First of all, I apologize that I am clearly way behind on blogging. I’m currently in Bariloche, Argentina and it is April 11th, a lot of days after March 25th. I have been recording what I do each day, I just have not prioritized actually blogging over all of the other awesome experiences we have been having. There is always a conversation to be had or a new friend to meet in the hostels or the destination. I’m gonna try hard to type all of the days up at some point in the near future. Also, sorry for the million typos.
Also, I apologize there probably won't be many pictures from here on out. They just take foreverrrrrrrrrrr to load on my slow computer, and I think the experiences are more valuable to remember. All of the pics are on Facebook, so feel free to friend me.
Wednesday, March 25 -
We woke, prepared and waited, 2:30 couldn’t come soon enough. I left a rather large trash bag full of stuff I didn’t need on the trek in the locked closet of the hostel to make my backpack lighter. At 1:15 we left the hostel to head to the Libreria to purchase a deck of cards for down time during the W trek. This was idiotic though because the whole town is closed from 1-3 for lunch/nap break. We realized this soon after we left, but we walked anyway just incase something was open. Nothing was open. We also wanted to go to the Vertice Patagonia office to see if we could book another night at Refigio Grey to extend our stay at Torres Del Paine, but sure enough, they were closed as well. We ended up doing a significant amount of sloped walking with our full backpacks on before arriving at the bus station at about 2:15. We used “Buses Gomez”, but there were plenty of options. It was 28,000 clp for a ride to and from the park. On the bus we met Ben and Anna, a couple from the San Francisco area (same as Gabi), who had the same schedule as us for the W. Immediate besties.
The bus ride was about 2 hours and I needed nothing to do besides enjoy the mountains, lakes, and wild life were driving passed. We made a quick unnecessary stop and we all got off the bus and had to hold back from taking pictures because we knew there would be some many more/better options. And we didn’t know what the situation was going to be with electrical outlets at the refugios. Had to conserve battery and memory for the next 5 days.
We arrived at the park entrance at about 4:30 and had to fill out a consent form, pay the 28,000 clp entrace fee, and watch the mandatory 3 minute video explaining why starting a fire was punishable by up to 20 years in Chilean prison. No fires were going to be started by this guy, I’m good without that experience. (Seriously though, in recent history they had a fire that burned down like 1/3 of the park and it is actually a really sad situation, hene the mandatory video. We saw many many many burnt trees and landscape).
We grabbed our packs from Buses Gomez and took a different 10 minute bus to the refugio area. The refugio had a tremendous view set right in front of a mountain with a whole mountain range in the background and many snow covered peaks. From this point on, really every view was virtually indescribable. This national park is just so naturally beautiful because it has it all. So I am not going to go to far out of my way to describe why each view was unreal, I’ll just post a bunch of pics because they’re worth more words anyway.
We were staying at “Torres Norte” about a 3 minute walk away from “Torres Central”. Central is where the check in, meals, and main areas were, while Norte was simply a lobby area and sleeping rooms with bunk beds. The refugios had these little fire pits that looked like old fashioned cooking ovens, but they provided warmth for human bodies or for drying of wet/used clothing items. Gabi and I set our stuff down in our rooms and ran into some more studying abroad American (with an A E Phi shirt or two). These lovely giraffes (shoutout) told us that they had hiked the 4 hours up to the Torres Base to see the sunrise (which is the pinnacle of the park). They left at 4am and got there around 8am. At that point, there was no way we weren’t going to do that the following morning. We never even hesitated in deciding to wake up at 4am, this was the start of what was clearly going to be 5 days of life away from reality.
We explored a little bit before rearranging our meals a bit with the nice front desk ladies to allow for our early departure the next morning. At dinner, our little group of trekkers started to form. There were 10 of us that had the exact same hiking/lodging schedule, so it didn’t take long to make friends with everyone. We acquainted and ate with a family of four (also tribal members, ironically) from the Seattle area, and the 22 year old son, Forrest, was eager to join us at 4am. Didn’t take long for our wolf pack to grow to 3. Dinner was a 3-course meal of soup, main course of meat and side, and a small dessert. Extremely average and left me a little hungry almost every night. After dinner we hung for a little and then packed our daypacks for adventure time so we could simply wake and leave in the morning. We read a little in the cozy lobby area and debated whether to just sleep out there, but the room was the better option as people would enter and exit and noise seemed to always exist.
Thursday 3/26/15
It was incredibly easy to get out of bed at 3:50am. We took our stuff out of the room to not wake our roommates and dressed in the lobby. Forrest had already arrived to meet us. It was really cold, but we were told that the hike is vigorous so you de-layer fairly quickly. I wore thin long sleeve under-armor, a dry fit t shirt, a high quality windbreaker, thin gloves and a beanie. Forrest and Gabi had head lamps, but I had a quite strong little LED flash light that would do me just fine. This flashlight also charges my phone and is definitely one of the coolest/most useful little gadgets that I have (thank you so much RRB!!!). We left Torrest Norte at 4:05am and were on our way to find the way up to watch the sunrise.
We really didn’t know exactly where we were going, how intense the incline was going to be, how clear the path was going to be, how long it would take, how much water would be available, what kinds of lions/tigers/bears were going to eat us, how many others would be hiking like us, or much at all. We just knew this was our first day at TDP, we couldn’t see anything without our flashlights, and we were on a mission to get to the top. It was a complete adventure.
