We were both looking forward to the trek. An early bus meant we had to gobble down a quick breakfast before stowing some (okay pretty much two thirds!) of our luggage at the hostel. The bus brought us to the park gate where, for an entrance fee of CLP21,000 we get to flog ourselves over three mountains in four days. Oh, and we got a map.
I quickly reshuffled things in my backpack and noticed Derek sneaked not only his massive bottle of shampoo into the bathroom bag, but also his facewash, two soaps (two?!) and deodorant. I only packed my toothbrush and toothpaste!!! Anyway, too late to argue about this now, so off we went.
We’ve never looked this ready!
My massive bag and both our jackets! Somehow I think I got the short end of the stick…
We had decided to walk the trek from East to West – that meant the toughest and steepest bit started straight away. As I imagined, my bag was starting to get heavy pretty quickly but of course I wasn’t going to admit this straight away. It was easy! Then we hit the uphill. We had about an hour’s fairly steep ascent with very little respite from the sun or the hill. Several people came past on horseback and I couldn’t help but envy them. At least we had beautiful views of lake Nordenskjold and Almirante Nieto mountain with its hanging glacier.
Horses with supplies on their way to the refugios. It’s quite a hill for a poor horse!
The desire to try and sneak a Fanta from that horse’s back…
We had to make quite a few pit stops – mainly because of me needing to put my bag down to give my back a break and Derek to try and dry his T-shirt that was completely drenched. The sun was unforgiving and the more sunscreen we put on, the quicker it came off from all the wiping. After what felt like forever we finally reached the top of the hill. Hello WIND! We got hit with the full force of the gales that had been forecast. We now realised we were protected for the first two hours by the typography and that these gales would last for the next four days.
More than once I thought I was going to get blown off the cliff as the trail was quite narrow and close to the edge. The wind was crazy! Thankfully, we reached our first overnight stay, Refugio El Chileno, with both of our lives still intact. It was a dingy hovel of a building with a door that couldn’t close and eight people to a drom room. We didn’t care, we just needed to get out of the wind. But this was also just a pit stop for now, as we were only a third through day 1. I dropped my big bag and we headed out into the teeth of the wind again. Another 2.5 hours hike up to the Mirador of Torres del Paine awaited – the famous view on many postcards of the park.
The first part of the trail was absolutely breath-taking as it made its way through a millenary Lenga forest. It was beautiful and sadly the pictures don’t do it justice.
The last part of the hike was a very challenging ascent that was quite tough for both of us. Most of you will know neither of us have very good knees so that was the first problem. Second problem was that our shoes weren’t the best hiking shoes so blisters and sore toenails quickly became the main topic of conversation. Coupled with the incredibly strong wind, this was no walk in the park.
We (finally) made it to the top totally baked by the sun and driven mad by the wind. The view was spectacular!!
Derek’s retelling of our experience at the top is brilliant:
“I had some concern when I overheard some other hikers retreating behind a rock saying; “Let’s go down, we don’t know when another one of those is going to hit again!” I say only some concern as, after five hours of walking, I was too taken in by the majesty of the Torre and the glimmering lake at the base. I didn’t even mind the wind in my face for the moment. The wind looked like it was whipping up the lake and blowing it towards us creating a misty effect on the water. How cool!! How wrong?! That wasn’t mist – that was rock and sand and it was coming my way!! As I was covered in sand and silt, I now understood the earlier comment of the hiker. Every few minutes the wind created a rockfall avalanche that made us duck for cover behind a massive rock.”
We spent a few minutes admiring Torre Sur, Torre Central and Torre Norte and taking the obligatory pictures, before starting our descent.
When we finally made it back to the refugio we were more than ready for a shower and a beer. And man, was I happy to see Derek’s shampoo and soap!! He scored many brownie points for packing those, even though I had to carry it.
The staff at the refugio was unbelievably rude, but I guess they have to deal with sweaty, noisy backpackers day in and day out. We had an early dinner and went to bed before 9pm – not something that happens often!