Torres de Paine
The Plan
The plan is to fly from Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas and
then take a bus the three hours to Puerto Natales, the town that is the
“gateway” to Torres del Paine national park. The plan is to stay in the Erratic Rock Hostel in Puerto
Natales, which is known for bringing hikers together at its daily talk about
the park. The plan is to meet
other travelers at this talk, travelers who want to trek the complete seven-day
circuit and who don’t already have a group to hike with.
On the bus from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales, the plan
starts to feel unrealistic. The
plane and the bus and the hostel part are easy, but how am I supposed to find
people to hike with, people who want to do the same trek and in the same time
frame? And if I do find such a group,
are they going to be people that I want to
spend seven days with?
The man in the seat next to me is asleep, the couple sitting
behind is talking quietly in Danish, and the two men in the seats in front of
me are conversing energetically in Hebrew with their friends across the
aisle. Out the window, there is an
expanse of emptiness: flat land that stretches on and on and on, until finally
the golden grasses collide with the horizon. There, I imagine, is the end of the world. I feel very, very alone.
Puerto Natales
The next morning I wake up to Bill, the owner of the Erratic
Rock Hostel*, bellowing “Last call
for breakfast!” I tumble out of
the top bunk and stumble downstairs to the kitchen, where Bill makes me an
omelet and I drink real (non-Nescafe) coffee. Sitting across the table from me is Jannis, a German who has
been traveling South America for the last three months, and he tells me about
his adventures trekking in Argentina while we drink cup after cup of
coffee. He is also, it turns out,
traveling alone, also planning on hiking the circuit in Torres del Paine, and
also hoping to start the trek within the next few days. He met two other travelers in
Argentina, he tells me, two Britts also planning to trek in the Park, and
they’re all meeting up at the three o’clock talk the hostel talk. Why don’t I meet them there?
Everything, I realize a few hours later while I wander
around Puerto Natales looking for a fleece and a camping knife and other
necessities, is pretty much going according to plan.
At the three o’clock “Talk at the Rock” Jannis introduces me
to Ben and Kate, and after hearing about the different options we decide that
we want to do the complete circuit in seven days (although Kate will have to
leave on the third day to catch a flight to Buenos Aires) following a
counter-clockwise route. We spend
the next day, Sunday, buying supplies and food, packing and re-packing our
bags, and enjoying our last real meal—Patagonian lamb—before a week of hiking
food (oatmeal, crackers, instant soup and polenta… can you say
delicious?). Early Monday morning,
we leave for the park.
At the Parilla Don Jorge in Puerto Natales
Day One: Puerto Natales – Guardería Pudeto – Lago Pehoé –
Los Cuernos (24.1 km)
A bus takes us from Puerto Natales to the park, where we pay
the entrance fee and then wait for another bus, which takes us to Lake Pehoé
where we board a ferry that takes us to the trailhead. It is 1pm by the time we finally start
the trek.
For the first hour of the trek we can see the effects of the
massive fire that swept through the park in December, burning over 70,000
hectars and turning swaths of what had been trees and brush into charred
skeletons, strokes of black against the landscape. The wind is strong, and I am unsteady on my feet as I try to
get used to the weight of my backpack.
After two hours we reach the French Valley, where we drop
our packs at the ranger’s house and hike the two hours up to the end of the
valley. It’s hard to decide where
to look—a snow-covered mountain rises at the end of the valley, it’s peak
obscured by the clouds, and every so often a cracking sound tumbles down the
valley as chucks of ice fall from the side of the mountain, sending small
avalanches sliding down the face.
Looking down the valley in the other direction, we see a wide, turquoise
lake, and even from so high above it we can see the wind whipping the water up
into small cyclones that spin across the surface of the lake.
By the time we reach the end of the valley, two hours later,
the wind has grown stronger and the clouds thicker, and I am freezing despite
the fact that I am wearing a long-sleeved underarmor t-shirt, a fleece, and my
rain jacket. Kate is wearing only
a t-shirt and seems to be quite warm.
I’m tired by the time we get back to the ranger’s house, but
we have another two hours of trekking before we reach Los Cuernos, where we
will be camping for the night. We
pick up our packs and trudge onwards.
