Torres del Paine - The W trail.

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Torres Del Paine - The W trail.

We left El Calafate for Puerto Natales on the bus after seeing two real life gauchos ride past us and head out for the plains while we were having breakfast. It was on our list of things to do to head out on horse back with a group of gauchos and catch our supper of steak over an open fire but unfortunately we didn't have time to do everything, especially if we want to catch up with these killer whales before they leave.

We got to Hostel kaWesker around 1pm and checked in and were told by the owner Omar that at 3pm everyday there is a meeting discussing how to tackle the W trail safely that lasts about an hour. I explained to Laura that the meeting would get in the way of the Bayern Munich v Barcelona Champions League match but my plea fell on deaf ears.

Maurişşimø was the guide who was taking our W trail meeting and as he was explaining that the trail is not for the faint hearted and anyone who had previously not done any serious hiking would find it tough I was honestly thinking in my head that he must just say that all the time and it'll not really be that hard.How wrong I was.

Maurişşimø explained that the W trail is a 5 day, 4 night solid hike that runs from west to east across the Torres del Paine National Park and that we would need to be carrying enough food for our entire expedition and enough clothes to cope with all weathers from the famous Patagonian winds to well below freezing to hot and humid temperatures, aswell as our tent and sleeping bags and walking boots and spare shoes and torches and towels etc etc. He said that our bags should weigh a maximum of 14kg otherwise we would really struggle. He also said the time of year we were doing the trail was absolutely perfect as it was coming to the end of the season and the park closes for winter, meaning that there would be hardly any people on the trail.

What he meant was that most sane people would actually sack off the idea of walking through one of the coldest places on the planet behind the two poles not a week before the park closes for the winter months!

He went through things meticulously like what we should be eating and how we were best at tackling the trail and how we were best getting there. We should get the bus to the foot of the trail and the bus should cost around 1500 Chilean Pesos. He said that you may find the bus cheaper for like 1450 or maybe 1400 pesos but any less than that and we should start worrying at where we were actually being taken to!

The talk finished and we were both absolutely buzzing at what we were about to do. We were to hire some roll mats to keep us insulated from the cold floor, buy a gas stove and grill, get our bus tickets to the park, get our shopping and we'd be set. We got back to our hostel to book our bus with Omar after renting our mats and getting our stove and were charged 1200 pesos for the bus! We must have looked a little worried as Omar promised us he would sort out the bus to pick us up and drop us off at our hostel door. We went to do our big shop of cereal bars, porridge, rice, pasta and chocolate then the next morning we were off and on the bus to the park for 7am without any need of worrying. Omar's a legend!

Looking at the map of the park as we were getting our tickets it started to dawn on us the enormity of the trail. Over 5 days we would walk over 88.5 kilometres (over 54 miles) over mountains, lakes through ice caps, glaciers over bridges and rocks and into and past thick forests and windy plains with 14kg bags on!

After we got to the National Park entrance and paid our entrance fee we had to get a catamaran to the west of the park where our hike would start. We got a map of the trail out and set off with our bags on for the first trek of 11k up the side of a glacier called Glacier Grey. The weather was clear but the air was very cold so we set off wrapped up wearing most of our clothes but they soon come off as we got trekking and started sweating all the steak and red wine out that we had in Argentina.

On the map it showed that the trek we were doing for the first day ended with the campsite being located just after a bridge. What we didn't know was that the map only showed one bridge but the reality was that was must have walked over 6 or 7 bridges thinking that the campsite was just round the corner after every one we crossed! We thought we'd smashed it when we crossed the first bridge after only a couple of hours! "This has got to be that bridge" we kept saying, but it wasn't! Bear in mind that this is South America were in, we weren't just walking on paths that had been cleared, most of the time we weren't sure if we were going the right way, then every so often we'd see a red spot painted on a tree or a rock that meant that someone had obviously been there before meaning we must be going the right way. These dots were sometimes painted on the top of huge rock faces that meant scrambling up the rock, or at the other side of a wild river that meant wading through ice cold waters. While I'm on about the rivers actually the cool thing was that all the water we saw and passed was drinkable. It was that pure and clean you could just fill up your water bottle in the stream you were walking along the side of that was coming from the huge waterfall spewing out of the glacier we could see in the distance. It was really cold and gorgeous taking big gulps of ice cold water when you were that hot from trekking that we literally had steam coming from the tops of our heads.