The sky was clear of clouds though so the star gazing was breathtaking. Impossible to capture in a picture, unfortunately, but it was easily the most stars and brightest presentation of a night sky I have ever seen. At first we were all freezing and hunched over, but as we started walking, we started warming. When we started working on the uphill slopes, we all removed our jackets and soon enough we were all sweating and panting. The time seemed to pass rather quickly, but we were walking uphill, nonstop, in the pitch black for about 3 hours. We heard rivers and creeks and waterfalls along the way, but unless they were within 30-40 meters, we couldn’t see them. Our surroundings were a complete mystery. We had to find the correct bridges and paths, and when we came across streams, we would fill our water bottles with the fresh and super cold water.
We finally made it to the camping base at the base of the steep, last 45 minute climb at about 6:30am. At this point, a few others were also hiking to the top, we could only tell because we could see other flashlights, near and far off into the distance. At this point all three of us are tired and sweaty but extremely excited for the finale. Not to mention we had plenty of energy because the hike had been a complete blast so far.
In the last part of the walk, we walked 1 kilometer and gained 500 meters in altitude. It was basically climbing a mountain if it was not extremely steep walking. We were constantly out of breath and had to take breaks, repeatedly is disbelief that some hikers do the whole hike with large packs on their backs. We arrived at the top at about 7:20am where it was all large boulders to climb over/sit on and a whole bunch of fog surrounded by mountain. We couldn’t see much beside some brightness off into the distant valley. But we settled in, tried to re-bundle up, and ate some breakfast. My under armor layer was drenched in sweat and couldn’t dry, so I was absolutely freezing. We sat around, enjoying what we could see, attempting to stay warm, and hoping the fog would clear at some point. We did get a good view of the pretty lake at the top of this mountain, right underneath the “towers” (that we couldn’t see). And we could see the bottom half of the mountain that separated us from the base at the bottom, the mountain we had walked around and up. We realy had tremendous views even with the fog and clouds. We were in between cloud layers, so off into the distance, below us, we could see a sheet of clouds covering the ground. Really, if we didn’t know that there were incredible “Towers” and more to see above, we would have been enamored by what we could see. But we did in fact know there were more/better views to come, and others were also patiently waiting for some sort of view as some had brought sleeping bags and/or coffee makers. For some, this was their last day on the W and this was all they had waited to see.
At one point, the fog thinned a little and we could see the towers with some of the red tint from sunrise, but it was very blurred due to the layer of clouds. It was like our eyes couldn’t focus because we simply could not see the towers clearly. Then the fog came back, and we started to prepare to walk back down the mountain. It was 9am now.
As we were walking down, one of the Israelis we had met while waiting called for us to come back up, the clouds were finally clearing. We ran back up the rocks back to the top and sure enough you could clearly see the towers and the surrounding mountains. The fog had now descended to the lake below, so we didn’t get the whole effect, but being able to see the towers was great. About 10 minutes later, the clouds rolled back in, and at that point it was time to make our way back down to the bottom.
Walking down was a lot of fun because we could see everything we weren’t able to see on the way up. Granted it was very foggy so we could not see far off into the distance, but we could see and enjoy the changing fall colors on the trees and the mountains that we were walking down and around. We knew we had to make it down in some sort of a timely fashion to be in time for lunch, but we were still able to stop, take breaks, and enjoy it. The color of the river running down near our walking path was a tremendous bright blue, which really added to the effect of all the other colors we were already seeing. For the whole national park, pictures do not do the experience justice by any means, but specifically on this day, the fog made it so that pictures weren’t even representative of what we were actually seeing.
The walk back seemed long, but we eventually made it to the base at 1:15 very hungry and very ready to do nothing. We enjoyed our hot lunch of the same meat from the night before (it was actually good, not sarcasm), and relaxed on the couches in the living area of the refugio for a while. Half sleeping, half reading. Dinner was at 7:30 and we all exchanged stories of our hikes that day. Apparently everyone that didn’t get up for sunrise (everyone else aside from us 3), got a clear view of the towers at the top. But we weren’t mad because hiking at night for 3 hours was some of the most fun we were probably going to have. Before and after dinner, Gabi, Forrest, Mia (Forrest’s little sister) and I played card games, and we went to sleep around 10 knowing we didn’t have to get up before 8am, which felt great after over 32,000 steps that day (I wear a pedometer).
Friday – Day 2 of the W trek.
We slept in a bit, ate breakfast at 8:30ish and took our time packing our bags and preparing for the (relatively) short hike we had planned for the day. We were simply going to walk from the Torres refugios to Los Cuernos refugios, which was 11 kilometers and estimated to take 4.5 hours. Today was tremendous weather so our plan was to enjoy the hike as much as we could, especially since we had the time flexibility. Gabi, Gee (our Portuguese friend whose full name is William but in Portuguese is very hard to pronounce), and I left at about 10am and we were immediately loving the weather, visibility, and scattered clouds. The hike was walking along a long and beautiful lake called Lago Nordenskjöld, so we were constantly stopping and taking pictures and relaxing. We ended up catching up with the Seattle family of four as they were just soaking up some rays at a good viewpoint. We met some English girls headed the opposite directions and shared experiences with them. We each probably took over 50 pictures just this day because the views were so tremendous, the weather was so great, and we had so much time. We spent probably an hour on a rock almost exactly in the middle of the lake with a perfect view of the whole lake, the mountains in the background and to the left and right, and of the mountains right behind us. As the clouds shifted and light changed, we couldn’t help but take way too many pictures and just enjoy it. Two fun girls ran into us here and we swapped stories and hung out. We ended up stretching this relaxing and eye-pleasing hike into about 7 hours as we arrived at the refugio Los Cuernos at about 5pm. The refugio was located in the middle of the trees, very close to the lake with a great view over it. It was very nice to just relax there for a couple of hours before dinner. It was a very cozy refugio, and they even had 3 stories of bunks in the rooms, I thought that was incredible. Dinner was some tasty lamb chops, and afterwards we played some more cards with a new comer or two.