These are by far the longest two hours of the day: it’s
getting late and the wind is strong, so strong I almost fall over a few times
as it grabs at my pack and I struggle to find my footing. It isn’t raining at first, but when the
trail curves down by the edge of the lake the wind is so fierce that it picks
the water up off the lake and tosses it onto us. I start to think that maybe I won’t survive these seven days
in Torres del Paine, that if the wind doesn’t knock me over or the lake swallow
me whole, the cold very well might kill me. It’s here, when buckets of freezing water from the lake are
being thrown into my face, that I start to wonder if Laura is right, if I need
to reconsider my idea of “fun.”
By the time we arrive at the campsite it’s raining—standard,
miserable, vertical rain—and the campsite is packed and muddy. It’s high season for tourists in Torres
del Paine, and this is one of the easiest campsites to get to, meaning that
there are tents pitched every few feet and you have to step nimbly around guy
lines while at the same time avoiding patches of mud.
We have two tents for the four of us, but we huddle in one
to create more heat, cooking dinner—polenta and instant soup—by lighting the
stoves just outside the door of the tent, leaning out the door to stir so that
we don’t have to sit in the rain.
We are all slightly miserable and delirious, and we can’t stop
laughing.
Fire damage along Lake Pehoé
Looking down the French Valley
View up the French Valley
Day Two: Los Cuernos – Campamento Torres (14.9 km)
The campsite seems to be caught under a constant drizzle, so
we leave as quickly as we can in the morning, rolling up wet tents and trying
to keep our packs as dry as possible.
As we set off on the trail Kate and Jannis race ahead, hiking at a speed
that I would have before thought impossible.
Ben and I stick to a reasonable pace, marveling at the way
the landscape and the weather changes over the course of the day: we see snow
covered mountains, wide smooth lakes, rivers that curve through valleys. It rains for a while, the sun shines
for a glorious half hour, it rains again and then the rain turns to sleet, the
wind comes and goes, there is sun for another few moments and then, as we climb
closer to Campamento Torres it begins to snow.
When Ben and I make it to the campsite Jannis and Kate are
huddled in the cooking shelter, a three-walled wooden structure that is no
warmer than being outside but a huge improvement over trying to cook from
inside a tent. They have just
gotten the water to a boil, and we make hot chocolates spiked with whiskey and
warm our hands over the tiny cooking stove fire.
About an hour later, we are still in the shelter when the
sky clears, letting sunlight filter through the trees into the campsite. After a quick discussion, we decide we
have to hike up to the Torres, the most famous part of the park, while the sky
is clear. The weather is always
unpredictable in Torres del Paine, and if we wait until the next day to hike to
the Towers we might not be able to see them.
Despite the fact that we have already hiked for eight hours
that day, I am surprised to find that I’m excited to get going again, looking
forward to moving and warming my body and feeling the ground beneath my
feet. Halfway up the trail, the
clouds roll in again, and we almost turn back. We decide to go all the way up anyway, just in case, and
just as we reach the end of the trail the clouds begin to clear, revealing the
Towers of Paine, three huge columns of granite that push up into the sky. The towers are solid, heavy granite,
but they are constantly changing: as the clouds drift overhead the sunlight
skimming the stone dims and then grows bright again, shadows grow and shift and
the rock seems almost alive. We
stay at the rocks at the base of the towers, watching, until it becomes too
cold.
The group!
Los Torres
Day Three: Campamento Torres – Hosteria Las Torres –
Campamento Serón (13.9 km)
We hike down from Campamento Torres to Hotel Las Torres a
huge, beautiful old hotel that sits on the open plains below the
mountains. Here we have a picnic
in the sun while we wait for the bus that will take Kate away, taking off our
hiking boots and laying in the grass in front of the hotel.
Later, as we leave the hotel and start off towards the
Campamento Serón, a pack of horses run across the field in front of us,
unbridled and free, tossing their heads and letting the sun shimmer over their
manes. We stand and watch, too
stunned to even pull out our cameras.
As we leave sight of the hotel, the trail widens and takes
us uphill gently, and we walk at a good pace for a few hours, debating
political theories and the benefits of the word cookie verses biscuit, pants verses trousers.
We take a snack break before we begin the descent into a
wide, flat valley where a river meanders from one side to the other and the
wind is warm. As we start up
again, Jannis’ leg seizes up and all of a sudden, despite the fact that he had
been perfectly fine only moments before, he can hardly walk. He tries stretching his leg, and
resting it, but nothing seems to make a difference and it is getting late. Finally, we decide that Ben and I will
take Jannis’ pack and walk ahead of him, so that we can get to the campsite and
set up the tents before it gets dark.
Without his pack, Jannis can at least walk slowly, and the campsite, we
figure, can’t be very far away.
