Chilean National Park passes may only be purchased online; no cash, no card, no trade, no entry. At the entrance to Conguillo National Park, a reticent ranger reluctantly allowed me to use the wifi to attempt a purchase with my phone. Somewhere between birthdate, passport number, number of visitors, date of visit, and credit card number, the website crashed. The ranger shrugged.

A second ranger told me that kayaking was no longer allowed there in any case, on the classic Truful Truful River. And anyway, it was past the 2 pm park closing time. I’m pretty sure the late Douglas Tompkins, chief benefactor of Chile’s parks, would be thoroughly disgusted.

Thankfully, we were allowed to pass through the park…for transit purposes only—no stopping allowed. Despite our diligence in adhering to a harried pace, the drive was outrageous—old growth coihue forest, gleaming volcanoes, groves of Dr. Seuss-like araucaria trees, and one long hill where the road had sunken beneath the soft soils of the woodland so that we drove in a deep trench, a car-width slot canyon below the forest floor.

All that driving brought us to the Cautin River—a well known whitewater run tucked in a clandestine canyon, just below the highway shoulder.

The Lolco River is not so well known. To reach it, one must make an epic drive across slopes of black cinder, down to surreal green lakes bordered in jagged lava flows, traverse a lonely road of fine powdery dust, and somehow discover a place to put-in amidst cow pastures and horseflies. The effort is worth it. The Lolco is a class III-IV gem, at the far, far end of the road.

I had hoped the road would continue, perhaps to the Lomin basin just over the ridge. But Anna the German bike-packer reported a road so rough that it required “hike-a-bike,” and the village man to whom I showed my map said the river on the far side, the Chaquilvin, was too high to ford. Back over the cinders of volcano-land we went.