Wharton Journal

Issue date: 3/22/04 Section: Insider

On March 5th, give or take a day, 26 Wharton students, two second year Leadership Fellows and one faculty member set out for a weeklong trek through Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia for a Wharton Leadership Venture. First years stuck taking the late-Thursday OPIM final missed the wine tour event at the beginning of the trip, but it is certain that we would run circles around any wine maker with our linear programming prowess. And they can never take that away from us.

After a stop in South Beach for a quick bite to eat, three plane rides, and a bus ride, we arrived in Puerto Natales, Chile. The group split into teams of four, serving as our hiking and camping teams for the remainder of the trip. Each day two members of the group would serve as its leaders and would be responsible for disseminating important information from the guides as well as for making important decisions such as "who smells the worst after a few days without showering."

For five days we hiked and camped. Some days we were required to move camp, on our backs, further up the trail. Given the varying physical abilities of the group, the team structure proved critical as we learned how to get every team member and all gear to our destination. This once again requires an OPIM reference: "Oh, Herbie, where art thou?"

To describe the scenery in words does not do it justice. We were blessed with clear skies and moderate temperatures each day, with maximum visibility of all the peaks and lakes for miles (kilometers actually, miles do not exist in South America). Much of the group hiked in shorts and a t-shirt for the majority of each day. Chile's national bird, the condor, was often seen soaring overhead. In fact, we once mistook a group of condors circling the sky to be a gang of vultures waiting for us to abandon a blister-afflicted team member on the trail. No such luck.

One of the pleasures of the trip was the chance to interact with Vertical SA co-founder Rodrigo Jordan. Rodrigo is a world-class mountaineer who has reached the summits of Mount Everest and K2, both from "difficult" approaches. As the leader of expeditions to reach those exclusive peaks, Rodrigo shared with us some of the situations he encountered and asked us to reflect on how we would have led particular situations. He is truly a remarkable person and we hope that everyone at Wharton will get a chance to interact with him either before they leave Wharton or at some point in their life.

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