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Published: December 15th 2008
Have you ever read "Into the Wild?" Well, I hate that book. (Don´t worry, there is a point to this rant.) If you know me, you know there are some things (okay, a lot of things) that throw me through a loop. Idiots are one of the primary things. The people who idolize idiots are even worse, so please don´t tell me you like that book. The kid in it is a complete fool; he perceives himself as some grand, throw back romantic when he is just a scarred, suburban, winy bi&$% who goes into the wilderness completely under prepared and suffers the consequences. People compare him to Thoreau, who actually survived, due to this romantic vision of some kid in the woods reading literature (which, in my opinion he misinterprets constantly) and writing poetry (which sucked). Anyone who doesn´t realize a small creak in a much larger river bed in Alaska in April (i.e. before the snow melts) is going to be huge river in the summer is a fool not worthy of pity, much less idolization. It is a case of natural selection doing what it needs to do to clean our species of idiots. To top it all
off, here is my point, the kid hardly made it into the wilderness! He was extremely close to several residences, took up camp in an abandoned bus that served as a hunting lodge in season, had trails and means across the river at his disposal, yet still couldn´t make his way back to town. He was in such a blind stupor of his own perceived unique grandness that he didn´t realize he wasn´t in the "wild" he so coveted. Okay, gone a bit far to make this point, but, like I said, this fires me up; basically, there is a difference between nature and wilderness and many people, despite their stated goals, aren´t willing to find out, or can´t tell, the difference.
In Torres del Paine National Park, in southern Chile, the most spectacular views of the Torres and Cuervas run along a commonly hiked circuit called "The W." The views are beautiful, the plant life is spectacular, but it is more of a nature walk on steroids than a trek in the wilderness. For the most part the trail is in phenomenal shape, it is well marked with catwalks over marshes and bridges spanning rivers. (There was one
Glacier Grey
Look at way the rock comes out of Lago Grey on the right. That is what we hiked on for the third and fourth days.major exception, and more on that later, and a few places that were muddy due to the snow melt.) There are huge refugios, which are more like hotels, all along the way that will cook you meals at outrageous prices. So, while we were on a budget and had to carry our tents, stoves, food, etc., we were still passing people struggling up the trail with nothing but a toothbrush in their pocket (not that I view their presence as bad; many times, as when we saw a 75 year old grandmother with her grandkids it is inspirational, I simply state that it overpopulates a trail.) And, there are bafoons (obviously I do have a bit more of an opinion here) without the slightest clue of basic hiking and camping protocol. For example, we saw one guy peeing into the river bed upstream of the campsite´s water source! In other words, anyone who got water from that source ended up drinking this waste of oxygen´s urine. (Contrary to the first case of natural selection mentioned earlier, here it simply is not strong enough to remove such an idiot from our gene pool.) There are bathrooms with running water every few
hours, people within sight at all times, and extremely cushy campgrounds everywhere. Despite doing a large number of miles over the span of four days, we never got in the wilderness. It was an area of natural beauty but still had a lot of the creature comforts of home. It only gives the
perception of being in the wilderness that many people want, while in fact you are only taking a nice stroll through nature. Then again, it is the most visited national park in South America, so I guess I´m the fool for hoping to find wilderness on its most popular hike and should just stop my wining, right? All that said, the scenery was magnificent. There are beautiful mountains, interesting rock formations, huge glaciers, loads of flowers, and incredibly colored lakes.
On the first day in we hiked up to Camp Torres, only three hours, a handful of kilometers in, and a few thousand feet in elevation gain. We got there early, set up our tents, ate a quick lunch and headed up to the mirador at the base of the Torres. The Torres, or Towers, are an igneous rock formation that formed from lava
Welcoming Party
These guys were marching by as we entered the park. breaking through the earths crust and forming these mountains, which are completely separate from the Andes surrounding the area. Their sides are almost completely vertical, and they are made out of a completely different rock from the other mountains we have been seeing. When we arrived, after a steep forty some minute walk, they were covered in clouds. We didn´t have anything better to do, so we took a seat and waited. It paid off and after a short bit we had an amazing view. We enjoyed it for a bit, came back to camp, cooked up our first meal and slept like babies that night.
We got on the road early, or at least as early as we could given my lack of morning motivation, the next day. Once we got out of the first valley and started moving towards Valley Frances the scenery wasn´t that spectacular and this was the only area that the trail was a little under maintained. Mud was past ankle deep in areas, we had to find our own ways around it, and we came upon some gnarly river crossings. One in particular was extremely rough. It only had a wire the width
of a coat hanger as a hand rail to help pull you across and you had to leap between half submerged rocks, hoping you didn´t slip on the way. Ali and Drew made it across fine. Eric went next and right when he was about to go for the big jump, his hiking pole snapped in half, he fell forward, landing directly on his nose with his lower half getting submerged in the fridged river water. He came up with an enormous black and blue bump on his nose which grew with every minute and a large cut which was bleeding pretty well. For the first time since I´ve known him, he actually looked tough! We all got across, did a quick repair job on Eric´s schnoose, and kept moving. Eric and Drew got a little in front of us, and when we caught up they had decided to make a run for the boat at Lago Pehoe leaving that evening to get Eric´s nose checked out and to give Drew´s knee, which had been hurting for a week or so now from the continuous hiking, a rest. Two down (and for good reasons), the other three of us kept
on.