While we were hanging at the hostel before dinner, Gabi and I decided to join Anna and Ben (a couple from San Francisco in our “group”) in leaving the next morning at 6am before a very long day’s hike. So we arranged our meals accordingly, packed our bags, and fully prepared the night before so we wouldn’t wake anyone in the morning, and went to sleep. 20,140 steps didn’t feel like too much.
Saturday – hiking day number 3
We woke up at 5:50am to meet Ben and Anna in the common room at 6am. After organizing our stuff and preparing in layers, we left at about 6:15, excited for another little night hike. It was pretty chilly but not too overwhelming, and this time the star gazing was not as prevalent as before. Not too long into the walk, we encountered a runner with a head lamp and a race number on his chest. He came the opposite direction, passed us with a “permisso” and went on. Gabi and I remembered talking to our bunk mates in Torres, who were organizing a race through TDP and figured that this must be it. It was an 80k literally up and down mountains through all types of terrain on the farthest thing from a flat, even surface. Sometimes there wasn’t even enough room on the paths for 2 people to fit, so passing wasn’t easy. I discussed how insane/impressive these people were by running this race. Many more racers passed us in the next hour or so, some in groups, some by themselves, some lost, and some found.
After we took a few de-layering stops, we decided to find a good place to park, eat breakfast, and watch the sunrise. We found a spot perfect for the occasion and set up shop. I set up a time-lapse on Anna’s iPhone (mine is my camera, she had another camera), got out some food, and began to layer back up as the sky became lighter and lighter. We had tremendous views all around with the same beautiful lake as the day before right in front of us with mountains in the background behind it. We had a mountain right behind us with a glacier at the peak and were hearing “avalanches” every 30ish minutes, and across the lake was a range of mountains all with snow top peaks. And there were scattered solo clouds only to emphasize the drastic color changes of the sun rise.
Needless to say, the 1.5 hours we spent there were unreal and perfect. We all took way too many pictures of basically the same thing over and over again, and my phone died like half way through (figures). It was an incredible time. And the time lapse turned out fantastic, I am still working on getting that recording from Anna, but it’ll happen. At about 8:30 we packed up and continued on our way, very content with our decision making so far.
Not needing our lights anymore, we hiked normally for another hour or so until we made it to the campsite where we could drop off our big bags and only bring our day packs. We were going to pick up our big bags later before we headed to the refigio at the end of the day. We were headed up the “French valley” which was supposed to take about 2.5 hours one way, then 2.5 back down, then another 2.5 hours (with our whole packs) to the paine grande refugio. At this point it was about 10am, and it was going to be a long day, which is why we were wanting to get up at 6am in the first place.
The French Valley was incredible. We were basically walking up through a forest of trees changing colors for autumn, alongside a strong creek, and with a large mountain to the left featuring a glacier at the top. Every 15 minutes or so we would come to a clearing in the trees and have a fantastic view of the mountain/glacier, and we were in constant ear shot of the running water of the creek. We even re-filled our waters in it many times. But, needless to say, we took many picture and view breaks, as well as breathers because we were walking at a constant up hill over rocks and other forest barriers.
After what seemed like forever, we made it to the top to “Mirador Britanico” at about 1pm, and it was completely breath taking. One of those views that was simply too amazing for pictures or panos or videos. The view point was up on a few large boulders above the tree line and it featured about 270 degrees of enclosing mountains with the sea of colorful trees filling in the circle below us. And the 1 or 2 visible creeks running through the tree sea. Most of the mountains were snow capped, and the back of the torres twins we had seen the day before were also featured. The other 90 degrees of the view was back down the valley to see the lake in the distance and the mountains in the far distance on the other side of the lake. We hung out there and ate lunch.
The map said there was another 0.5 hour hike from the mirador, but it was closed off. However, we wanted to explore anyway. So, after conversing and meeting others at this tremendous view point, we adventured up the weakly closed off path. We were basically climbing straight up alongside a creek, it was extremely steep and very fun. The path crossed the creek about 10 minutes into the hike and at this point we were climbing up the path with hands and feet. We stopped on a large rock and looked back down to see how much higher we were than the Britanico view point. It really wasn’t a better view, but we were significantly higher, and it was a fun little adventure. However, from there we decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to ascend any further, so we slid back down (quite literally), and made it back to Britanico with minimal damage. At this point it was almost 2, and with 5 hours of hiking in front of us, we needed to head down. Dinner was at 7 at the refugio, and eating dinner was extremely high on our priority lists.
The hike back down was pretty annoying because none of the view were new (even though they were all still tremendous), and we were constantly have to brace the steepness and slam our feet down on the uneven rocky path. It was rather painful. We got back to our large packs at about 4:40, already a little behind schedule, but we knew the last 2.5 wasn’t going to be extremely challenging (even though it was like 7.5 kilometers). We took a 5 minute break, got everything together, returned the mini wallet full of money that we found, and got to walking at a pretty quick pace. We all threw our rain covers on as well because it seemed like it was about to rain, which it eventually did.
