & Decker drill up the central tower to drill holes for climbing protection? Even if as a false memory it has been a persistent image, enough to sustain a desire for 45 years. We’ve made it to Ushuaia, now I’m allowed my reward, that ‘chittery bite’ for reaching the windy south. All I want to see are those Towers.

Winter is creeping north, the season is sliding down to autumn, new snow merges into the treeline, a stark chiaroscuro of shade and glare. Roiling clouds stubbornly cling to the outer massif, spinning vaporous shrouds that tangle on the towers. Teasing sensations, speculative suggestions, testing questions. Do the eponymous towers that adorn beer bottles, bus ribs and every outfitter’s window truly exist? Will we get to the mountain only to find an inconclusive answer, only to find it shrouded in cloud?

We’re on a bus doing ‘a day Tour of Torres del Paine’, which should be an anachronism for this cycle tourist and I’m not even going to attempt a justification, other than to note that booking campsites is a prerequisite; this requires planning that then creates deadlines, only to result in angst. The weather has been unsettled for several days, pewter-shine sun blending into counterpane cloud, degradations of gunmetal grey, all interspersed with sudden downpours. Weather ideal for photo-essays entitled ‘moody-cloudscape’ and potential disappointments up at the Towers. They say that it is better to travel in hope than expectation, possibly true, however I Expect! today.

Come the designated morning, a prophetic pink sunrise competes with thunderheads amassing on the near horizon. A discussion between the occasional patches of nascent clear-blue and an ominous weather front is ongoing. Much the same debate is playing with my emotions. Normally when travelling I’m happy to accept graciously what the weather gods wish to hurl my way, but today is different: I so want, I so need to see those Towers.

I know that I could see the Towers, I know that they were there, I could see them faint through the veil of mist, shadow ghosts of luminescent warm stone, but strangely, the camera lens could not. And therein lies a parable for our times: if it’s not on the pixel does it exist? If I don’t have the documented evidence, did we even travel to the Tower?

Factual answer to the posed question. In the end the tidy ethic wins out, the final score settles down at 89 pictures. But has it satiated the Tower’s itch?

Yes.

But.

Only don’t mention it to The Navigator just yet, but we might just have to come back again, for there still appears to be a lingering tickle, that and there’s ample room in the ‘phone’s memory.