Torres del Paine
Loading Map
Torres del Paine,
Patagonia,
Chile
Saturday, May 10, 2008
I spent a couple of nights in Puerto Natales, mainly just getting things ready for the trek. Its a pretty sleepy place and the most interesting thing about it is the number of stray dogs on the street. They´re just about everywhere and they´ll follow you around hoping for some scraps but they´re not aggresive at all, nice doggies. They seem to go nuts when a car passes by and absolutely mental when a pickup goes by with another dog in the back. It´s actually really funny.
I took the bus out to Torres early in the morning with a massive backpack laden down with almost 20kgs of food, tent, mat, stove, gas, pot, clothes, and lots of things I could have done without, in order to start my 5 day trek of the "W". I had decided not to do the full 10 day "circuit" as the weather had been so bad and everyone was saying that it would be crazy to try it alone as there would be no-one around to help if things went wrong (the W is much more popular at this time of year). When I got there, there was a sign up saying the Circuit was closed anyway due to a big avalanche which confirmed the decision for me.
As we entered the park there was a great view of the Torres themselves which are three big towers of rock. Took a few photos because from what I heard from people who had been here over the previous weeks the weather was very changeable - lots of cloud, wind, snow and rain. Perfect trekking weather. I took a catamaran across a lake to the bottom of the left U in the W (if that makes any sense!) as we couldnt get to the top left because there wasnt enough demand for boats. This is by the way the low season in the park so everything is close to shutting down for winter.
I set up my little tent in the campsite beside the refugio at about 1pm and decided that I´d try to walk to the Grey glaciar and back if possible - one way is normally a full day with a backpack but I was just carrying water and a camera. It lashed down for the most of the afternoon and when I got to the lookout point about half way to the glacier you could barely see it so I pushed on as far as the glacier itself. It was much bigger than any of the glaciers I had seen before you were able to get quite close to the little icebergs that had broken off. Took plenty of photos and decided to turn back as there was not much day light time left.
I met a Swedish couple on the way back who were also trying to make it back to same campsite. They weren´t going particularly fast because the guy´s knee was giving him trouble but we thought it would be safest to stick together as we were definitely going to have to walk in the dark. We ended up walking for about 2 hours in the dark but by this time the clouds had cleared and the stars were out - the first time I had seen the southern night sky properly. I looked up at one point and saw a couple of green eyes staring back at me about 15 metres ahead. They were gone without a sound a second later. I spoke to a guide about it the next day who reckoned it was probably a puma. Apparently they´re not that rare but very difficult to see. I was well chuffed with myself! Made it back to the camp site pretty late and we were all tired. Cooked up some quick pasta and then hung the food up in the shelter as I´d heard lots of stories of mice getting into tents in search of food.
It was a very cold night but my sleeping bag was pretty good so didnt feel it too much. I woke up at around 3am to the sound of a mouse chewing something in my tent. I lashed out at it and it started scurrying around my tent. I then swung at whatever place I thought it was and it would move and hide again. I found my head lamp and plastic hammer for the tent pegs but at this stage it was in my rucksack and I didnt fancy a mess in there so I started chucking things out of the tent. I had a look through everything but it seemed to be gone. The little b"·$%"%d had chewed through the tent and through my waterproof jacket to get at a peanut that I had forgotten to take out. No wonder I could hear it chewing! For the next hour or so every time I heard a noise near the tent it was head lamp on and hammer in hand. Saw some shadows scurrying around outside but nothing in the tent.
The next morning my tent was covered in little drops of ice where the previous day´s rain had frozen over night. My neighbours, an older couple in their fifties from the Czech Republic and South Africa thought my mouse story was very funny until they looked in their food bag and saw a lot of it had been chewed at. It looked like a much nicer day and the mountains which had been covered in cloud the previous day were now out in full view - really spectacular stuff.
I caught up with the older couple a while into the day and walked with them for a couple of hours until we reached the bottom of Valle Francés where I had planned on staying that night. The place was very cold due to winds coming off the glaciers above and looked like serious rat territory (lots of rubbish and close to the lake) so decided to climb up the valley and get back ASAP and push onto the next refugio a few hours away. The valley itself had two of the most amazing mountain formations I have ever seen, one on each side. On one side was a mountain which was topped with glaciers from which huge chunks of ice regularly cascaded down into other glaciers far below, almost like some kind of ice "waterfall". You could hear the sound of the ice crashing and avalanches for miles. On the other side of the valley, which got more light and therefore had no snow or ice, were the Cuernos (or Horns) of Paine which were formed by magma being pushed up through the earth´s crust. The tops of the horns were black volcanic rock while the rest was older lighter coloured sedimentary rock. In any other country either would be a tourist attaction in their own right. Here they were just some of many amazing rock formations.