It was fairly flat, but pretty muddy and we were on a mission to make dinner, so we didn’t do much stopping to look on this route. We passed a few lakes on our left, saw some tremendous rainbows, complained a lot, and found other ways to pass the time. After a few rounds of 20 questions and a lot of inaccurate altitude markers, we made it to the refugio at 6:50.
Dinner was more cafeteria style this time, so we got seconds and almost thirds and had a nice, large relaxing dinner. All 4 of us were moving very slowly. In Gabi’s and my room were 2 other guys on their second night of the W trek, and they were actually from Texas and went to Rice. So we hung out with them for a while and exchanged experiences to that point, and before we knew it, it was after 10pm. We legitimately thought we were going to go to sleep at 9pm. Gabi and I agreed to get up at 7am and check the weather to see if it was good enough to get an early start, but both of us knew that we weren’t going to start early.
Sunday – Day 4 of the W!
We awoke at 8am and the weather was pretty grey, so we were in no hurry to start the day, especially since we only had about 5 or 6 hours of hiking to do. We had a nice, casual breakfast, organized our things, and headed up towards refugio Grey with Gee at about 9:30. It was supposedly a 3.5 hour walk to the refugio and we had our sights set on catching some view points farther past the refugio as well.
It was impressively windy. With our (almost) full packs on and walking basically constantly uphill, it was quite the energy burner. People that were walking the other direction as us were in short sleeves and didn’t look tired at all, and boy were we jealous. I was only wearing a Nike dryfit and my windbreaker, but this just proved how great of a purchase the windbreaker from Bass was because the wind really wasn’t affecting me much. In fact, once I took it off, my dryfit shirt was drenched in sweat, even though I really wasn’t that hot. But the views were great as always, and soon enough we came across the first view of Glacier Grey. Gee had to be back down to catch the 6:30 boat, so we didn’t have all day, but we spent some time stopping at each view point and enjoying them. This was the first time I had ever seen a “true” glacier, a massive block of ice that extends farther than the eye can see.
We got to the refugio at about 1:30 and were very ready to eat lunch (packed by the paine grande refugio). Gee wanted to head back by 2, so we ate pretty quickly and then went to check out the viewpoint of the glacier that was a quick 10 minute walk away. It was a pretty stunning sight this glacier, and of course the scenery surrounding couldn’t have been better (just like the whole Torres Del Paine trek).
Gabi and I headed back to refugio Grey where we split and said bye to Gee, checked into our room, got our meals situated, and prepared for a short day hike to some better/farther view points. We decided not to order a lunch for the following day because we had a good amount of food left over, it would save money, and we were planning to catch the 12:30 boat so we would be able to have dinner in Puerto Natales. At about 2:45 we left Grey again and set out to find some view points that we heard were just tremendous. It was a fun time because neither of us were carrying any weight and we were able to walk pretty quick and free, which was a change from the rest of the journey in TDP.
People were right. About an hour in we hit a great view point, took some pics, and ran into a couple who recommended going about 20 minutes further for a really great view. Dale. On our way there, we crossed 2 bridges that were extremely intimidating and long bridges that limited 4 people at a time. They were hold your breath type bridges, but a lot of fun. When we got to the top of the hike, we knew it immediately because I don’t think the view could have been better. We took the obligatory pictures, urination breaks (we had started holding it in until there is a trademark view), and hour-plus long chill sesh before heading back to the hostel. Neither of us really wanted to leave, it was one of the many views that were just simply too good to capture in a picture or video or panoramic.
Dinner was supposed to be at 7, and we were all starving and ready. The Seattle family, Scott, Gabi, me, and a couple from Tennessee (late/new addition to our team) were counting down the minutes. The next thing we knew it was 7:09 (catastrophe!!) and no dinner, so we tried to seat ourselves at the already set tables, but the staff would not let us. Finally at 7:40, we sat down, and the bread appetizer went down our stomachs before anyone could blink. We had a very nice, peaceful, and relaxing dinner as we compared the daily stories and recommendations, then we were all excited to sleep again.
Monday – Day 5 of the W
We got up again to catch the sunset. The view of the glacier and mountains was only 10 minutes away, and we needed to leave the hostel early regardless to catch the 12:30 boat, so why not? But this time we were unsuccessful because the mountains were blocking anything in our view from turning red. I even climbed the relatively small hill for a better view, but really couldn’t see much noteworthy. Gabi didn’t follow me because his previously turned ankle was bothering him. No regrets though, it was well worth the try.
We said bye to the Seattle family, who was taking the later boat at 6:30, and left Grey with all of our stuff at 8:30. We knew it was going to be a steep hike up and that the wind was going to be at our backs, so it wasn’t long before we were in short sleeves and passing oncoming bundled up hikers, like we were the day before. We ironically ran into a few people that we knew from other hostels/travels/high school (Gabi knew this girl) on the way down, which made for a fun 10 minute break and conversation. The what was supposed to take 3.5 hour hike really wasn’t that bad, we got to Paine Grade (where the boat picked up) at 11:20, in just under 3 hours. We hung out there and enjoyed the weather and finals views with the Tennessee couple and others waiting for the boat. It was definitely bitter sweet to say goodbye to this God-given place because we were ready to be done hiking for a day or 6, but we also knew that we would not be at a park that beautiful again in a long time, if ever. It really was 5 days of not real life.
The boat pulled up at 12:35, we piled on and enjoyed some time on the balcony enjoying the breeze and (once again) incredible scenery. We all agreed that this boat staff had maybe the best job of all time. Then after a bus, transfer, and another 2 hour bus ride, we were back in Puerto Natales at the Singing Lamb Hostel. We got our stuff we had left there, showered, re-organized, went to dinner and drinks with some new friends at Baguales, and eventually called it a night before we had to catch a 7am bus to El Calafate the next morning.
