Torres del Paine Backpacking Trip Part IV

June 12, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

Continued from Part I, II, and III. The O-trek can only be hiked in the counterclockwise direction. I thought this was the case for the W-trek as well, but I learned that lots of people hike it clockwise, meaning they start their trip with the towers. I’m really glad we started from Paine Grande, because it meant that we reached the towers on our last day, which is a high note on which to end the trip!

Hiking to the Towers for sunrise requires a very early rise. I wanted to be hiking by 4am, so we got up at 3:30am and the campsite was already bustling with other campers and day hikers. I know a lot of hikers weren’t able to get a reservation for Chileno, so it’s not uncommon for people to hike all the way from the Campsite at Centrale to see the sunrise. Many of the day hikers were taking a break at the picnic table before continuing up to the towers.

Seth is definitely not a sunrise hiker, but I was pretty much buzzing with excitement all night about how fortunate we were to experience the towers on a cloudless day. It was pitch dark when we set out; I carried our shared pack and thanks to our early start, we were able to move at a leisurely place. It’s not the most fun to hike in the dark, but I honestly have some really fond memories from this hike. The night sky was incredible and it felt really special and romantic to hike up a mountain by starlight.

The first two kilometres are mostly in the trees and aren’t too steep. Eventually you reach a junction where the ranger station and outhouse are located, and from there, it’s all uphill. It was steep, but honestly, I found it easier than at Lago de los Tres. The main downside is that the trail is incredibly busy. It kind of felt like we were on a pilgrimage with hundreds of other hikers all following the same route (like the many hikers who had come before us).

The trail gets a little confusing just before the towers. You reach a certain point where you can start to see the peaks rising out of the darkness (it’s magical!), and I think people get overexcited and start climbing the rocks directly towards them. It’s a big boulder field, but you’re supposed to follow the trail, as some sections are roped off for safety reasons. I had to focus on following the trail markers rather than the people and we made it to the top with lots of time to spare.

It was very busy at the lake, but there is a lot of room to spread out. Unfortunately, a lot of people were ignoring the roped sections, but we stuck to the sanctioned area. We found a nice place near the water and sat in the dark to wait for sunrise.

Similar to Lago de los Tres, once you start hiking, it’s freezing! I took off my sweaty clothes and put on every other layer I’d brought with me. You’re not allowed to cook in the park, so we couldn’t bring our pot to make breakfast and ate some protein bars instead. I was so cold I decided to finally test out my emergency bivvy, which I’ve never used. It definitely helped trap a lot of heat, but it has its limitations, so it was a good reminder that it would be a long cold night if I ever have to survive outside with only a bivvy.

Finally, the sun started rising on the other horizon. At first, the daylight only illuminates the towers, but once the sun comes up, they turn a very vibrant orange. It lasts for around 30 minutes and it was every bit as magical as I hoped it would be! I felt so content sitting there watching it. I feel like there’s always one thing you miss on a big hike – either you skip a summit, or the weather is bad – but I felt like I got to experience everything that I wanted in Torres del Paine, and I left the park feeling very content.

Once the sun fully came up, most people left the lake and it was pretty empty. We hung around for a while longer, taking more photos and warming up. The sun makes a huge difference in the temperature and we layered down before starting our hike back. I didn’t want to feel rushed at the towers on our last day, so I had booked the last bus on the day, which didn’t leave until 8pm. This was definitely a mistake as we ended up spending 4 hours at the visitor centre, but it made for a more leisurely day.

We hiked back down to Chileno, past a steady stream of hikers still coming up, and had our breakfast at the campsite. We hung out for a bit, chatting with some other hikers, before starting our hike out of the park around noon. From Chileno, you do have to hike back up the canyon to Windy Pass, but it’s only ~1km and then it’s all downhill for the rest of the day. At this point, most people who were doing the towers were already beyond Windy Pass, so it was a pretty empty trail down to the base.

It was the hottest day on the trek and we switched out to shorts and t-shirts for the first time! The hike to Centrale is gorgeous as you continue back down the valley. The trail is completely exposed, so you have views the entire way. From Chileno to the towers and back to the base is ~15km, but we were fast on the last section.

There’s a huge hotel at the trailhead and then you walk another kilometer parallel to the road to get to Centrale Campground and the Visitor Centre. From there, you take a shuttle bus to the Park Entrance, where you can catch your bus back to Puerto Natales. We debated trying to get an earlier bus, but apparently they only leave at like 3pm and 8pm. We just missed the 3pm shuttle, so we decided to stick around the Visitor Centre and got beer and empanadas to pass the time.

It was a long time to hang around, but we befriended some other hikers who were also killing time before starting their hike the following morning. They were quite young and I found it very entertaining listening to stories about their adventures and missteps. The one thing I didn’t love about Torres del Paine, or Sendero al Fitz Roy, is that I felt we didn’t really befriend that many people.

