Torres del Paine Backpacking Trip Part I

May 22, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

Torres del Paine National Park was the inspiration for our entire trip to Patagonia. I’m not sure when I first learned about this park, but it’s been on my bucket list for at least 5 years. There are 2 popular treks in the park: The W-trek and the O-trek. The O-trek is a loop trail that encircles the entire park, taking 8-10 days to complete. The W-trek is the southern half of the O-trek, taking 4-5 days to complete and generally done as a thru-hike.

I would have loved to do the O-trek, but we picked the W-trek for many reasons and I think it was the right choice for us. Seth is willing to backpack, but he definitely doesn’t love it the way I do, so the shorter hike was a good compromise. It freed up more time in our itinerary to visit El Chalten and Ushuaia, which we wouldn’t have been able to do if we’d spent 10 days of the trip in Torres del Paine alone. It was a much more well-rounded trip and I felt really satisfied with our choice when we finished the trek.

But let’s start at the beginning! Our bus left Puerto Natales at 7am, so it was an early rise for us to walk to the bus depot. It’s a 2-hour drive to the Torres del Paine park entrance, where the bus stops for everyone to get their National Park Pass. If you’re doing the O-trek or just visiting for the day, you would start your adventure here. But we were starting our trek at the opposite end of the park, so we still had another 45-minute bus ride, followed by an hour long catamaran journey across Lago Pehoe to Paine Grande.

What’s interesting about Torres del Paine, is that you don’t actually have to do any camping if you don’t want to. Unlike the Sendero al Fitz Roy, Chile has sunk a lot of money and resources into developing the park into a tourist destination. The park is much more developed, but it’s also a lot better protected. You have to obtain a park pass to enter the park and get camping reservations to stay there overnight. There are rangers patrolling the park and they have very strict rules about going off trail. There are absolutely no fires or smoking permitted anywhere in the park, and all cooking must be done in the designated shelters.

There is a mixture of campgrounds and refugios spread throughout the park. The refugios are basically hostels, with shared bedrooms, washrooms, and a huge dining room. They are more expensive than your average hostel, but they’re very popular because they eliminate the need for a tent. We decided to avail of the refugios where possible and ended up booking rooms for our first two nights on the trail, followed by campsites for the last nights. However, to eliminate the need to bring our tent, we paid extra for pre-set tents and sleeping pads at our campsites. We still had to bring our sleeping bags, but we were able to lighten our packs by leaving our tent and thermarests at home.

Our trek started from Paine Grande, but our final destination was Refugio Grey at Grey Glacier, which is 11km away. As far as the terrain goes, it was a pretty easy day of hiking and in normal circumstances, I think it would have taken us less than 4 hours. Unfortunately, as I alluded to in my previous post, Seth got hit with a bout of traveler’s sickness from the ceviche he ate the night before, and it hit him on the catamaran to the trailhead. He spent most of the boat ride in the bathroom, followed by a visit to the refugio toilets, so we were some of the last people to start hiking for the day.

Fortunately, he wasn’t totally incapacitated and did start to feel better as it left his system, but it definitely resulted in a slow pace on day 1. Even so, Torres del Paine National Park is immediately a very striking place. There are several famous features in the park, one of which is known as “the horns”. It’s a set of sharp granite peaks on Cuernos del Paine mountain that can be seen throughout most of the park. We got our first glimpse of them on the catamaran, and there’s an incredible view from Paine Grande. The weather was fairly moody when we arrived, with dark clouds hanging over the horns, but it never rained and I thought it made for pretty scenic photos.

The trail to Grey Glacier starts with a gentle hike up through a small canyon, around the west side of Cerro Paine Grande. It’s a steady uphill, but not overly challenging. I decided to set Laguna los Patos as our first milestone; it’s only 3km away, but it felt like it took forever! In reality, it was only 90 minutes, but poor Seth was really struggling. We stopped for lunch when we finally arrived at the lake, but it wasn’t super restful because we got our first introduction to the infamous Patagonian wind!

Torres del Paine is super well known for its blustery conditions and it didn’t disappoint on our first 3 days. It was moderate wind on the first day, but it was forecasted to get much worse on the following two days (and it did). After our lunch break, we continued on, setting Mirador Lago Grey as our second milestone. It’s located just past the halfway mark and is the highest point on the trail for the first day. It has an incredible view of Lago Grey and the glacier, but it’s a steady uphill the whole way there, so our slow pace continued.