As we got further up the trail we could see the affects of a forest fire that ripped through the park in 2007, some Israeli bloke set his toilet paper on fire rather than carry it with him after doing a number 2 and it caught in the wind and burnt down 10% of the National Park. It created a really eerie feeling walking through the woods, like some sort of elephant graveyard from The Lion King.

We got to our first camping spot later that evening and set up camp and made our tea of curried rice and got talking about how good it was doing what we were doing.

The day after we trekked back down the trek we had done the day before to get to the next camp to continue east to see the three towers of the Torres del Paine. Again we had good weather but after walking the 11k back down, then the 7.6k up to the next camp by the time we got our tent set up we were shot! We had our tea of pasta and hit the sack.

That morning we woke up and had our breakfast of porridge and dried bananas to set us up for the 10.5k hike we had that day. This part of the hike was up hill on massive rocks and boulders and although the distance was a fair way, the terrain was the hardest thing to navigate. There's not really that much else to say about the next day or two other than that the scenery was breathtaking but the terrain was mental.

Then as we got to our second to last camp of the trail as I was getting in my sleeping bag I managed to break both zips and the thread broke on our gas stove meaning we couldn't screw it onto our grill to cook our food. So in the Patagonian winter, one of the most coldest places on earth, at night, the coldest part, in the strongest winds I've ever experienced I didn't have a working sleeping bag and we were going to have to have a tea of 2 cereal bars to warm us up! Add to that the trek we were doing the day after was the longest on the trail and on the hardest terrain. And we had actually paid good money to put ourselves through it! It's fair to say that night we weren't talking about how good it was doing what we were doing!Then some really nice American (yes, they do exist!) and Canadian people lent us their stove so we managed to get a hot meal and saved our battered morale with a cup of Yorkshire Tea (Kerry Thomas, we are forever in your debt!)

In the morning we got up nice and early to give ourselves plenty of chance to get to the other camp before it got dark. That morning we got up was absolutely stunning. The view was incredible. Purple electrifying skies with a massive full moon sitting at the top of a mountain like the flame on a candle. We didn't hardly walk anywhere for the first 20 minutes and just stood and watched the dream like views. Unbelievable. As usual the photos don't do it justice.

That day was a 15.9k hike all up hill and over huge rock faces in strong icy winds. For this day we said that we would eat in one of the few 'Refugios' dotted around the trail. A Refugio is basically a log cabin where you can get warm next to an open fire and can get a decent meal. We planned that we would only take enough food for 3 nights and eat at a refugio on the last night, saving the weight in our bags of extra food and it being a nice reward for the hardest day on the trail to eat in a nice warm place. The refugio we were to do this was called 'Camp Chileno' and was the stop 2.5 hours before our camping spot for that night.

The hike was literally staggering! Its the hardest thing I've ever done. I kept thinking 'frigging hell, I'd rather be at work!' I think that because we'd been spoiled with unbelievable views on the trail, the parts that were just solid walking for hours on end in dense, cold woodland enhanced the pain in the legs and in the back from our bags.

All I kept thinking about was what I was going to have for tea at Camp Chileno. "Whatever I have, I'm definitely having a beer....!" I kept telling myself. I could taste it.

The problem was that every time we looked at the map it seemed it was getting further away, it was a huge, steep, relentless climb and with blisters from the previous days I did feel as though I'd hit the wall. Laura was being far more positive but I was losing it. Then we heard a rustle in the woods "It's a puma!" Laura shouted whilst trying to whisper. "I don't think pumas are that big Loz " I said. Then we heard a massive "Moooo!" And realised it was just a cow. How it got to where it was is beyond me but it was a nice break from the now monotonous task of left, right, left, right, left right.

We got to a break in the terrain from ridiculously steep to just steep and realised Camp Chileno was just an hour away. Result.

We past a French guy on the last stretch and I asked how the weather was further up the trail (the weather can change drastically from one part of the trail to the other) and he said it was a really cold at Camp Chileno, I said something like that that was okay for us as we were going to sit by the fire and have some food with a nice cold beer. I must have looked crazily desperate for what I was explaining as he had an extremely sympathetic look on his face when he explained that Camp Chileno was now closed for the season.

I said this cannot be.

People are still in the park on that part of the trail, why would they close the refugio while there's people still on the tail?!

I went bezerck.

The guy started explaining something to Loz but I was just going mental kicking rocks that I did not listen to what he was saying.