Also, I apologize there probably won't be many pictures from here on out. They just take foreverrrrrrrrrrr to load on my slow computer, and I think the experiences are more valuable to remember. All of the pics are on Facebook, so feel free to friend me.
Wednesday, March 25 -
We woke, prepared and waited, 2:30 couldn’t come soon enough. I left a rather large trash bag full of stuff I didn’t need on the trek in the locked closet of the hostel to make my backpack lighter. At 1:15 we left the hostel to head to the Libreria to purchase a deck of cards for down time during the W trek. This was idiotic though because the whole town is closed from 1-3 for lunch/nap break. We realized this soon after we left, but we walked anyway just incase something was open. Nothing was open. We also wanted to go to the Vertice Patagonia office to see if we could book another night at Refigio Grey to extend our stay at Torres Del Paine, but sure enough, they were closed as well. We ended up doing a significant amount of sloped walking with our full backpacks on before arriving at the bus station at about 2:15. We used “Buses Gomez”, but there were plenty of options. It was 28,000 clp for a ride to and from the park. On the bus we met Ben and Anna, a couple from the San Francisco area (same as Gabi), who had the same schedule as us for the W. Immediate besties.
The bus ride was about 2 hours and I needed nothing to do besides enjoy the mountains, lakes, and wild life were driving passed. We made a quick unnecessary stop and we all got off the bus and had to hold back from taking pictures because we knew there would be some many more/better options. And we didn’t know what the situation was going to be with electrical outlets at the refugios. Had to conserve battery and memory for the next 5 days.
We arrived at the park entrance at about 4:30 and had to fill out a consent form, pay the 28,000 clp entrace fee, and watch the mandatory 3 minute video explaining why starting a fire was punishable by up to 20 years in Chilean prison. No fires were going to be started by this guy, I’m good without that experience. (Seriously though, in recent history they had a fire that burned down like 1/3 of the park and it is actually a really sad situation, hene the mandatory video. We saw many many many burnt trees and landscape).
We grabbed our packs from Buses Gomez and took a different 10 minute bus to the refugio area. The refugio had a tremendous view set right in front of a mountain with a whole mountain range in the background and many snow covered peaks. From this point on, really every view was virtually indescribable. This national park is just so naturally beautiful because it has it all. So I am not going to go to far out of my way to describe why each view was unreal, I’ll just post a bunch of pics because they’re worth more words anyway.
We were staying at “Torres Norte” about a 3 minute walk away from “Torres Central”. Central is where the check in, meals, and main areas were, while Norte was simply a lobby area and sleeping rooms with bunk beds. The refugios had these little fire pits that looked like old fashioned cooking ovens, but they provided warmth for human bodies or for drying of wet/used clothing items. Gabi and I set our stuff down in our rooms and ran into some more studying abroad American (with an A E Phi shirt or two). These lovely giraffes (shoutout) told us that they had hiked the 4 hours up to the Torres Base to see the sunrise (which is the pinnacle of the park). They left at 4am and got there around 8am. At that point, there was no way we weren’t going to do that the following morning. We never even hesitated in deciding to wake up at 4am, this was the start of what was clearly going to be 5 days of life away from reality.
We explored a little bit before rearranging our meals a bit with the nice front desk ladies to allow for our early departure the next morning. At dinner, our little group of trekkers started to form. There were 10 of us that had the exact same hiking/lodging schedule, so it didn’t take long to make friends with everyone. We acquainted and ate with a family of four (also tribal members, ironically) from the Seattle area, and the 22 year old son, Forrest, was eager to join us at 4am. Didn’t take long for our wolf pack to grow to 3. Dinner was a 3-course meal of soup, main course of meat and side, and a small dessert. Extremely average and left me a little hungry almost every night. After dinner we hung for a little and then packed our daypacks for adventure time so we could simply wake and leave in the morning. We read a little in the cozy lobby area and debated whether to just sleep out there, but the room was the better option as people would enter and exit and noise seemed to always exist.
Thursday 3/26/15
It was incredibly easy to get out of bed at 3:50am. We took our stuff out of the room to not wake our roommates and dressed in the lobby. Forrest had already arrived to meet us. It was really cold, but we were told that the hike is vigorous so you de-layer fairly quickly. I wore thin long sleeve under-armor, a dry fit t shirt, a high quality windbreaker, thin gloves and a beanie. Forrest and Gabi had head lamps, but I had a quite strong little LED flash light that would do me just fine. This flashlight also charges my phone and is definitely one of the coolest/most useful little gadgets that I have (thank you so much RRB!!!). We left Torrest Norte at 4:05am and were on our way to find the way up to watch the sunrise.
We really didn’t know exactly where we were going, how intense the incline was going to be, how clear the path was going to be, how long it would take, how much water would be available, what kinds of lions/tigers/bears were going to eat us, how many others would be hiking like us, or much at all. We just knew this was our first day at TDP, we couldn’t see anything without our flashlights, and we were on a mission to get to the top. It was a complete adventure.