Immediately thereafter the views got infinitely better. We had beautiful clear skies as we hiked towards the Cuernos, large light brown mountains that near the top change colors to a very dark mocha brown in a clearly defined line of different rock. Chilean fire flower bushes appeared everywhere and aqua colored Lago Nordenskjold provided a great color contrast to it all. With this amazing landscape fueling us, we turned the expected nine and a half hour hike into seven hours and got into Camp Italiano at the base of Valle Frances in the early afternoon, and, to our surprise, there were Drew and Eric waiting for us! I´ll let Eric explain how that came about:
(Erics edit: This came about because the handful of people who work in the national park are idiots. Once Drew and I decided to catch the boat out that day (There is a boat that shuttles trekkers across a large lake to an awaiting bus stop. Most people end or begin their circuit with this boat trip to save their legs a few kilometers of pain), we knew we would have to hustle in order to make it. The site of the
Ascencio Valley
The view of the hike on the first and second day. accident was about 4 hours away from the intended campsite for the night and the catamaran landing was another 2 hours beyond that. With a little time to spare, we knew we could catch the boat in time, but we´d have to keep up a good pace. Soon after splitting up from the rest of the group, we realized we had no confirmation of the boat schedule and our belief of a 630 PM boat was simply based on the recollection of some guy in our hostel we had met the night before we embarked to the park. We decided to make a quick stop in the Cuernos Refugio to confirm the boat time. A group of 4 boys who work at the refugio are standing around the front door looking incredibly bored when Drew and I get there, and in our broken Spanish we tell them what has happened and ask them when the last boats for today run as they stare at the blood soaked bandaid stretching across my nose. They are certain that the last boat is at 4 oclock, and not at 6:30. They collectively confirm this information and of course they should know being that
Chilean Fire Flowers
The red bush up front is a Chilean Fire Flower bush, or so Ive been told. they do work in the national park. We continued onward and made it to the next campsite a few hours later. Afraid we might not catch the boat by 4, we decided to sit tight and wait for the rest of the gang because if we continued to the boat landing and missed the boat we´d be camping anyway, but without our other amigos and in a far less magical setting. A few hours later, whilst making friendly conversation with some neighbors at the campground and telling them the story of the day, they whip out a boat schedule... the boat was at 6:30... not at 4 as we had been so assured. By the time we had heard this news, we could´ve rushed to catch the 6:30 but at this point my nose had receded to half its original post-impact size and Drew was going to have to limp out whether it was that afternoon or the following morning. We decided we might as well stay put and continue camping.)
That afternoon we took it easy, some took naps, some read, Eric and I headed up into the valley a little ways to check out the enormous glaciers
that lined the walls. As Burton and I had been approaching the valley earlier in the day we heard loud sounds we presumed to be thunder, as there were ominous clouds up the valley, however we came to find out that it was actually chunks of glacial ice falling thousands of feet down the mountainside and crashing into the valley floor below. That night, one of the crashes was so loud that it actually woke me up, from several kilometers away. Anyway, after Eric and I got our fill of the valley, we headed back for some nice camp stove cooking and a few games of Eucher.
The third morning we got up a bit later, actually really late, as we were in no rush to get to our last campsite, which was a five hour and twenty kilometer hike away, and Ali and Drew only had to hike two hours to catch their twelve thirty boat back to town. The hiking that day was insanely windy, without a doubt the most windy weather I´ve ever experienced. The gales would nearly push me over; I felt like a semi with my backpack twisting me back and forth as it
was assailed by the winds. But, we got Drew and Ali dropped off on time, and continued up to Glacier Grey. The hike along Lago Grey, which was even windier, was exceptionally beautiful; in my opinion it was the best trail in the park. It was constantly changing terrain going up and down, up and down, along the valley wall. The cliffs you hiked on were shear shale raising perpendicular to the horizon and diving a thousand feet into the cold glacier lake below. As you got an hour or so into the hike you were given an amazing view of Glacier Gray directly in front of you and the icebergs it gives off floating throughout the lake. The campsite we made it to, and its mirador, I didn´t find to be as spectacular as these views, however it did allow you to sit directly in front of the glacier waiting for some action. Burton and I had great seats when a large chunk came crashing off into the water, the impact of which we felt on our chests a kilometer away. We camped that night on the lakeshore and after a fairly unspectacular 10:30 p.m. sunset, but a great
Wind on the lake
The waves this day were huge, and look at the mist flying off the lake. game of stick ball played with the rocks on the beach, we passed out hard on our last night.
The next morning we got up and made it to the boat with an hour to spare. We spent that time grazing on the last bits of food we had in our packs, talking with the couple of Irish guys we met along the way, and simply pleased to be giving our feet (and knees) a break. Eric´s nose was quite a bit smaller than what it was immediately after his fall, but had turned into a nice black and blue bridge across his nose. Burton´s knee, which normally bothers him from his years of getting beaten at ice hockey by the teams from further north in Wisconsin (i.e. Neenah, where I played), faired quite well on the hike due to his brand spanking new knee brace, but was in need of a break. Drew was already laid up in Puerto Natales letting his knee rest after the two weeks of hiking by sucking back beers, wine, and eating an astonishing seven pizzas with Ali. And, my feet appreciated being out of my hiking boots. I get the gnarliest blisters,
so I was happy to be done with the camping...
Like I said earlier, the "W" isn´t exactly the wild I had been hoping for but was as beautiful as nature gets. It is overloaded with people moving between hotels with some people camping who simply don´t know how, but it still lets people get to see some of the beauty of nature, and the more people that experience that, the better the world will be. For all my wining about not getting out into the wild, I don´t know how much more we really could have taken given the state we were in after the last month of hiking and camping. Our delapidated state of various injuries speaks for itself.
Still, my point stands, the kid from "Into the Wild" is an idiot.
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