Tuesday 9/12/2025 Arakur Ushuaia Resort – Camino Arakur – Base Cascada de los Amigos – Cerro Cortez
Cerro Alarkén Nature Reserve above Ushuaia
Patagonia
Tierra Del Fuego Province, ARGENTINA
Participants: Stephen Davies (Photos), Sue Davies (Report)
We were keen to get out for a walk before boarding the boat for the next ten days this afternoon.
We walked down the road from our hilltop hotel along the Camino Arakur before following the trail through the forest. We enjoyed views of the stunning mountains under clear skies. There were still some wildflowers around, including some orchids.
Max elevation: 256 m
Total climbing: 216 m
Total descent: -217 m
Average speed: 3.54 km/h
Total time: 02:48:30
Forest along valley of Cascada de los Amigos
The trail was quite boggy in sections, and we needed to climb under a low-fenced section presumably to keep the cows out.
Forest below Cerro Cortez
We then followed a clear stream and a grassy trail with views of the surrounding peaks. We returned via the same trail. It was good to stretch our legs and get some fresh air before the long journey ahead.
On Sunday, 7/12/2025, we explored the foreshore area of Ushuaia.
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The local landscape features, geology, scenic highlights, flora, fauna, Indigenous history, white history and other nearby walks in the area (Perplexity AI Model)
The Arakur Ushuaia–Cascada de los Amigos–Cerro Cortez area occupies a small, steep catchment on the lower slopes of Cerro Alarkén above Ushuaia, within the privately protected Cerro Alarkén Nature Reserve overlooking Ushuaia Bay and the Beagle Channel.
Landscape features and scenic highlights
The reserve encompasses approximately 100 hectares of native forest and open clearings on a rounded hilltop and its flanks, with altitudes rising from near sea level at Ushuaia to over 900 metres on adjacent summits such as Cerro Cortez. Short walking tracks radiate from the Arakur Ushuaia Resort and the Camino Arakur access road, traversing dense forest, boggy depressions and grassy streamside flats before breaking into natural lookouts with panoramic views across Ushuaia Bay, the Beagle Channel and surrounding massifs including Monte Olivia, Cerro Portillo and the Martial and Vinciguerra ranges.
Cascada de los Amigos and similar small waterfalls in the vicinity form where short, vigorously flowing streams drop over bedrock steps and boulder chutes cut into the hillside, creating confined gorges and spray zones set within forest. The ascent towards Cerro Cortez leaves the road corridor and climbs sharply through forest, then low scrub and grassland, culminating in an open summit ridge that affords extensive views northwards over glacially sculpted valleys and southwards to the maritime fjord landscape of the Beagle Channel.
Geology and geomorphology
The Ushuaia region sits within the Fuegian Andes, where Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks have been deformed into an east–west cordillera and subsequently modified by Quaternary glaciation. The slopes around Cerro Alarkén and Cerro Cortez retain the characteristic imprint of this history: rounded, ice‑smoothed ridges, thin rocky soils derived from glacial till and colluvium, and a network of short, steep streams that follow structural weaknesses in the underlying bedrock before debouching towards Arroyo Grande and the coastal plain.
On a finer scale, the “boggy” sections observed along the Camino Arakur trails reflect poorly drained hollows where impermeable subsoils, high precipitation and seasonal snowmelt promote peat development and persistent saturation. The small alluvial flats and grassy sections near clear streams indicate localised deposition of finer sediments and organic matter, producing relatively fertile microsites embedded within an otherwise thin, acidic soil mantle
Local flora
The Cerro Alarkén Nature Reserve was established specifically to conserve native Fuegian forest dominated by southern beeches and associated understorey communities. The canopy is primarily composed of lenga (Nothofagus pumilio), ñire (Nothofagus antarctica) and coihue de Magallanes (Nothofagus betuloides), forming dense stands on cooler, moister slopes and more open, wind‑pruned woodland and scrub near ridgelines.
Beneath this canopy, the ground layer includes mosses, liverworts and low shrubs adapted to cool, wet, windy conditions, interspersed with herbaceous species and wildflowers that take advantage of the short summer growing season. Orchids and other small forbs occur in forest gaps, stream margins and meadow‑like openings, while boggy patches support peat‑forming vegetation and sedges indicative of high water tables and slow decomposition.
Local fauna
The reserve is described as harbouring “flora and fauna fueguina”, representing the typical vertebrate assemblage of the subantarctic forest belt of Tierra del Fuego. Medium‑sized mammals may include introduced European species such as cattle grazing on adjacent private lands (as implied by stock‑control fencing), and native species such as foxes and small rodents that use forest edges and stream corridors as movement routes.
Birdlife constitutes a conspicuous component of the fauna, with forest passerines, woodpeckers, raptors and ground‑feeding species occupying different strata of the lenga–ñire–coihue woodland mosaic. In riparian areas and around the Beagle Channel, additional species associated with aquatic and coastal environments contribute to the overall biodiversity context experienced from viewpoints near Arakur and along the Cerro Cortez track.
Indigenous history and Country
The broader Ushuaia and Beagle Channel region forms part of the traditional territories of several Indigenous groups, notably the Selk’nam (Ona), the Yamana or Yaghan and the Haush, who occupied different ecological niches across the main island of Tierra del Fuego and its coastal archipelagos for millennia. The interior forested slopes above the present‑day city and along valleys such as Arroyo Grande, beneath Cerro Alarkén and adjacent hills, would have been used seasonally as hunting grounds and overland routes linking coastal sites on the channel with inland steppe and mountain environments.
In this context, the area now designated as Cerro Alarkén Nature Reserve can be understood as part of a wider Indigenous cultural landscape, where Selk’nam and neighbouring groups integrated forest, river and mountain features into subsistence patterns, spiritual beliefs and territorial identities on what can appropriately be referred to as Selk’nam and Yaghan Country. The subsequent disruption and near‑erasure of these lifeways through disease, missionisation and violence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has left only fragmentary material traces and oral histories, some of which are interpreted today in museums and cultural programmes in Ushuaia.
White history and contemporary land use
European contact with Tierra del Fuego intensified from the early sixteenth century with maritime exploration of the straits and channels, but systematic colonisation around Ushuaia accelerated in the late nineteenth century with the establishment of missionary stations, a penal colony and sheep‑ranching enterprises that appropriated Indigenous lands. The hillslopes above the nascent town, including Cerro Alarkén and neighbouring ridges, became part of a hinterland supporting grazing, timber extraction and later military and urban infrastructure, reshaping access regimes and further marginalising Indigenous communities.
In the late twentieth and early twenty‑first centuries, tourism and conservation have become dominant land uses, with the creation of private nature reserves such as Cerro Alarkén aimed at protecting remnant native forest while providing high‑end accommodation and recreational opportunities. The Arakur Ushuaia Resort, positioned on a natural rocky outcrop within the reserve, now functions as both a viewing platform and trailhead, from which short walks along Camino Arakur, to Cascada de los Amigos and towards Cerro Cortez exemplify the contemporary re‑inscription of this landscape as a space for scenic appreciation, outdoor sport and eco‑tourism layered over much older Indigenous and pastoral histories.
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