The sky was clear of clouds though so the star gazing was breathtaking. Impossible to capture in a picture, unfortunately, but it was easily the most stars and brightest presentation of a night sky I have ever seen. At first we were all freezing and hunched over, but as we started walking, we started warming. When we started working on the uphill slopes, we all removed our jackets and soon enough we were all sweating and panting. The time seemed to pass rather quickly, but we were walking uphill, nonstop, in the pitch black for about 3 hours. We heard rivers and creeks and waterfalls along the way, but unless they were within 30-40 meters, we couldn’t see them. Our surroundings were a complete mystery. We had to find the correct bridges and paths, and when we came across streams, we would fill our water bottles with the fresh and super cold water.
We finally made it to the camping base at the base of the steep, last 45 minute climb at about 6:30am. At this point, a few others were also hiking to the top, we could only tell because we could see other flashlights, near and far off into the distance. At this point all three of us are tired and sweaty but extremely excited for the finale. Not to mention we had plenty of energy because the hike had been a complete blast so far.
In the last part of the walk, we walked 1 kilometer and gained 500 meters in altitude. It was basically climbing a mountain if it was not extremely steep walking. We were constantly out of breath and had to take breaks, repeatedly is disbelief that some hikers do the whole hike with large packs on their backs. We arrived at the top at about 7:20am where it was all large boulders to climb over/sit on and a whole bunch of fog surrounded by mountain. We couldn’t see much beside some brightness off into the distant valley. But we settled in, tried to re-bundle up, and ate some breakfast. My under armor layer was drenched in sweat and couldn’t dry, so I was absolutely freezing. We sat around, enjoying what we could see, attempting to stay warm, and hoping the fog would clear at some point. We did get a good view of the pretty lake at the top of this mountain, right underneath the “towers” (that we couldn’t see). And we could see the bottom half of the mountain that separated us from the base at the bottom, the mountain we had walked around and up. We realy had tremendous views even with the fog and clouds. We were in between cloud layers, so off into the distance, below us, we could see a sheet of clouds covering the ground. Really, if we didn’t know that there were incredible “Towers” and more to see above, we would have been enamored by what we could see. But we did in fact know there were more/better views to come, and others were also patiently waiting for some sort of view as some had brought sleeping bags and/or coffee makers. For some, this was their last day on the W and this was all they had waited to see.
At one point, the fog thinned a little and we could see the towers with some of the red tint from sunrise, but it was very blurred due to the layer of clouds. It was like our eyes couldn’t focus because we simply could not see the towers clearly. Then the fog came back, and we started to prepare to walk back down the mountain. It was 9am now.
As we were walking down, one of the Israelis we had met while waiting called for us to come back up, the clouds were finally clearing. We ran back up the rocks back to the top and sure enough you could clearly see the towers and the surrounding mountains. The fog had now descended to the lake below, so we didn’t get the whole effect, but being able to see the towers was great. About 10 minutes later, the clouds rolled back in, and at that point it was time to make our way back down to the bottom.
Walking down was a lot of fun because we could see everything we weren’t able to see on the way up. Granted it was very foggy so we could not see far off into the distance, but we could see and enjoy the changing fall colors on the trees and the mountains that we were walking down and around. We knew we had to make it down in some sort of a timely fashion to be in time for lunch, but we were still able to stop, take breaks, and enjoy it. The color of the river running down near our walking path was a tremendous bright blue, which really added to the effect of all the other colors we were already seeing. For the whole national park, pictures do not do the experience justice by any means, but specifically on this day, the fog made it so that pictures weren’t even representative of what we were actually seeing.
The walk back seemed long, but we eventually made it to the base at 1:15 very hungry and very ready to do nothing. We enjoyed our hot lunch of the same meat from the night before (it was actually good, not sarcasm), and relaxed on the couches in the living area of the refugio for a while. Half sleeping, half reading. Dinner was at 7:30 and we all exchanged stories of our hikes that day. Apparently everyone that didn’t get up for sunrise (everyone else aside from us 3), got a clear view of the towers at the top. But we weren’t mad because hiking at night for 3 hours was some of the most fun we were probably going to have. Before and after dinner, Gabi, Forrest, Mia (Forrest’s little sister) and I played card games, and we went to sleep around 10 knowing we didn’t have to get up before 8am, which felt great after over 32,000 steps that day (I wear a pedometer).
Friday – Day 2 of the W trek.
We slept in a bit, ate breakfast at 8:30ish and took our time packing our bags and preparing for the (relatively) short hike we had planned for the day. We were simply going to walk from the Torres refugios to Los Cuernos refugios, which was 11 kilometers and estimated to take 4.5 hours. Today was tremendous weather so our plan was to enjoy the hike as much as we could, especially since we had the time flexibility. Gabi, Gee (our Portuguese friend whose full name is William but in Portuguese is very hard to pronounce), and I left at about 10am and we were immediately loving the weather, visibility, and scattered clouds. The hike was walking along a long and beautiful lake called Lago Nordenskjöld, so we were constantly stopping and taking pictures and relaxing. We ended up catching up with the Seattle family of four as they were just soaking up some rays at a good viewpoint. We met some English girls headed the opposite directions and shared experiences with them. We each probably took over 50 pictures just this day because the views were so tremendous, the weather was so great, and we had so much time. We spent probably an hour on a rock almost exactly in the middle of the lake with a perfect view of the whole lake, the mountains in the background and to the left and right, and of the mountains right behind us. As the clouds shifted and light changed, we couldn’t help but take way too many pictures and just enjoy it. Two fun girls ran into us here and we swapped stories and hung out. We ended up stretching this relaxing and eye-pleasing hike into about 7 hours as we arrived at the refugio Los Cuernos at about 5pm. The refugio was located in the middle of the trees, very close to the lake with a great view over it. It was very nice to just relax there for a couple of hours before dinner. It was a very cozy refugio, and they even had 3 stories of bunks in the rooms, I thought that was incredible. Dinner was some tasty lamb chops, and afterwards we played some more cards with a new comer or two.
