IT WAS A CLEAR DAY, the sunniest in the two weeks that my wife Mia and I had been in Argentine Patagonia. But instead of heading into the mountains, we were on a bus, heading home. Looking out the rear window, El Chaltén’s iconic granite towers—Torre, Egger, Herron, Standhardt, Poincenot, Fitz Roy—rose like mile-high sharks’ teeth on the horizon.

Before catching our morning ride, we took a final walk through town to stretch our legs, grab coffees and medialunas, and give farewell scratches to the now-familiar dogs at each intersection. We had already said goodbye to our friends Sole Diaz and Nick Russell the previous night, but as we rounded the corner by Restaurant Ahonikenk we found them loading fully stuffed backpacks into Sole’s truck in front of Matthew Tufts’ apartment.

Nick’s pack looked like it weighed upwards of 80 pounds. Sole’s was quite a bit smaller—but then again, so was she. The trio was headed into the mountains for three days with an ambitious plan to connect a series of big descents with camping on the glaciers between Cerro Eléctrico and Fitz Roy. We reiterated intentions to ski together next season, asked them to be careful and hugged them tight, saying goodbye again.

As we walked away from our friends, my heart ached with a mix of worry and envy. In another time, I would have changed my flight, stuffed my pack to the point of bursting, joined up with the merry adventurers and headed into the hills. But not this time. This time we’d come to Patagonia not in search of a new adventure, but to finish an old one—one that had been underway for nearly nine years.

Nine years. That’s how long it had been since Liz Daley died in an avalanche in these peaks. At the time, Liz was one of the most ambitious and charismatic splitboarders in the world, a hard-working mountain guide, and an inspiration to many. She was also one of my closest riding partners, a dear friend to my wife, and fiancé to my best friend, Davide De Masi.

In 2014, we were riding high. I won the Freeride World Tour in 2013. Davide and Liz split time between Washington state and Chamonix, and together we ticked off trip after trip, line after line, party after party. Things got even better when Liz joined me on the Eddie Bauer team, and we set out on our first professional expedition together, to the mountains of El Chaltén.

With our small group of teammates, photographers and local guides, we shared about a week of some of the best ski touring I’ve experienced anywhere. Then, on September 29, Liz was caught in a slide near Cerro Vespignani. Just like that, she was gone. The ensuing hours, days and years have all since blended into an amorphous sea of time and grief that is impossible to break back down into summary parts. There is merely before and after.

Following the accident, I was sure I would return to El Chaltén within a couple of years. Not only to memorialize Liz, but also because in the 15-plus seasons I had spent exploring the Chilean and Argentinean Andes, I had never seen such an incredible place. I’d fallen in love with El Chaltén. There was a magnetism there that had enchanted generations of travel- ers, which, despite the best efforts of storytellers and artists, continued to elude description. But when Liz died, gone too was the magic of this place, at least in my eyes.

I can’t say why this year was finally the year, but I do feel like we did what we were supposed to do, when we were supposed to do it. We had about 10 days to accomplish our modest goals: ski what we could, gaze upon the mountains if they revealed themselves, and visit Liz’s final resting place. Modest though they were (compared to the boundary-pushing alpine heroics that frequently go down here), and despite a bit of Patagonian weather, our mission was a success. After nearly a decade, the expedition was finally over.

Mountains that I had dimmed to a morose greyscale, were now once again awash with color and light. As our bus rolled down Ruta 40, the sparkling peaks and glaciers in the distance beckoned to me again, telling me to not let another nine years pass before the next time.