Towers of Pain(e)
Trip Start
Dec 31, 2005
1
17
20
Trip End
Jan 24, 2006
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Torres del Paine National Park,
Chile
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
In any case, we made the most of the ride, playing 500 runny and Gin (with some rather creative Dutch and Austrilian rules added into the mix). I also struck up a conversation with a couple from Australia (Wendy and Grant). They turned out to be really fun, and I spent a good portion of the remainder of the trip hiking and chatting with them. As it turns our, Wendy´s grandmother is named Margaret Boyd (as is mine, though Boyd is her married name), both have a sister Mary, and all originated from a similar area outside Glasgow, Scotland. Who knows, we might even be related somewhere along the line...and we agreed to keep in touch and try and find out.
Anyway, we arrived at Torres del paine park and our campsite around 11:30am. We dropped our packs, keeping only our daypacks, and immediately headed out on our first hike.
The ascent up to Torres del Paine starts with an almost immediate uphill climb that continues for about 45 minutes of the roughly 90 minute first leg. Through this part of the hike, we were walking on dirt trails with scattered rocks that weaved uphill at a fairly steep angle. About 45 minutes in we crested as we made our way around the lower third of the mountain, navigating alongside the river gorge and into the dry beech forest that would contine for almost another hour before reaching base camp 1, aptly named el Diablo.
At El Diablo, the temperature plunged to a modest 12 degress or some, compared to the balmy high 20s where we began.
01 - Me at Torres del Paine
It also began to rain, although relatively lightly.We broke for lunch at El Diablo, and ate the pack lunch we had to carry (by now, my day pack is overflowing with various changes of weather gear, plus camera, chocolate, cookies and that damn box of Merlot wine that I had nowhere else to pack it!)
After about 30 minutes, we started up stage 2, which has as many ups as downs, although it rises along at a steam climb. It also has more water crossings, narrower trails along the steep edge of the mountain, and a tarzan rope (more on that later). As we set out from our campsite, we were 7 plus the 2 guides (2 of the group opted to sit out this trek based onthe length and difficulty). As we left el Diablo, we lost 2 more, who turned back having had enough. We continued on with 5, plus the 2 guides.
Moving uphill, we clung to the sides of the mountain at places, while other sections turned into a blissful hike through the moist and mossy beech forest al9ongside the river valley. It was somewhere about 10 minutes into this stage that we came up to the tarzan rope, so called because it hung from a tree (growing sideways from the mountain essentially), and that allowed you to grasp and swing across a break in the trail.
The first 2 trekkers swun across relatively easily. Until I got up to bat. It started off well, but somehow I got myself hanging from the wrong side of the rope (back to the mountain), and without a toehold or launching point, I twisted around and swung back and forth.
02 - Valley Shot No. 1
A few folks got a picture of it (I will suppress that if it ever appears), and it was duly dubbet the Pirouette. Nice.Anyways, i got across, and we continued on our trek through stage 2 for another hour and a half, stopping at the base camp that marked the beginning of the final ascent.
Here at base camp 2, we discussed for awhile whether we should continue, as the rain had made the rocks slippery, and the final third of the climb was essentially over rock and boulder to reach the top. Literally, it was a moonscape, where it was difficult to get a toehold on anything solid.
After some debate, we decided to keep going, and headed up the slope. At this point, the angle of wascent was somewhere around 40 degrees, quite literally. My knees and lower thigh muscles were burning pretty bad, but we all kept going. Somewhere along the way, one of my travelling companions who had been fighting exhaustion, uttered what would become the motto of this trek: "This had better be pretty fucking good"!!. And about an hour later, we saw that it was.
I have some fantastic shots from the lookout over the glacial lake, and straight over to the three towers (Torres) that make up torres del paine. It is said that rarely do you get to see all the towers exposed (not covered by cloud), but here they were, and they are beautiful. Ill post the pictures as soon as I can, as I have many.
We had a snack and rested for about 45 minutes at this lookout, taking in the vista and treating our wounds (at this point, I had only a scraped knee and the starting point of a couple of heel blisters, but otherwise just fine).