I bumped into the Swedish couple again and pushed on to the next refugio. Was really feeling the weight of the big pack by the end of it. Very very tiring, ended up spending the last while looking at my feet rather than the scenery. We got in late again and had to pitch tents in the dark. Had just finished pitching the tent in a patch of dirt surrounded by bushes and was about to leave my bag of food in the refugio when I turned around with the headlamp and saw 2 mice waiting patiently for me to leave so they could scoff my queso. Had a beer in the refugio after some well earned pasta and luckily had no more mouse incidents that night.
Got up late the next day, I was probably the last person to leave but was happy to be going at my own pace. Some of the others I had been hiking with wanted to finish the trek in 4 days but I decided to take the 5 days seeing as I wasnt pushed for time and after the previous day I was happy to go at my own pace. It was another glorious day weather wise and I was continually surprised by the variety of the landscape. At some stages I was being pushed up the hill by the wind and was strggling just to stay on my feet. I was really glad not to be walking into it. I later caught up with Rob and Elizabeth, an American brother and sister, as I got close to the campsite. Really great people, very nice and very funny. The campsite was great too, massive open spaces, horses wandering about, clear skies, a clear view of the Torres and we even had a place to make a camp fire (illegal at most places in the park). We cooked up lots of different courses and it was the nicest camping experience of the trek. The wind picked up a bit later on and I felt like the tent was going to take off a couple of times, but had a really restful night´s sleep.
The next day we decided that we would carry all the gear up to the campsite at the base of the Torres and camp there so that we could see the towers at sun-rise when they glow orangey red if you have a clear sky. The way up was really steep and the further up we got the icier the paths became. We were slipping about with big packs which wasnt terribly safe - really could have done with some trekking poles for some extra stability. We got up there at around 4pm, pitched tent and decided to go up to the Torres in case it was cloudy the next morning and we would have come all that way to miss them.
The way up was really really icy. Everyone was slipping and sliding all over the place though luckily the ice seemed to have thawed a bit during the day and it wasnt as bad as it could otherwise have been. It took us about an hour to get up there and the view was really cool - the three towers shoot up from the surrounding mountains behind a small lake. Everyone up there was really happy to have reached the end of the W and lots of group photos were being taken in front of the towers.
It took over an hour to get back down. Most people were sliding down parts of it. The campsite was sitauted under really high trees and covered in a few inches of snow but I had been lucky enough to sneak into a spot where someone had camped the previous night so the snow underneath had melted and I was therefore a bit warmer than I should have been. More mice here than anywhere else and they were more brazen too. Met lots of sound people as we huddled in the shelter to cook our dinner.
It was a really windy night and I could see the massive trees swaying wildly through the plastic window above my head in the tent. I tried some kung fu on a mouse that had bitten through my expensive platypus water bottle (which was also a gift) which I had left hanging inside the door of my tent. There was nothing but water inside... pure vandalism if you ask me. Didnt manage to find the git either.
The whole camp site got up early to a clear starry guys at about 6 in the morning and faced the icy climb again. It was much worse this time around. The previous evening we had been able to use foot holds that people had kicked out during the day, this time we had to go up the recently frozen slide which we had come down the evening before. Everyone made it up without busting themselves though but some clouds on the horizon spoiled the sunrise effect, but at least the view was a bit clearer than the evening before.
After packing up, it was back down the mountain with our big packs. I was dreading hitting that icy path again especially after iovernight freeze but luckily most of it had managed to thaw the evening before so it was much quicker and easier than expected. Everyone bought loads of ice creams as we waited for the bus. We all looked wrecked and scruffy and the manager of the hosteria we were waiting outside told us to get off his premises though Im not sure what customers we were supposed to be scaring away. The place was empty and at least we were buying up his whole supply of ice cream.
Everyone was very happy to be back on a bus, though Im sure the smell was pretty bad. Went back to the same hostel as before where Michael and Eliza, a really sound Aussie couple I had bumped into a few times, were also staying. A lot of us from the last night in Torres ended up heading out for dinner in Puerto Natales at a really great little restaurant. Everyone was pretty chuffed with themselves for managing to get through the five days, though we were very lucky with the weather (it was much worse the week before and after and lots of people had to bail out!).
I also got talking to some of the guys who I hadnt met properly before. JP (another really sound Aussie) and Michael are really into photgraphy so we bored all around us for a while talking about that stuff. The guys had arranged a birthday cake for Gordon, who had only realised it was his birthday when he had to fill out a registration form on the way into the park. It was a pretty early night though as everyone else was heading off to El Calafate the next day to visit the glaciers and I had decided to head back to Punta Arenas to get that digital SLR!
