The best Park in all of the Patagonia

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Torres del Paine or the towers of blue. This are an iconic part of Patagonia. 3 spires of granite rock that some crazy guy scaled all 3 of them in 51 hours. In the Patagonia weather that is no mean feet. One day the weather is nice, sky blue no wind, picture perfect. 3 hours later its frickin freezing as the wind picks up to 60km/hr bringing horizontal rain on the verge of snow and this is all in the summer!

We arrived in Torres del Paine National Park at about 9am in the morning. The perfect day, the sun was shining, there was a breeze but not to strong. I felt justified in my decision to save on space and leave the long pants at home. It won´t be that cold.

Once we set up camp we started our first hike to Mirrador los Torres. It was nice for the first 1/2hr and I was thinking, this is good, I can handle this. Then the next 1 and 1/2 was a nice steep ascent (I will say that ascent is easier than descent). It was a good hike, we had been going for about 3 hours when we get told that the last bit is climbing to the bottom of the towers. I immediatly was ´what the´ I dint´t think hiking including climbing and scaling rock walls. Turns out it was boulder climbing. I´m not sure how high was climbed, I reckon at least 300m. The problem wasn´t really the climbing, but everytime you looked to see how far you had to go there was just more rocks, and more rocks and more rock. Off in the distant you could see the specks of people ahead of you. Once you get to the top though, it was worth every bit of energy. There was a glacier lake and then the 3 towers and there was a bit of a view of the valley we had hiked through during the day.

The next day the we boarded the ferry to cross Lake Pehoe, it makes the city cat look tame when you stand out the front for a bit or air con. The wind was todo loco, everyone had the sense to sit inside, but our rage tag bunch decided that the top was for us. We still needed to acclimatise. It kinda worked becae the wind didn´t seem as strong when we arrived at our next destination. We tried to hike to Glacier Grey but because the weather was miserable, frickin freezing, drizzling raing and a nice strong wind to keep you on your toes. When we got to a look out point there wasn´t much visability and the drizzled had turned to sleet. On the way there and back we were able to see icebergs that had broken off the glacier and floated down the lake.

Our next hiking destination lead us to the French Valley. It was a better day than the previous, but the wind was still nice and strong. On the way one of the mountains had a glacier on it. It was pretty massive. Apparently you have to touch the glacier to name it, we were contemplating trying it with all our mountain climbing experience, but then heaps of little avalanches started. It was really cool because they sound so loud and you expect this massive rush of snow and debris and all we could see was a trickle of snow of the edge. We were a fare distance so it was probably bigger closer up. In total we walked about 25km that day, never have I been so glad to have a luke warm shower and sleep on a mat on the ground in wind that literally caused the tent to collaspe a few times, only to rebound and collapse 15mins later.

That concluded our adventure in Torres del Paine. On the way out of the park we saw gaunacos but no pumas. Once we got back to Puerto Natales we boarded a bus to Punta Arenas where we were to spend Christmas.

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Comments

[Jose]

pants!
so you regret not taking the long pants? Christmas here was just as you have described, except perhaps without the snow and glaciers....