While we were hanging at the hostel before dinner, Gabi and I decided to join Anna and Ben (a couple from San Francisco in our “group”) in leaving the next morning at 6am before a very long day’s hike. So we arranged our meals accordingly, packed our bags, and fully prepared the night before so we wouldn’t wake anyone in the morning, and went to sleep. 20,140 steps didn’t feel like too much.
Saturday – hiking day number 3
We woke up at 5:50am to meet Ben and Anna in the common room at 6am. After organizing our stuff and preparing in layers, we left at about 6:15, excited for another little night hike. It was pretty chilly but not too overwhelming, and this time the star gazing was not as prevalent as before. Not too long into the walk, we encountered a runner with a head lamp and a race number on his chest. He came the opposite direction, passed us with a “permisso” and went on. Gabi and I remembered talking to our bunk mates in Torres, who were organizing a race through TDP and figured that this must be it. It was an 80k literally up and down mountains through all types of terrain on the farthest thing from a flat, even surface. Sometimes there wasn’t even enough room on the paths for 2 people to fit, so passing wasn’t easy. I discussed how insane/impressive these people were by running this race. Many more racers passed us in the next hour or so, some in groups, some by themselves, some lost, and some found.
After we took a few de-layering stops, we decided to find a good place to park, eat breakfast, and watch the sunrise. We found a spot perfect for the occasion and set up shop. I set up a time-lapse on Anna’s iPhone (mine is my camera, she had another camera), got out some food, and began to layer back up as the sky became lighter and lighter. We had tremendous views all around with the same beautiful lake as the day before right in front of us with mountains in the background behind it. We had a mountain right behind us with a glacier at the peak and were hearing “avalanches” every 30ish minutes, and across the lake was a range of mountains all with snow top peaks. And there were scattered solo clouds only to emphasize the drastic color changes of the sun rise.
Needless to say, the 1.5 hours we spent there were unreal and perfect. We all took way too many pictures of basically the same thing over and over again, and my phone died like half way through (figures). It was an incredible time. And the time lapse turned out fantastic, I am still working on getting that recording from Anna, but it’ll happen. At about 8:30 we packed up and continued on our way, very content with our decision making so far.
Not needing our lights anymore, we hiked normally for another hour or so until we made it to the campsite where we could drop off our big bags and only bring our day packs. We were going to pick up our big bags later before we headed to the refigio at the end of the day. We were headed up the “French valley” which was supposed to take about 2.5 hours one way, then 2.5 back down, then another 2.5 hours (with our whole packs) to the paine grande refugio. At this point it was about 10am, and it was going to be a long day, which is why we were wanting to get up at 6am in the first place.
The French Valley was incredible. We were basically walking up through a forest of trees changing colors for autumn, alongside a strong creek, and with a large mountain to the left featuring a glacier at the top. Every 15 minutes or so we would come to a clearing in the trees and have a fantastic view of the mountain/glacier, and we were in constant ear shot of the running water of the creek. We even re-filled our waters in it many times. But, needless to say, we took many picture and view breaks, as well as breathers because we were walking at a constant up hill over rocks and other forest barriers.
After what seemed like forever, we made it to the top to “Mirador Britanico” at about 1pm, and it was completely breath taking. One of those views that was simply too amazing for pictures or panos or videos. The view point was up on a few large boulders above the tree line and it featured about 270 degrees of enclosing mountains with the sea of colorful trees filling in the circle below us. And the 1 or 2 visible creeks running through the tree sea. Most of the mountains were snow capped, and the back of the torres twins we had seen the day before were also featured. The other 90 degrees of the view was back down the valley to see the lake in the distance and the mountains in the far distance on the other side of the lake. We hung out there and ate lunch.
The map said there was another 0.5 hour hike from the mirador, but it was closed off. However, we wanted to explore anyway. So, after conversing and meeting others at this tremendous view point, we adventured up the weakly closed off path. We were basically climbing straight up alongside a creek, it was extremely steep and very fun. The path crossed the creek about 10 minutes into the hike and at this point we were climbing up the path with hands and feet. We stopped on a large rock and looked back down to see how much higher we were than the Britanico view point. It really wasn’t a better view, but we were significantly higher, and it was a fun little adventure. However, from there we decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to ascend any further, so we slid back down (quite literally), and made it back to Britanico with minimal damage. At this point it was almost 2, and with 5 hours of hiking in front of us, we needed to head down. Dinner was at 7 at the refugio, and eating dinner was extremely high on our priority lists.
The hike back down was pretty annoying because none of the view were new (even though they were all still tremendous), and we were constantly have to brace the steepness and slam our feet down on the uneven rocky path. It was rather painful. We got back to our large packs at about 4:40, already a little behind schedule, but we knew the last 2.5 wasn’t going to be extremely challenging (even though it was like 7.5 kilometers). We took a 5 minute break, got everything together, returned the mini wallet full of money that we found, and got to walking at a pretty quick pace. We all threw our rain covers on as well because it seemed like it was about to rain, which it eventually did.
It was fairly flat, but pretty muddy and we were on a mission to make dinner, so we didn’t do much stopping to look on this route. We passed a few lakes on our left, saw some tremendous rainbows, complained a lot, and found other ways to pass the time. After a few rounds of 20 questions and a lot of inaccurate altitude markers, we made it to the refugio at 6:50.
