We spent 11days at trekking through the Torres del Paine national park, at the southern end of Chilean Patagonia. It is touted in marketing literature as one of the m out beautiful treks in the world. After completing it, we would agree!
The trekking is interesting in that there are numerous private hostels along the way. Most people do 4 to 5 day trek along the southernmost end of the park. Because of the shape of the trails, this shorter trek is called the "W". We started with the busy W trek, but then carried on around the back side of the park to complete the circumnavigation of the park on a trail called the "O".
Many people do the trek by horseback, and the hostels and campgrounds throughout the park are supplied either by boat or by horseback.
We started our trek in the southeast corner which was accessible by bus. This area of the park still has a private ranch, although the ranch is now dedicated to tourism.
We had a bit of a surprise on our first morning, as we woke up to find our tent covered in snow. We waited for it to warm up a bit, and then we hiked up to the Mirador de Los Torres - the viewpoint of the towers.
On our next day, we had a pleasant surprise when we bumped into some Australians who we originally met on our Antarctic cruise. Jaylynn had always wanted to go to Antartica, so she convinced her dad to join her. Brian, her father, had only been out off Australia once before in his life. Also, he had never been backpacking before and had never seen snow! He said that he was loving the backpacking experience, but he wished that they had rented a tent that was large enough for him to actually stretch out in! We actually met a lot of very interesting people on the trek, since we would congregate in the evenings in cook shelters to make supper. Two of the most interesting couples came from England and Germany. The English couple bought a motor bike in
Chicago and drove it all the way to the southern tip of Chile over a 9 month period. They took a boat to get around the Darien Gap in Panama, but sent their motorbike by Fedex because couriering it was the least expensive way of getting it to South America. The young German couple told us a lot about what it was like growing up in the former German Democratic Republic. Apparently, when the Berlin Wall came down, birth rates in East Germany dropped 80% because everybody felt so uncertain about their future.
The stratigraphy of the Torres del Paine is fascinating. 10,000 years ago, the entire area was glaciated. Only the tops of the highest peaks were not covered with ice. There are some fascinating rock layers as a result. Also, because the area was no recently ice covered, there is very little topsoil, which means relatively sparse vegetation, resulting in very little wildlife.
They get plenty of precipitation - it rained on us every day, although most days it was gently drizzle or a mist. Because of all of the precipitation, their glaciers are very scenic. One amusing bit of scenery was all of the young people who had clearly never back packed before, and were doing the trail with a pair of huge day packs with tents and sleeping bags attached by string and shoe laces. Looked very uncomfortable!
There is also a lot of erosion around the old moraines, so in some places the park has installed ladders.
One of the most spectacular sites was the Grey Glacier. It is 10 - 12 km wide, and over 70 km long.
The most impressive a views were from the top of John Gardner Pass. Most guide books, tour operators and park rangers recommended doing the "O" circuit counter clockwise so that you are descending the steep, muddy, slippery slopes on the west side of the pass. We decided that we would rather ascend steep and slippery trails. There were only 3 other people doing the trail in our direction.
Christmas Eve dinner was noodles and dehydrated soy vegetable protein cooked in chicken noodle soup! The next day we had tuna cakes for Christmas Day dinner at one of the hostels. We carried most of our food with us, but planned to eat a few dinners at the hostels to keep our pack weight down.
The back side of the "O" was much less busy than the front, and was just as ruggedly beautiful.
Overall, a beautiful trip. Glad that we did it - even if it meant 11 days in our tent!
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