Laura explained that guy said that all of the Refugios were now closed for the winter months. All the park rangers had finished for the season yesterday so there were no park rangers either. All the camps were shut so there were no toilets or places to get warm. Basically the whole bastard National Park had shut.

We hurried to Camp Chileno to see if it was true to find a message wrote on paper stuck to the inside of the door saying 'CLOSED'. The ink was barely dry.

We had an extremely heated discussion for such a cold day and could not even salvage the mood with a cup of tea because of our broken stove. Even the people who lived and worked there had gone home for winter in one of the coldest places on earth and we had to sleep in a tent with 1 sleeping bag between us with no food after walking just under 10mile up hill.

It was absolutely frigging freezing.

For me continuing seemed foolish. It was either a 2.5 hour trek to where we had to pitch our tent, or an hours walk down hill to a hotel at the 'finish line' and if it wasn't for the fact that Loz gave me a kick up the arse and told me to get a grip of myself, I'd have legged it to that hotel with no shame whatsoever. She's definitely harder than me. So through gritted teeth we trekked to, what I thought was, certain death.

That night we got talking to the American group round our camp and kindly borrowed their stove and swapped tales of how hard the day was. It seems I was not alone in thinking it was one of hardest things I'd ever done, but I was the only one that had moaned relentlessly about it, much to my embarrassment. After all my feelings of certain death it was probably the most enjoyable night on the trail, getting all the Americans to speak broad Yorkshire and make sure that from now on they all followed 'The Tykes'. It honestly did wake me up to the fact at what a mardy git I'd been that afternoon and vowed to myself to keep it together in future as you never know what can come of things.

It was the next morning, our last day of the trail, that we were to wake up before sunrise and climb to the top of the mountain range to watch the sun come up over the peaks. It was the crowning glory of such a hard trail and if it was a clear night you were rewarded with watching the '3 ladies' change different colours as the sun would reflect off the face of the mountain.

It was absolutely freezing so I woke up and put on my boxers, 2pairs of thick socks, my thermal trousers, my thermal top, my jogging bottoms, my walking trousers, a t-shirt, a jumper, my fleece, another t-shirt over my jumper and fleece to lock in the air for good measure, then my coat, hat, scarf and 2 pairs of gloves and I'm not kidding when I got out of the tent you could still feel the cold! It was only when we started walking that the layers started to come off. The sky was clear though so we were due a nice sunrise.

We got to the top after about an hour of walking in the dark and it already looked beautiful with all the stars and the moon in the sky.

The wind was blowing a gale though so we got perched behind a big rock to try and combat it and got the iPod and speakers out to watch the sun come up with some tunes on. Absolutely amazing.

What an experience, and to say even the park rangers had pussyed out and gone home 'cos of the weather I was chuffed to bits that we'd done it all the way to the top.

I'll put some pictures up but they dont portray the enormity of what we could see. The photos also don't get across just how cold it was! It was baltic!

Then it was a steady 5hour hike back down to the end of the trail where we got a beer and celebrated not wimping out!

We'd done it! And while we were doing it one of the coldest places on earth had closed for winter!

Eat shit Bear Grylls!

We got back to our hostel a couple of hours later and got a shower and headed out for a bite to eat and walked into a pizza place to find our American friends from the trail sitting down. We joined them and had a good drink that 'The Tykes' had managed to beat Hull and lived to fight another day!

The Americans are actually in a Spanish school in a place called Valpariso which is where were headed in the next week or so and they offered to show us round the town when we get there which we'll take them up on the offer. They really are sound.

That's it for now.

We've been chilling in this kaWesker hostel since the trail playing Omar on Fifa and reading our books and learning Spanish. It's that nice it's the longest we've stayed in one place - 6 days.

Our first month travelling has been and gone and now it's on to warmer and (thankfully) cheaper climates. We've missed the bloody killer whales by three weeks which were gutted about but we've done and seen so much, you can't do it all I suppose!

We fly to Santiago on Saturday to start our journey of meeting up with our good mates in Bolivia before they head home after their travels. The weather man says 22c in Santiago which will hopefully kick us off on our next part of our trip of sun, sea and sand. Thank you god.

Until the next time!

Mick n Loz

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Comments

[Pete Rickards]

Your Blog
Mick & Loz, Your blog is fantastic, and the photo's are stunning, ENJOY xxxxx