Hiking the Torres del Paine Circuit

I've just gotten back from hiking in Chile's Torres del Paine National Park. The most common route is the "W," but I have loads of time, so I decided to do the full circuit, which goes around the backside of the mountains. The most common method involves eight days and seven nights, but I doubled up a couple days and skipped one side trip, so I did it in five days, four nights. 

Day 1: 9 km

After being picked up by the bus at my hostel and driven for two hours, I made it to the park, and what a sight were the mountains. The Torres were covered in clouds, but most of the rest was still visible. The weather was stupendous (clear, not windy), and the 4 hour hike was pretty easy on the whole. The trail today went through some pretty areas, nice short forests, arid steppes. Beautiful mountians and hills around too. Part of the park is privately owned, and about a third of the circuit goes through their property, so you have to pay at their campsites. I spent the first night at Campamento Seron, which cost 10 bucks but did have a nice hot shower (really roughing it). 

Day 2: 28 km.

Oh what a day two. Something about sunny mornings gives me a lot of energy, I hiked quickly to Refugio Dickson.  Refugios are basically hiking hostels: you can rent a bed and buy meals. The walk was not so hard, it went through brush and low forest with incredible views on either side. Saw some absolutely gorgeous mountains, complete with glaciers hanging off. Saw a beautiful huge lake, and a large glacier with a beautiful huge mountain next to it, just glowing in the distance past Dickson, which sat on a lovely lake. It would have been a nice place to spend the night and afternoon, but I decided to continue, pressing two days into one. 

The next stretch was the most heavily forested so far. Gorgeous, really. Saw a woodpecker (picopalo) and a Patagonian fox eating a hunk of meat the size of a decent steak. This stretch, unlike the morning, actually took me about long as advertised. It actually got extremely difficult towards the end, as I myself was pretty exhausted  and the trail went over some glacial moraine scree that was difficult to walk on, the hardest terrain of the day. The peaks were gorgeous in that area, though, and there was another (detect a theme yet?) glacier there. The campsite seemed emptier- not sure why, as it should have just as many as any other on this side of the circuit. Everyone looked like really, really serious hikers there, and there was only one girl in the whole camp. That night, I discovered that my rental tent was quite crappy. It rained the whole night, and my tent flooded, my sleeping bag got wet, etc. etc. When I woke up at 1 a.m. with water dripping on my bag, I was suddenly able to remember every Spanish cuss word I'd ever learned, and they were all directed towards the guy who loaned me the tent. Didn't sleep much the rest of the night. 

Day 3: 22km, and mountain pass
Today's walk was more difficult then yesterday's, involving a lot of topo. I started through a muddy forest, and rain continued throughout most of the day. After emerging through the forest, I followed the trail up a seemingly endless rocky ridge to reach a mountain pass. 

Orange poles marked the path. Visibility was low, and climbing the ridge, following the orange poles felt like I was in the scene in Lord of the Rings when the series of signal fires are lit to call the Riders of Rohan. No pictures from that stretch, as the rain was pretty steady. After the pass, it was a hard descent, and then thankfully the weather cleared up a bit to reveal Glacier Gray and some cool mountains behind it.

The path kept descending all the way down to Refugio Gray. There were some interesting river crossings involving big ladders and such. After spending a night without much sleep in the crummy tent and carrying my water-logged gear through some tough terrain, I decided to splurge a bit and rented a bed. The Refugio was practically empty, and I ended up having the room all to myself. 

Day 4: 23 km

I slept in the night before, grabbing some well needed z's. The day started a little rough, I think because of my sleeping in. After a while I got a little more energy and recovered a bit, and managed to appreciate my surroundings. There was some forested bits, and also some rocky terrain with crazy folded rocks. The geology in the park was generally pretty amazing.

Then I made it to Paine Grande, a Refugio/guard station on the lake, and a pretty easy (I was a little too tired for it to be as easy as it should have been) hike followed up to Campamento Italiano. Unfortunately I couldn't face the prospect of another wet night in the crummy tent, which made a hike into the Valle de Frances difficult, so I continued on to Refugio Cuernos and rented a tent. 

The clouds covered most of the Cuernos (Horns) del Paine, which was disappoining, but I got to see the shorter ones when I rounded the corner to the Refugio--see the first picture in this post. Amazing mountains. Sheer granite (ish) walls crowned by a layer of black rock. The weather has been not very typically Patagonian: a steady rain, with hardly any wind. It really wasn't bad to hike in except for the slippery trails and flooded stream crossings. The issue is those cloud-covered mountains.

Day 5: 30 km (and a hellacious climb!)

What a day. I woke up, brushed my teeth, and then the foggy clouds magically parted to give a brief glimpse of Cuerno Principal, one of the awesome Cuernos del Paine with a jagged plutonic base, followed by a more easily weathered metamorphic crown. The sun was hitting it, and I couldn't help but stare until the clouds moved in again. I had been considering just catching the early bus (it was foggy and a little drizzly, and the forecast was rain) but I went ahead uphill for a chance to see the Torres. After dropping my pack (what a pleasure that was) I hiked up towards the viewpoint. The clouds were beginning to thin, the fog lifting. The first people I passed looked rather glum, but I saw more and more smiles as I got closer, making me think the weather was improving. When I made it to the viewpoint... Wow. Absolutely incredible. I hung around for a bit, soaked in the view, snapped some pics, and hoofed it downhill forevvverrrr to the bus stop. Somehow I made it in over an hour early, so I was able to grab some food and a beer before the bus left, and the weather was so clear that we could see the towers from the restaurant.

Made it!

The trip on the whole was pretty incredible. Physicially, it was quite demanding, but I mostly enjoyed the challenge. I wish I had a suitable tent, as that would have unlocked the Valle de Frances for me, and I could have camped right near the Torres to see the sunrise/set. But, I am incredibly pleased with the whole trip. I think Torres del Paine National Park has broken into my top tier of natural sights, joining the Grand Canyon and Iguazu Falls. 

Total: 5 days, 112 km. You can see loads of more pictures on Facebook, open to the public.