Fortunately, it was downhill after the mirador and our pace improved, but overall, it was a rough first day and I admit that I resented Seth a little. We arrived at the refugio shortly after 5pm, after 5+ hours of hiking, so you might be wondering what was the rush? The rush for me was that after Refugio Grey, there is a day hike to a series of suspensions bridges with a viewpoint, and I really wanted to do them. We were scheduled to go kayaking the following morning, and with rain in the forecast for later, I really wanted to hike to the viewpoint on Day 1.

So I was silently cursed Seth for most of the afternoon because I’d been dreaming of this hike for so many years and I was determined to see every highlight. I’ve had several of my big hikes interrupted over the past few years due to other people or circumstances outside of my control. But all of those hikes were in British Columbia and easy to come back for in the future. I felt like I only had this one shot at Torres del Paine. I think I was pretty supportive earlier in the day, but the more the clock counted down the remaining daylight hours, the more impatient I got. I’m sure it was very annoying.

Fortunately, my resentment dissipated with our arrival at the refugio and it didn’t return for the rest of the trip. The refugio is very cool! Each one is different and Refugio Grey is basically a big log cabin, with toasty woodstoves to dry your clothes. The rooms vary in size, but ours had 2 bunkbeds, sleeping 4 people. It says online that you have to bring your own sleeping bag (which is the case at other refugios), but this one actually provided bedding, so it felt like a proper hotel. I really liked it and Seth was stoked to have access to flush toilets and a place to lie down.

I quickly re-arranged my pack and decided to make a go at hiking to the suspension bridges and viewpoint alone. I did hiking math on the trail and determined that, as long as I started the day hike by 6pm, I could make it back to the refugio before the 9pm sunset. Just in case, I took all my essentials, including my headlamp and inreach. Seth knew where I was going and we agreed on a set time to raise the alarm if I didn’t return. Check back next week to learn if I was successful or not in Part II!

Sendero al Fitz Roy Backpacking Trip Part III

May 8, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

Continued from Part I and Part II. On day 3, we set our alarms for 5am to start our sunrise hike up to Lago de los Tres. However, the campground was extremely crowded and other hikers started getting up as early as 3am to prepare for their sunrise hike (and they were not quiet)! I mentioned in my previous post that I really didn’t like Poicenot Campground. People were noisy and partying late into the night and just generally disrespectful. We ended up starting our hike at 4:45am because we were awake anyways.

Unfortunately, the clouds had rolled in overnight and it was even drizzling a little bit when we started walking. The clouds were pretty high, so you could still see all the lower elevation mountains, but the top of Mount Fitz Roy was hidden. It’s an interesting experience to hike to the top for sunrise because you have to do pretty much the entire trek in the dark. It’s only 2km of hiking, but there’s 400 metres in elevation gain, so it’s very steep. You walk for a couple hundred metres on flat ground and you can see a steady trail of light criss-crossing the rockwall ahead of you where people are climbing. It’s not for the faint of heart!

Like usual, I think I was running half on adrenaline. The rain didn’t really last and we ended up layering down once we started the climb. Eventually, I layered down to just a t-shirt, but I had to add every single layer back the second we got to the top because it was so cold! We ate some protein bars and took a lot of breaks on the way up, but Seth struggled with the steep climb. I felt like we were going really slow, but our pace was fine and we got to the top around 6:45am (with sunrise shortly after 7am). So it was ~2 hours of hiking for just 2km.

The top of Mount Fitz was in the clouds, but you could see everything else. It is quite a beautiful view and the sky was just starting to get light when we summited. But like I said, it was absolutely freezing! We quickly layered up into all our clothes and Seth made us hot oatmeal for breakfast. I mentioned in my last post about how Lago de los Tres and Laguna Torre are so iconic at sunrise because the sun comes up on the opposite horizon, turning Mount Fitz Roy orange at dawn. I experienced this at Laguna Torre, but we didn’t get the full ‘orange mountain’ thing at Lago de los Tres because the sun rose directly into the clouds. It peeked out for a few minutes now and then and would light up the mountain a little bit. So if we’d reversed the trip and done Lago de los Tres on the first morning, I think we would have nailed it, but weather is fickle and we still had excellent conditions, all things considered.

The lake is packed with people at sunrise, but as soon as it’s over, the crowds disperse really quickly because of the cold. We still had to hike all the way back to town to catch a bus to El Calafate, but I didn’t want to rush our visit at the lake too much, so we hung around for about an hour exploring the lake. There’s a second viewpoint next to the lake that you can hike up (only takes about 10 minutes), and that lookout had a fantastic view of Laguna Sucia. So we got to see what we’d missed the previous evening and Seth was adamant that the trail looked like it would have been a struggle (which I think he is right about if you attempt this one in the future).

