W Trail Torres del Paine Report

Welcome back to the Geezer Blog. Given that you are reading this, you now know that we have completed and, dare I say, brilliantly conquered the last of the ¨Triple Crown¨ of Patagonian trekking. Parts of this six day blog were written before, during and after the trek, often on scraps of napkins and paper, but I will try to avoid a ¨Cloud Atlasian¨ effect and properly order our trip.

David writing this blog

Warning: A picture is worth a thousand words and Simon´s pictures are worth even more, so for those of you who have a life to attend to please skip reading this part of the blog (but do look at the pictures). Much of what is written here was done in the hours spent recuperating from our daily tribulations and their glorious rewards - a dangerous concoction for rambling introspection.

1.Our days preparing for Torres: We stayed 2 days in Puerto Natales (PN), preparing ourselves for the W-circuit of nearby Torres de Paine Chilean National park. Our circuit involves 6 days of trekking from refugio to refugio, with the goal of reaching some momentous vista every day. The town was crammed with backpackers, all drawn to the Torres´ sights and challenges. During our stay in PN, our resolve was severely challenged as the notorious winds and rain of Torres howled and tormented us with horizontal sheets of rain.

2. To Torres: We hardly recognize PN the day we leave as there is brilliant sunshine and only a mild breeze. As we drive through the park entrance herds of wild guanacos (llama family) are only slightly disturbed by our presence. The park’s glaciers, high peaks, deep valleys and rivers create a panoply of micro-climates, ensuring that any walk is a continually chnaging adventure. We find our bunks at Torres Base Camp and quickly escape for a quick, warm-up hike into the mountains. We are enveloped by a narrow, verdant valley, providing the first hints of the peaks to come.

3. First Stroke of the ‘W’. We leave base camp headed for the crown of the park, Las Torres. As with the visit to any ‘shrine’, an important part is the journey. Our pilgrimage begins on a narrow path that precariously hugs the edge of a steep canyon. A glacier river roars a thousand feet below. Death-defying, horseback-riding gauchos speed past us, carrying supplies to the Chileno Refugio, our stop for the night. After 4 hours of treacherous climbs, we descend to Chileno on the valley floor. We drop our bags at Chileno and head to Torres which sits majestically on the other side of the valley. The terrain quickly changes as we enter a deep forest fed by raging glacier streams.

Two hours later we reach the enormous rock field (the litter of millions of years of Torres’ erosion) that begins at the valley floor and continues almost 800 meters to its base). It’s an arduous ascent through a miraculous route that navigates us through boulders and rocks of every shape and size. As we scamper over the last ridge, we are rewarded with the glorious spectacle of Torres’ four granite towering obelisks, bathed by a perfectly clear, sun-drenched sky. The clouds that, even on a clear day, stubbornly cling to the peaks have vanished. The southern summer sun has become our faithful hiking partner. Crystal clear lagoons catch Torres’ ice and snow melts that often explode into thunderous avalanches. (Simon’s pictures say it all).

{thanks, David, for the kind words - SF }

Torres started life millions of years ago deep underground as a lava field and then, as the Pacific and Atlantic tectonic plates collided, Torres sprung like wings, thousands of meters above the Andean landscape. Originally a single peak, snow, rain, ice and wind have masterfully sculptured the rock into four majestic towers. With many others, we spend hours ingesting its mystical presence that shifts with the setting sun. With some regret, we slowly descend back to Chileno.

4. An Evening of Retrospection (as suggested before, this part in particular can be skipped). At Chileno, with Torres reflecting an almost full moon, we are surrounded by hikers of all sizes, nationalities and ages. We all have travelled thousands of miles, taken nauseating bus rides through endless switchbacks, hiked countless miles with loaded packs over torturous paths. The question I have is ‘why?’. This question quickly engages us along with a young Danish couple having supper with us (especially the young man, a disillusioned car salesman). Like religion and drugs for some, we all long to escape our broken, ephemeral lives by connecting to something larger than ourselves - the ecstasy that the ancients Greeks sought. For many of us, nature’s strength and beauty allows us to, at least momentarily, flee our ‘mortal coil’. Days later we pass our Danish salesman and he shouts that he is getting closer to the answer. What are your thoughts?