I love meeting people hiking and I’m pretty good at making friends. When I hiked the Milford Track in New Zealand, and Mount Assiniboine and Lake O’Hara in Canada, I felt like I met so many interesting people on the trail. It’s definitely possible at Torres del Paine, but I think our combination of staying in refugios and cooking our own meals (plus the fact that Seth was quite sick for the first 2-3 days), didn’t lend itself that well to connecting with people. This was exacerbated by the fact that you can pay for wifi, so a lot of people were just hanging around on their phones in the refugio. I’m sure many people have a different experience, but this was my particular experience. It may have just been a timing thing.

But overall, it was an incredible experience. Like I said, I felt very content when I left the park. I feel that we made lots of good decisions in how we structured our trip and we got incredibly lucky with the weather. I’m sure I’ll be back to Patagonia again someday, but at this time, I feel more of a draw to return to Los Glaciares over Torres del Paine. I think I need to return for the Huemel Circuit, and one day, Antarctica!

Torres del Paine Backpacking Trip Part III

June 5, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 2 Comments

Following up from Part I and Part II. The weather forecast for Day 3 was our worst while on the trail. There wasn’t any heavy rain in the forecast, but more concerning was the alert for 80km/h winds. It was only 11km to our next campsite, but we wanted to attempt the day hike up to Mirador Britannico, which is another 11km round trip, so overall, it was our longest day of hiking in Torres del Paine.

The clouds looked pretty foreboding when we left Paine Grande, and as anticipated, it was incredibly windy. But the moody weather produced some of the most striking photos of the stunning landscape! The dark clouds hung around the mountains, without always obstructing them, and occasionally the sun would break through, splintering rays of sunshine across the hillside. It was really pretty and we both loved the hike from Paine Grande to the ranger station at Italiano, which is where the day hike starts.

We arrived around lunch time, so we ate at the picnic tables as it started to rain. There’s a washroom with a big overhang for bag storage, so everyone leaves their backpacks while hiking up to the mirador. We re-packed our bags, putting everything we didn’t need in Seth’s, and everything we might want in mine. A lot of people just do the hike with a water bottle, but conditions were marginal and it is a remote trail, so I’m glad we brought all our essentials, as we did use them.

I struggled with the hike to Mirador Britannico. I think my biggest problem was that I’d heard from other hikers that it was an easier-than-expected trail. Even though there is 600 metres of elevation gain, I heard that it was pretty gradual and I didn’t properly manage my expectations. A large portion of the hike is a gradual incline, but it’s not the full story. The first kilometer of the trail is pretty flat, but then it gets quite steep very quickly and is surprisingly technical, with lots of tree roots and boulders. It was raining throughout the entire climb and I started overheating in my rain pants, so I got pretty cranky, despite gorgeous views of the surrounding glaciers.

After a while, the hike definitely flattens out, with one steep push to the top at the very end. About halfway to the summit, the rain transitioned to snow, so the visibility was pretty poor. I definitely questioned turning around, but couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. I picked up a lot of the slack for Seth on day 1 (giving him my hiking poles and carrying a bunch of his gear), and he came through for me on day 3. He ended up really liking this section and carried our shared pack most of the way there. On day 5, we transitioned again and I carried the pack for our sunrise hike when he was struggling, so overall, I guess we do make a good team!

We were pretty slow, but eventually we made it to the top! We didn’t get much of a view, but it was still a pretty cool experience. My new problem was that it was very cold and my pants were soaked through from the lack of breathability in my rain pants. This was definitely a flaw in my set-up, so I’m glad we had brought lots of extra emergency layers in our backpack and we layered up and enjoyed our snacks. Fortunately, my pants are quick dry, so they dried out really fast on the way down, which was helped by the fact that it finally stopped raining.

There were a lot of day hikers doing the mirador when we were hiking up, but somehow we got passed by almost all of them. We only passed a handful of people on our descent and by the time we got back to Italiano, there were less than a dozen bags remaining. So this wasn’t our swiftest hiking trip, but we stopped to take more photos and videos on the way down and my mood improved a lot.

We hiked the last 2km to Frances Campground, where we’d be staying for the night. There’s no big refugio at Frances, just some small dome structures, but they are expensive, so we opted to stay in one of the permanent tents instead. Both Frances and Chileno Campgrounds have elevated tents that you can book. They’re basically those platform tents that people set up on top of their cars, but in this case, they were elevated platforms in the woods. They were massive inside, so it was pretty cool, but a bit annoying to climb in and out of. We were later arriving to the campground than other days, so we quickly ate supper and went to bed!