The valley is beautiful. The grasses on either side of the trail are tall and
slender, and they wave and bend in the wind. Scattered throughout are bright yellow flowers, shining like
wishes.
The valley is also impossibly long. Ben and I expect to see the campsite
behind every cluster of trees, but instead all we see is another expanse of
open grasses, another bend in the river to pick our way over, another patch of
trees that this time must be right in
front of the campsite. We go
slowly, trading Jannis’ pack (although Ben carries it much longer than I do),
resting frequently. Finally, just
when we are at the point of despair, we reach the campsite.
Jannis, it turns out, was not very far behind us, and he
arrives just after we have set up the tents. Soon after, the sun begins to set, and we watch it slide
while we make dinner. The clouds
in the valley are incredible, shapes that have been stretched out long and then
folded over each other, layered in yellow and peach. That night, for the first time, I am warm.
View along the trail
View from the Hosteria Las Torres
Jannis and Ben asleep while we wait for our absurdly expensive coffees
Incredible clouds above Campamento Serón
Day Four: Campamento Serón – Refugio Dixon (19 km)
We have a slow, lazy morning, knowing that the hike that day
will be mostly flat and easier than what we’ve experienced before.
Easy, of course, has a different meaning in Patagonia than
in most of the world, and midway through the day the trail turns, bringing us
into a new valley, and we are suddenly hit by the most ferocious winds I have
ever experienced. The trail is
high in the valley, a narrow stretch of flat ground between the hill that
climbs sharply to our left and the land that slopes quickly to our right, land
covered by a scattering of bushes that tumble down towards the lake at the
valley bottom. Jannis is only a
few feet in front of me, yelling into the wind, loving its force, but I don’t
know what he’s saying, I don’t even know if he’s yelling in English or in
German because I can’t hear him, can’t hear a single thing over the sound of
the wind screaming past my ears.
It’s exhilarating, the wind, the way it pounds against my
skin, beating it back to life, but it’s also terrifying. With every step, every time I lift one
foot of the ground, I fear that it’s going to take hold of me and throw me into
the blue water at the bottom of the valley. It does push me around, enough so that for a good few
minutes I’m not even walking on the trail at all, but am planting my feet, one
after the other, on the slanted rock face to my left, somehow held up by my
hiking poles and the wind. I
almost laugh at the absurdity of it until a sudden, stronger gust flings itself
up the trail, catching me and tearing my feet from the ground, sending me
spinning into back into Ben and knocking us both into the rock face on the side
of the trail. We sit for a minute,
a little shocked, tallying ripped shirts and skin. For a few moments I think that I won’t be able to stand up,
that the wind will keep me pinned against the rock forever, but in a moment of
almost-calm I pull myself and my pack up off the ground and we continue, step
by step towards the campsite at Refugio Dixon.
Just before we turned into the windy valley
Beautiful
The best view in the world--the campsite! (Dixon)
Day 5: Refugio Dixon – Campamento Los Perros (9 km)
Today is the day we have been looking forward to, the short
day, and we wake up late to sun in the campsite, a view of mountains sparkling
with snow, a glimpse of a glacier.
When we start hiking we get, as promised, a pleasant, easy hike that begins
with a hot sun-drenched ascent but then leads us down a flat, shady trail
through the last of the ancient forests in the park. The trees are tall but slender, covered in green mosses, and
through their branches we catch glimpses of the mountains, of waterfalls
cascading from unbelievable heights.
When the trail breaks out of the forest we climb to the
viewpoint that looks out over the hanging glacier. There, leaning casually against a rock, our Israeli friend
Asaf has set up his stove and is making coffee. He offers us a cup and we accept, it’s deep smell too good
to resist (they would never, he tells me, drink Nescafe in Israel. It sounds like a wonderful
country).
When the coffee cup has been finished and we have grown
tired of watching the glacier melt, ancient drop by ancient drop, we walk the
last half a kilometer to the campsite.
It is still sunny and there are hours left in the day; we celebrate with
cold beers bought from the campsite kiosk, Cerveza Austral that we enjoy in the
sun. I rinse my clothes in the
pristine water and hang them from the trees to dry, take a nap in the warm
rocks that have been baking all day in the sun, and I am completely,
blissfully, happy.
Refugio Dixon in the morning
View from the trail
The hanging glacier near Los Perros
Only half a kilometer until the campsite!