As tough as it was hiking up the mountain, it’s worse hiking down. I think we left around 9am and returned to the campsite to pack up the rest of our equipment. The hike down was pretty hard on my knees and irritated them for the rest of the day. However, the remainder of the hike seemed to pass in a bit of a blur. I believe there was a bus at 2:30pm and 3pm, and then no more until 6pm, so we really wanted to catch the 3pm bus at the latest. Which meant we had to hustle for the rest of the hike.

Once you leave the campground, the trail is pretty flat for ~5km to Laguna Capri. Our walking pace was really fast, but it was still slow going because the trail is SO crowded with day hikers. It can be narrow in some parts and you have to wait for people to pass often, so that slowed us down. The weather cleared up throughout the day and it was quite nice, but the clouds never did clear from around Mount Fitz. We stopped at Laguna Capri for lunch, which is the last big lake on the trek, but opted not to swim in the interest of time.

The rest of the hike from Laguna Capri was much more beautiful than I was expecting. Overall, the entire 3 days of hiking was very scenic. I thought it would just be forested, but the last 5km of the trail follows the canyon back to El Chalten and has sweeping views down the valley, so it was a very different vibe than the rest of the park. You feel like you’re coming out of the mountains towards the desert; it was a cool vibe and I enjoyed the walk down, even if my legs were killing me.

By far, the worst part of the trek was the 1.5km of hiking through town at the end. The bus station is located on the complete opposite end of town from where the trail starts, so it was brutal having to pound down the asphalt after 14km of hiking. We had to rush and made it to the bus station just in time to get a ticket! I pretty much passed out on the bus for the entire 3 hour ride back to El Calafate, but Seth had a fun time trying to count how many rheas’ he could spot running through the desert (a big bird like an emu)!

We returned to the same guesthouse and had a bit of a chaotic welcome back when we realized that our guesthouse did not have the advertised laundry services we were depending on and that my credit card had bounced our tour to Perito Moreno Glacier the following day and so they had cancelled our tour. To top it off, I had clearly started developing a cold while on the trek. The entire hike I tried to convince myself my throat was just dry from the desert air, but I had to finally admit I was getting sick.

Thank god for teamwork. I showered while Seth figured out an alternative option for doing laundry (which was desperately needed), and then while he showered, I found a replacement tour for the following day. I think things actually turned out better in the end. Our new tour was private (we basically just paid a guy to drive us to the glacier and wait for us), which had the benefit of a later start time, allowing us to catch up on sleep. Seth found a drop-off laundromat, and we dropped off everything on our way to town for dinner, with a pick-up time for the following day. We treated ourselves to a nice meal in El Calafate and enjoyed the Calafate berry ice cream for dessert! The town is obviously named for the berry, which is common in this region. If you eat a calafate berry, legend is that you are destined to return to Patagonia! I feel pretty confident I’ll be back, with or without eating the berry, but the ice cream was tasty! We tracked down some cough drops and tissues for me to manage my cold, and then hit the sack for the night! Check back next week to read about our visit to Perito Moreno!

Sendero al Fitz Roy Backpacking Trip Part II

May 1, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 2 Comments

Continued from Part I. On Day 2, I got up before the sun and walked back to Laguna Torre to catch the sunrise. It’s only 10 minutes from the campground, so you really can’t skip it if it’s a nice day, which it was for me! There were no clouds in the sky, but interestingly, it was cold enough overnight that the lake had a thin sheen of slushy ice forming across it. I found a good spot around the rim of the moraine where I could see both the lake and the sunrise on the opposite horizon.

Laguna Torre, Lago de los Tres, and Torres del Paine are all famous sunrise hikes. The reason that sunrise is key is because the sun rises on the opposite horizon of the lakes, which means for about a half hour in the morning, it turns the mountains behind the lake an orange, golden colour. The only other place I’ve experienced this was sunset at Assiniboine (although I’m sure if I was willing to get up for more sunrises, I’d have a lot more options).

I had the perfect weather for sunrise at Laguna Torre, although it was very cold! It didn’t rain on us very much during our trip, but I ended up wearing my rain pants a lot because they are still great for insulation and act as a windbreaker! While waiting, I bundled up in all my layers and heated some hot water to have with my breakfast. Seth slept through the sunrise, but I’m so glad I trudged out of bed for it because it was really beautiful and probably the most memorable part of the entire trek!