Lucky for us, the weather started to shift on Day 4. There was still some wind and rain in the forecast, but it tapered off throughout the day. We had to hike 16km from Frances Campground to Chileno Campground. Chileno is a smaller site, but it’s one of the most popular because it’s the closest campsite to the Towers. We left Frances and had a pretty easy walk to Los Cuernos Campground, which is a bigger and nicer site than Frances. It has a proper refugio, unlike Frances, but it’s still smaller than Grey or Paine Grande.

The morning hike was mostly in the trees, with a short walk along the lakeside beach. It sprinkled rain for an hour or so, but it cleared up after that and we didn’t get any more rain on the trip. Most of the day was a slow ascent along the mountainside, which looks out over Lago Nordenskjold, an absolutely massive lake. The trail peaks after ~7km at Mirador Cuernos, and we decided to stop for lunch, it has a gorgeous lakeview, but it’s still pretty windy.

The weather improved in the afternoon and the clouds started to disperse as we continued meandering along the mountainside. Eventually you come to a branch and you can either continue back towards the park entrance, or take a connector trail up towards Chileno. It’s a great shortcut when you’re hiking the W-trek and it’s an absolutely beautiful section of trail. It’s mostly meadows as the trail ascends through the foothills towards the pass to the Towers, but the real benefit was that it was almost completely empty (we only saw 4 people)!

The sun finally showed its face in the late afternoon and it was the first time on the trail where we could hike in shorts and t-shirt. We took another break to enjoy the view, before continuing our trek up to the main trail. The trail merges just before Windy Pass, which is a high point along this section. It was surprisingly not windy in the pass and there’s a gorgeous view looking down over a canyon to the Rio Ascencio. The trail was much busier, but it was mid-afternoon, so not as busy as it would be in the early morning when everyone is starting their climb to the Towers.

From Windy Pass, you descend along the open canyon trail to Chileno Campground. It’s a really cool campsite in that it overlooks the river and has a nice bar where you can enjoy a drink after hiking the Towers. But it was the least accommodating campsite we’d visited. The refugio at Chileno is tiny, so most people who stay there, stay in the platform tents (which is what we did).

The problem is that this refugio is highly focused on profits – if you’re not staying in the campground, they charge you to use the bathrooms (which are NOT well maintained), and they want everyone to pay for meals in the dining hall, so they only provide one single 4-person table for everyone who wants to cook. It was extremely annoying considering we did pay a lot of money for a tent. Plus, you’re only actually permitted to use this table when they’re not actively serving dinner, which means there’s a blackout between 5:30 and 8:30pm. So we ate very early and then hung out before going to bed.

An early night was required because we were planning to hike up to the Towers for sunrise. We got some experience sunrise hiking on the Sendero al Fitz Roy, but the hike to the Towers is double the length of what we did in Argentina, so we planned for a very early rise. However, we got incredibly lucky with the weather. The clouds continued to clear all evening and when I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, I almost lost my mind over the star-speckled sky that greeted me. We were incredibly remote, so it was easy to see the milky way and I stumbled around in the dark enjoying the night sky before heading back to bed. Check back for the final story in Part IV.

Tierra del Fuego National Park

April 17, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

On our second day in Ushuaia, we were determined to visit Tierra del Fuego National Park. I was really tempted to check out some of the hiking trails in the area, but I felt that visiting the park was a unique experience that I didn’t want to miss, so we opted to do the much more touristy activity. We signed up for a tour and got picked up at our hostel in the morning to drive towards the park. The bus dropped us off at the train station and we had the opportunity to travel into the park by train instead.

Tierra del Fuego is already an interesting geographic region at the end of the world, but it has an interesting history as well. We didn’t have the opportunity to learn very much about its indigenous history, except that there were a number of indigenous Fuegian groups living all over the coastal south region and the interior of the island. They had a very unique culture and were never colonized by the Incans (like many other parts of Argentina and Chile), but like many indigenous groups, they were devastated by the arrival of the Europeans and diseases like measles and smallpox.

Unfortunately, the park doesn’t really focus on this history. It’s a common theme we noticed in both Argentina and Chile, with the bypassing of indigenous history, save for our guide in Santiago, who shared more indigenous history with us on his 3 hour tour, than we learned on the rest of the entire trip. The National Park is heavily marketed to tourists, but they’ve decided to focus on the colonial history of Ushuaia and the surrounding area.

Ushuaia was initially founded as a penal colony in the early 1900’s and as it expanded, a railway was constructed to transport the prisoners into the forest to harvest timber to support the town’s growing needs. The train has been refurbished and is now known as “el tren del fin del mundo”. Today, it transports hundreds of tourists 7km into the park, showcasing gorgeous landscapes and educating visitors on the history of the railroad. It was a cool experience – it’s very picturesque and I enjoyed the opportunity to learn about the history – but I have to say, the entire experience is a bit tasteless.

