cherts. Still at depth, the rock was metamorphosed and then uplifted to roughly its present position. To all appearances the rock that underpins Sarmiento is solid. Early history The rugged lands surrounding these fjords were home of the Kawésqar (Alacalufe) and Yaghan people for thousands of years. Sadly, their names and tales were erased by the relentless and deadly European colonization process. The range was first recorded in written history by Juan Ladrillero in 1558, but his tales were quickly forgotten as 58 of his 60 men died during that expedition, and the rest, including Ladrillero, died soon afterward. Twenty years later, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa followed in Ladrillero's wake and claimed for himself the discovery. Sarmiento originally called the mountain range, now named after him, "cordillera nevada" (snowy range). Little further exploration was done in these waters for 250 years. In the 1830s, however, as Robert Fitz Roy and his crew explored the southern end of South America in , they discovered the fjord that gives access to the eastern flanks of Cordillera de Sarmiento. This they called the Canal of the Mountains (now most commonly known as the Fiordo de las Montañas), describing it as "bordered on each side by a steep range of mountains, broken here and there by deep ravines, which were filled with frozen snow, and surmounted by extensive glaciers, whence huge avalanches were continually falling." See also Alacalufes National Reserve Sarmiento Channel References http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1386i/chile-arg/wet/southpat.html http://www.williwaw.org Recon: Towers of Wind and Ice, The Cordillera de Sarmiento of Southern Chile Map Instituto Geográfico Militar (Chile) 1:50.000 (K-106) "Cordillera Sarmiento de Gamboa" Sarmiento Landforms of Magallanes Region