In southern Patagonia , a trail ascends a mountain to a renowned and beautiful lake. The trail was formed over several decades by climbers intent on scaling the granite spires of Argentina’s Fitz Roy chain . Climbers, being who they are, walked straight up the mountain from their camp at the chalky and rushing Rio Blanco below. In the 1990s, hikers began to outnumber the climbers, drawn by the sight of the emerald lake surrounded by an amphitheater of rock and ice. The trail eventually took the name of the lake, Laguna de los Tres, colloquially translated as lake of the three peaks, and over the next 30 years, the number of visitors who flocked to the nearby town of El Chaltén to hike the 14-mile out-and-back trail swelled from roughly 30 a day to 3,000. As these crowds trampled throug

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