The train has a very dark history, as many of the prisoners were severely mistreated during this time period. I felt that the tour didn’t understand its intention, in that it didn’t think critically about the experiences of the prisoners or respect them. The audio tour starts off by talking about how progressive it was to offer the prisoners work, and that many of them loved the opportunity to get outside and enjoy nature. But then later in the tour it expands on how the prisoners were starved, beaten, and mistreated while working in what was essentially a labour camp. It’s not like they were given the choice to participate in labour, so it didn’t seem very progressive to me and felt rather tone-deaf.

This is exacerbated by the fact that the Park also has paid actors running around everywhere dressed as goofy prisoners. They make you take a photo with them before boarding the train where they encourage you to pretend that you caught these naughty prisoners trying to escape (and then later try and sell you the photo of course). I found the entire production to be disrespectful and insulting to the people that suffered in this prison at the start of the century. It’s a good learning opportunity, but it was too commercialized and executed poorly.

It’s a one-way train journey, so our tour bus picked us up at the end of the line and we spent the next several hours exploring around the park. This part of the tour, I really enjoyed. First we visited the post office. It’s not the most southerly post office in the world (that honour is reserved for the one in Antarctica), but it is known as the “end of the road”. The road in question is the Pan-American highway, which stretches 30,000km from Alaska to Ushuaia. The post office is located on a beautiful beach, so we sent ourselves a postcard (stamped with a penguin) and then enjoyed the views.

Our next stop was Lapataia, which is the real end of the road and has a beautiful mirador of the Beagle Channel. Our bus dropped us off 1km away from the parking lot and we did a short walk through the forest to Lapataia and then explored the viewpoints. It was a nice day – not super warm, but a mix of sun and clouds. I really liked the forest walk, which smelled amazing after rain from the previous night. Our last stop was to Lago Roca, which is a huge lake located on the border between Argentina and Chile. Our tour guides shared some local spirits with us at the end of the tour (which was actually delicious, a very caramelly whisky), before returning to Ushuaia.

We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping around the downtown area. Seth was determined to find a bird guide and we visited some of the outdoor stores, of which there is actually a large number due to the many expeditions leaving from Ushuaia. But our main goal for the rest of the day was to sample the king crab that Ushuaia is known for. Our tour guides all recommended the same restaurant, a small place called El Viejo Marino, but given how small it was and how often it’s recommended, we could not get a table. Seth did a bit of research and found a place called La Casa de Los Mariscos, which I would highly recommend!

We got to the restaurant 15 minutes before it opened and were the first in line for the night, but a long line quickly developed behind us and by the time the doors opened, the entire restaurant was immediately filled. It was a great choice and one of the best meals I had on the entire trip! The popular dish is the parmesan king crab, which is basically a full crab baked with parmesan cheese. It was delicious and we ordered one to share with a seafood paella that came with squid, scallops, shrimp, clam, mussels, and white fish! We topped it off with a full bottle of wine for the low low price of $9. There was a guy performing life music throughout the night as well and the whole restaurant had a great vibe!

It was a wonderful way to end our time in Ushuaia. It was a very quick trip to the end of the world, we only really had two days there as we flew out to El Calafate early the next morning. I found our trip to be a bit airplane heavy on the front end with the excursion down to Ushuaia, but once we landed in El Calafate, we wouldn’t be flying anymore until the end of the trip,

El Calafate is further north than Ushuaia (everything is), but is located squarely in the center of the Argentine Patagonia. It’s the jumping off place for anyone looking to explore Los Glaciares National Park. Like Ushuaia, it was not at all what I expected. I thought El Calafate would be smack dab in the middle of the mountains, but Patagonia is quite different from the other mountainous regions I’ve visited. Mostly in that it’s still true wilderness. There are not very many towns actually located in the mountains. The mountains are crowded around the Argentina-Chile border, but east of the border mountains, Argentina is pretty much all flatland desert. It’s very dry and barren.

El Calafate is located right on the enormous Lago Argentino. It has a nice view of the mountains across the lake, but the town is characterized more by the desert than the mountains. We stayed in a nice little guesthouse, arriving around noon. We were starting our first trek the following day, so we spent the afternoon picking up some groceries for the trip and sourcing other things we couldn’t bring with us, like fuel for our stove. We enjoyed some beers at Patagonia Brewing and then spent the rest of the day birdwatching at Laguna Nimez, a reserve next to the lake. We saw lots of birds, but the most interesting was probably the Chilean Flamingo! There were dozens of them hanging out in the lagoon and they’re pretty goofy to watch.

In the evening, we re-packed our bags, leaving a suitcase at the guesthouse and getting our backpacks ready for our first trek: 3 days on the Sendero Fitz Roy!