We had a minor accident while resting, when one of the trekkers dropped her granola bar and it fell down a fissure below.
03 - Valley Shot No. 2
Since you cannot leave anything behind in the park (including bio matter, if you want to know), I volunteered to climb down and squeeze into the fissure to try and get back the granola bar. I dont have a picture of that, but I know my body was contorted in some pretty strange shapes to get that goddam bar!Just at the start of the return trail, there is a landing where various trekkers over the years have built stone piles and parkers to memorialise their visit here. I duly created a nice and durable inukshuk (I have a picture of that too) to immortalize my trek up here, and hopefully someone will recognize what it is.
The trek down was as difficult as the on up, given that coming down a rocky slope is considerably less speedy. But once we hit the dirt trail, we made up speed and continued without stopping until we reached the campsite. That was 8:30pm, making this a 9 hour trek equalling roughly 33 kilometers. Whew!
To our pleasant surprise, we had been joined by a group of porters who had prepared a welcome back drink and snacks, which we devoured. The drink was a regional specialty called pisce sour (I think I spelled that right) which is a lemony like sour liquor served cold with a sugared glass. It was really nice, but after that, the porters opened up a case of beer, and we pretty much stuck with that until dinner as we sat by the campfire.
After showers and a later dinner (the porters had erected a huge tent for our dining quarters), we sat by the fire for a little bit chatting, and within another hour or so, we were pretty much all in our tents.
04 - Stage 1, Torres del Paine Trail
A long and challenging day!!***Day 2, still in Torres Del Paine Park***
We got up in the early hours, awakened by the birds and such. It was cold, and the showers were even colder (they were hot the night before, so good thing I had one then). Today would be a somewhat rest day, with only a small 4 hour overland trek (no big hills, thankfully) out to see a view of Cerro Torres.
The rest of the day was spent overland travel south, followed by a ferry ride across Lago Grey, which is a glacial lake filled with icebergs from the glacier face at the far end of the lake.
The ferry took us to our second night´s campsite just short of the glacier face, and on a stony beech that ran inland for about 100 yards before reaching the beech forest. It was here that we had to set up our camp, and this was in cllose proximity to a camp facility that included a cantina and a place to warm by the fire.
We had a lot of daylight, well past 10om given our location so far south in Chile. This gave us time to hang out for a bit at the cantina, take a hike along the lakeshore to see the galcier, and finally, to sit on the rocks by the shore and bust open those boxes and bottles of wine!! Thankfuly, several people had the same idea I did, so we had quite a large selection of cheap and questionable vintages, and having turned our water bottles into wine bottles, we downed them all.
It was a late night, but when we finally bunked down, it was freezing! The winds came down across the glacier and those little tents were no protection against that.
05 - Footbridge at El Diablo
Luckily the sleeping bags were REALLY warm, so when I finally awoke in the morning (about 5am), I was so warm, and it was so cold, I waited about 2 hours before getting up to pee. We did breakfast at the cantina, and decamped before heading out on the final trek, our hike along the southern edge of the mountain that runs along Lago Grey (I cant place the name).
It was a steep and rocky cliimb at some points, and the trail became only a foot wide at some points along the cliff face, but it was no more difficult that our Torres del Paine experience two days earlier.
The trail cut through some really nice terrain, across lookout point that gave a great view across the lake and glacier. I have to admit that by this point, my feet were hurting, I had the burn in my legs, and as a result, there are way fewer photographs. My mental energy was pretty much on staying focussed on the trek and getting back to the base camp we started out from a couple of day earlier.
This trek was only a 3.5 hour forecast, but a few of us were motivated enough that we fininshed in under 3 hours, and hapily waited for the ferry to take us across the last strecth to return us to camp.
Finally, we reached the camp. After lots of groaning and moaning, we hit the showers, boarded the bus and made for Puerto Natales where we would pick up the things we had left behind, and immediately start out on the bus ride to our next stop, Puenta Arenas, and an overnight stay.