Day 6: Campamento Los Perros – Refugio Grey (22 km)
This is the day I have been dreading, the day that we have
been warned will be very, very difficult, the day that we have to hike up over
the John Garner pass (which can’t be done if it’s snowing or raining too hard)
and then descend two thousand meters.
We start early, knowing we have a long day ahead of us, and
although the trail shows the effects of recent rain (huge puddles of mud that
have to be avoided by stepping from tree root to tree root, one of which I slip
into and find not just my boot, but my entire calf submerged in mud) and the
sky threatens a downpour, the air is mostly dry as we start our way up the
pass.
The trail—at time distinguished only by rocks splattered
with orange paint—is hard, but not impossible as we climb higher and higher,
watching as the valley below us shrinks.
The map tells us the ascent will take four hours, but two hours after we
left camp we are pulling up over the top of the pass, the huge glacier below us
breaking into view, and we run and yell and throw our hiking poles into the
air. I can hardly believe that we
have already made it, that we have conquered the pass, that we are standing at
the highest point in the park and I don’t feel exhausted, I don’t feel okay, I
feel amazing.
The descent is tough, steep, and long—at times I feel like
I’m jumping from tree to tree, grabbing hold of skinny trunks, rather than
walking downhill. We have to keep
stopping, time and time again, to take photos of Glacier Grey.
I have seen many glaciers at this point, glaciers hanging
and melting and growing, speckled by sun and shrouded by clouds, but I have
never seen anything like this glacier.
It is huge, filling the entire valley and pushing it’s way out towards
the mountains as far as I can see.
It is blue and white and gray all at once, changing where it catches the
light, holding the sun somewhere deep below it’s surface. We hike and we hike and we hike, the
kilometers falling beneath our feet, and somehow we are still alongside the
glacier.
We camp that night at Refugio Grey and here once again the
campsite is packed. We are back to
the crowded side of the park, the part that can be easily reached by a day hike
from the ferry, and it is strange to be around so many people again. I feel accomplished, too, as we talk to
hikers who are just starting or who are turning back after only a day or two—it’s
our sixth day hiking, yeah, we just came over the pass—what do you mean you
don’t have time? You have to make time for the circuit! We try
to convince everyone that the circuit is the way to go, that the shorter “W”
trail isn’t worth it, but of course everyone smiles and no one changes their
plans. We drink whiskey and hot
chocolate in the Refugio with our Israeli friends, and then, for the last time,
fall into an exhausted sleep in our tents.
At the top of the pass!
View of Glacier Grey from the top of the pass
It just keeps going
I have a thousand pictures of this glacier
Ben and Asaf
I love you, hiking poles!
Day Seven: Refugio Grey – Lago Pehoé (11 km)
Our last day brings a short, fairly easy hike, but there’s a
pressure we haven’t experienced before, a deadline. We have to get to the
end of the trail before 2:00 in order to catch the ferry that takes us to the
bus to Puerto Natales.
There is not much to say about this hike. It was beautiful, of course, but the
day was gray, the clouds still heavy with rain from the night before, and we
put our heads down and hike and hike, merely wanting to get there. The
last two hours we hike through fire damage again, glad that the rain has left
the ashes moist and that the wind isn’t strong enough to pull them from the
ground.
And then, we are at the end of the trail, at the ferry port,
and we eat our last trail lunch in view of the turquoise water and the Horns of
Paine, and then the ferry comes. I
am giddy on the ride back across the lake, loving the cold wind, the smell of
the water, the not-quite realization that we did it, we completed the circuit,
I am still alive—more alive then I’ve ever been, in fact, aware of the life in
every inch of my skin and every breath of air that moves through my lungs.
I watch behind the ferry as the end of the trail falls out
of sight and I am exhilarated, amazed that we finished, craving a real meal,
and terribly, terribly sad that it’s over. You just have to let it go, Jannis will tell me later when I ask him how he does it, how he
travels and meets so many people and sees so many places and then leaves them
all, each and every one, no matter how incredible. You have to learn how to let go, he says, but I don’t know how.
The ferry
We made it!
Los Cuernos de Paine - Cerveza Austral, anyone?
* To anyone
who is traveling to Puerto Natales, I strongly and wholeheartedly recommend the
Erratic Rock Hostel. It is exactly
the kind of place you want to stay in before and after a visit to the park;
it’s cozy—warm and busy and full of movies and blankets and books—the breakfast
is delicious, the coffee is real, and the staff will tell you everything you
need to know about trekking in the park.
Bill, the owner, is an Oregonian who is loud and friendly and will
remind you of all the things you love about America.