Contemplating

5. The Middle Stroke of the ‘W’: We have two days of hiking to complete this part. We wake to another brilliant day. Torres, which is gleaming in a dazzling sunrise, towers over our glass breakfast nook. As we leave Chileno, we look back for one last view of Torres and then head to Los Cuernos base camp. It’s another salubrious day, the fertile valley floor lies ahead of us. As we cross a rocky river bed, we bump into the remains of a gaucho saddle and a load of supplies.

We remembered that the gauchos we had met the evening before were also ‘loaded’ with a few too many Pisco Sours. Pastures open before us and before long our gaucho friends appear at full gallop corralling a herd (what is a group/team of horses called?) of magnificent stallions.

Seven hours later as we approach Los Cuernos (horns in Spanish) camp we begin to see glimpses of the black cone-shaped peaks that appear to teeter on top of snow covered mountains rising vertically several thousand feet. Seeing Los Cuernos up close is our next day’s objective.

Our cabins by the waterfall

Luxury awaits us as we have individual cabins nestled beside a raging waterfall with skylights over our beds, revealing a star-studded southern sky.

A primitive hot-tub (really a lukewarm water barrel) with a submerged wood stove could only attract our male contingent.

We wake to morning sunshine. This is, by far, our most challenging day as we have over 11 hours of difficult hiking with a serious climb up the ‘French Valley’ to get close to Los Cuernos´ horns. First, it’s a 2.5 hour trek up and down the water´s edge to Camp Italiano which lies at the base of the French Valley.

There, along with tens of others, we leave our heavy packs, bring a light lunch and gear for the always threatening Patagonian storms. At the best of times, it´s 6 hours up and down. Half way up we exit the woods and confront a massive mountain glacier across the valley.

The now familiar exploding ice fields send whiffs of snow down the mountainside. The weather is turning dark and the word is spreading among most hikers that it is not worthwhile continuing as the cloud cover was too thick. We soldier on for another hour to where we reach the decision point every French Valley hiker must make - the next part involves a half hour scrambling up vertical rock faces. We all turn to Esther and without hesitation she points upwards into the clouds and we ascend. As we reach the summit, high above, the clouds break just enough to reveal Los Cuernos’ horns in a mystical spectacle of rock and mist. We lie captivated by an on-going game of peak-a-boo.

We made it to the top...

...and here´s the reward for making it

We start climbing down knowing that the Geezers never take ‘no’ for an answer and the rewards do always come. Half way down, we face rain for the first time but we are well prepared. We arrived at our next refugio Paine Grande to thundering applause as many of the friends we had met at previous refugios see us marching through the rain as the sun sets behind us.

6. The Last Stroke: For the first time we wake to rain but we have still kept the ugly wind gods at bay. We put on our full rain gear and head north to Glacier Grey. It´s only a 4 hour hike but the rain makes the up-hills and especially the rocky down-hills treacherous. We meander through pastoral valleys for several hours. We reach then Lago Grey, the huge lake at the base of the Glacier. It is lined with icebergs of every description. The heavy clouds change our usual perspective of looking up to looking downward and inward. The path on the left follows the lake and the right is flanked by a huge mountain glacier that we could only imagine as all we hear and see are raging mountain waterfalls that stream down its side. We arrive at Refugio Grey, a delightful, modern chalet. We are wet but our weather gear preserved.

Victory dance - we finished the W!

As we sit and relax in the lounge, the rain intensifies and we watch as more and more desperate hikers arrive. This wretched march continues well into the night with horror stories of swollen rivers flooding many trails.

Esther and Annice in the kayak

The next morning the weather broke and we decided to take a glacier kayak trip. Our guides quickly had us dressed in wet suits, booties and gloves, launching us onto the glacier lake. We kayaked close to marooned dark blue icebergs, some several stories high; close to the glacier’s edge, looking up its vast ice fields; and past stunning glacier water falls. It was thrilling to be so close and personal with these water sentinels

The mountains as seen from the boat...

By the time we left Grey, the sky was turning blue, all signs of the past rain quickly disappeared. We now had 6 hours to return to Paine Grande to catch the catamaran and bus home that evening. We tried to hike quickly but we could not resist the views behind us. Glacier Grey was perhaps the most spectacular vista of visit. It looms unbelievably large, its three massive ice fields spilling into its lake. With the clouds of the previous day gone, enormous snow peaked mountain chains ringed our path and the lakes reflected the rich blue skies.