Dinner was more cafeteria style this time, so we got seconds and almost thirds and had a nice, large relaxing dinner. All 4 of us were moving very slowly. In Gabi’s and my room were 2 other guys on their second night of the W trek, and they were actually from Texas and went to Rice. So we hung out with them for a while and exchanged experiences to that point, and before we knew it, it was after 10pm. We legitimately thought we were going to go to sleep at 9pm. Gabi and I agreed to get up at 7am and check the weather to see if it was good enough to get an early start, but both of us knew that we weren’t going to start early.
Sunday – Day 4 of the W!
We awoke at 8am and the weather was pretty grey, so we were in no hurry to start the day, especially since we only had about 5 or 6 hours of hiking to do. We had a nice, casual breakfast, organized our things, and headed up towards refugio Grey with Gee at about 9:30. It was supposedly a 3.5 hour walk to the refugio and we had our sights set on catching some view points farther past the refugio as well.
It was impressively windy. With our (almost) full packs on and walking basically constantly uphill, it was quite the energy burner. People that were walking the other direction as us were in short sleeves and didn’t look tired at all, and boy were we jealous. I was only wearing a Nike dryfit and my windbreaker, but this just proved how great of a purchase the windbreaker from Bass was because the wind really wasn’t affecting me much. In fact, once I took it off, my dryfit shirt was drenched in sweat, even though I really wasn’t that hot. But the views were great as always, and soon enough we came across the first view of Glacier Grey. Gee had to be back down to catch the 6:30 boat, so we didn’t have all day, but we spent some time stopping at each view point and enjoying them. This was the first time I had ever seen a “true” glacier, a massive block of ice that extends farther than the eye can see.
We got to the refugio at about 1:30 and were very ready to eat lunch (packed by the paine grande refugio). Gee wanted to head back by 2, so we ate pretty quickly and then went to check out the viewpoint of the glacier that was a quick 10 minute walk away. It was a pretty stunning sight this glacier, and of course the scenery surrounding couldn’t have been better (just like the whole Torres Del Paine trek).
Gabi and I headed back to refugio Grey where we split and said bye to Gee, checked into our room, got our meals situated, and prepared for a short day hike to some better/farther view points. We decided not to order a lunch for the following day because we had a good amount of food left over, it would save money, and we were planning to catch the 12:30 boat so we would be able to have dinner in Puerto Natales. At about 2:45 we left Grey again and set out to find some view points that we heard were just tremendous. It was a fun time because neither of us were carrying any weight and we were able to walk pretty quick and free, which was a change from the rest of the journey in TDP.
People were right. About an hour in we hit a great view point, took some pics, and ran into a couple who recommended going about 20 minutes further for a really great view. Dale. On our way there, we crossed 2 bridges that were extremely intimidating and long bridges that limited 4 people at a time. They were hold your breath type bridges, but a lot of fun. When we got to the top of the hike, we knew it immediately because I don’t think the view could have been better. We took the obligatory pictures, urination breaks (we had started holding it in until there is a trademark view), and hour-plus long chill sesh before heading back to the hostel. Neither of us really wanted to leave, it was one of the many views that were just simply too good to capture in a picture or video or panoramic.
Dinner was supposed to be at 7, and we were all starving and ready. The Seattle family, Scott, Gabi, me, and a couple from Tennessee (late/new addition to our team) were counting down the minutes. The next thing we knew it was 7:09 (catastrophe!!) and no dinner, so we tried to seat ourselves at the already set tables, but the staff would not let us. Finally at 7:40, we sat down, and the bread appetizer went down our stomachs before anyone could blink. We had a very nice, peaceful, and relaxing dinner as we compared the daily stories and recommendations, then we were all excited to sleep again.
Monday – Day 5 of the W
We got up again to catch the sunset. The view of the glacier and mountains was only 10 minutes away, and we needed to leave the hostel early regardless to catch the 12:30 boat, so why not? But this time we were unsuccessful because the mountains were blocking anything in our view from turning red. I even climbed the relatively small hill for a better view, but really couldn’t see much noteworthy. Gabi didn’t follow me because his previously turned ankle was bothering him. No regrets though, it was well worth the try.
We said bye to the Seattle family, who was taking the later boat at 6:30, and left Grey with all of our stuff at 8:30. We knew it was going to be a steep hike up and that the wind was going to be at our backs, so it wasn’t long before we were in short sleeves and passing oncoming bundled up hikers, like we were the day before. We ironically ran into a few people that we knew from other hostels/travels/high school (Gabi knew this girl) on the way down, which made for a fun 10 minute break and conversation. The what was supposed to take 3.5 hour hike really wasn’t that bad, we got to Paine Grade (where the boat picked up) at 11:20, in just under 3 hours. We hung out there and enjoyed the weather and finals views with the Tennessee couple and others waiting for the boat. It was definitely bitter sweet to say goodbye to this God-given place because we were ready to be done hiking for a day or 6, but we also knew that we would not be at a park that beautiful again in a long time, if ever. It really was 5 days of not real life.
The boat pulled up at 12:35, we piled on and enjoyed some time on the balcony enjoying the breeze and (once again) incredible scenery. We all agreed that this boat staff had maybe the best job of all time. Then after a bus, transfer, and another 2 hour bus ride, we were back in Puerto Natales at the Singing Lamb Hostel. We got our stuff we had left there, showered, re-organized, went to dinner and drinks with some new friends at Baguales, and eventually called it a night before we had to catch a 7am bus to El Calafate the next morning.