Day hiking to Laguna Torre and Lago de los Tres is really popular, and backpacking to Lago de los Tres also seems to be popular, but doing them both back to back didn’t seem to be quite as common as I was expecting. It’s ~3km of hiking back along the trail until you come to a branch that connects to the Lago de los Tres hike. The connector between the two trails involves climbing up a steep pass to Laguna Hija and Laguna Madre (daughter and mother lake). It’s a bit of a slog through the forest to the top of the pass, but overall manageable, and then the hike flattens out along the two lakes and is absolutely gorgeous!

Laguna Hija is first – it’s the smaller of the two lakes, but it’s the most beautiful (in my opinion). What I liked about this section of trail is that it was very empty. We did pass some groups, but overall, it’s much less trafficked than the others trails because only the backpackers doing both hikes use it. Laguna Hija has a beautiful rocky beach at the foot of the lake and we decided to stop there for lunch. It was really nice and sunny, so we both went for a swim and enjoyed having the beach to ourselves. It was still very cold, but overall, a more enjoyable swim than at Laguna Torre.

Once you leave the beach, you hike along the edge of the lake for a little while before doing a short climb to a viewpoint looking down on Laguna Madre. Laguna Torre looks at the backside of Mount Fitz Roy, so this is where we got our first view of the massive peak from the front. From there, the trail continues above the lake and goes in and out of the forest with lots of lovely viewpoints of the mountain.

Eventually you arrive at Rio Blanco, which is where you re-connect with the main trail to Lago de los Tres. This part of the trail is like a super highway of hikers and had a much different vibe from our morning hike. We filled up our drinking water at the junction because the river looked so nice, but this source continues another 1km to the campsite, so you don’t need to fill up in advance like you do at the Agostini campsite.

At this point in the day, it was actually quite hot, so we continued directly to the Poicenot Campground, which is ~1km from the junction. Unlike Agostini, it’s still another 2km away from the view at Lago de los Tres. However, from the campsite, you can still see the trail to Lago de los Tres, as well as the steady stream of people heading to and from the summit, which is 400m in elevation gain. Because of this climb, it looks pretty intimidating from the campsite, where all you can see is a vertical wall with switchbacks!

It took us longer to get to the campsite than I thought it would, and we arrived around 4pm. It was just shy of 11km of hiking, but it took us 5 hours, mostly because we stopped so much for photos and videos. I did not like Poicenot Campground at all – it’s what Brandon would refer to as a “tent city”. Agostini Campground was busy, but not really crowded. At Poicenot, it felt like the tents were almost on top of one another and there were a lot of people who seemed very new to backpacking, by which I mean they were loud and not overly considerate of other campers.

Once we set up the tent, Seth was keen for us to hike up to the lake. Neither of us had a lot of energy after backpacking all day, but he didn’t want to get up early for sunrise. I had mixed feelings because I didn’t want to do the hike twice, but I felt that if I did it that evening, I’d still want to do it again for sunrise. The sunrise was incredibly rewarding at Laguna Torre and I didn’t want to miss that experience at Lago de los Tres. Fortunately, Seth is good at reading his partner and he knew the experience was more important to me than it was too him, so he let me decide when to hike and I picked sunrise.

So instead of hiking up to the lake for dinner, we studied my GPS map and decided to check out a side trail up to Laguna Sucia, which looked to be ~5km round trip. It was a solid plan, although it didn’t quite manifest the way we’d hoped. My GPS showed two trails going up to the lake on either side of Rio Blanco, but when we tried the north side, there was a sign saying it was closed. We hiked up the south side of the river instead, but eventually you have to cross the river in order to go all the way to the lake, and there is no bridge. We could see people hiking on the north side, so they were clearly just using the closed trail. The trail appeared to be closed because the river has created a lot of erosion and the bank is unstable, so avoiding it was the wise choice, but I kind of wish I’d just taken the risk this one time.

But as usual, I played it safe. We walked around for a while looking for somewhere to cross the river. It’s definitely possible, but it was a bit dicey and I didn’t want to attempt it without my trekking poles, which were busy holding up my non-freestanding tent. So we never crossed the river and instead ate our supper along the river bank. It felt a bit anticlimactic, especially when we saw some other hikers crossing the river later, but I stand by my decision not to cross the river.

Eventually some clouds started rolling in and I worried we wouldn’t get the view we were after in the morning. But that’s the way it goes sometimes with hiking and we still got incredible weather overall. But we went to bed early and set our alarm with a 5am wake-up call! Check pack for Part III.