A lot of Paine

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Torres del Paine that is. Didn't see that one coming did you?

So, upon my arrival in Puerto Natales, I once again followed some Israelis to find the cheapest hostel in town, and started my preparations for my trek in the Torres. I had planned to do the W, but some girls in my hostel had just finishing the full circuit, and were strongly recommending that. I decided to leave it until the next day to make my final decision.

There exists a hostel in Natales called Erratic Rock where they give a talk at 3pm everyday about trekking in the park. As I was currently dithering over doing the O or the W (technical names here) I decided to go along to see what the guys had to say. Somehow, over the course of this hour long talk, I became convinced that the Q was what I wanted to do, which is essentially the full circuit, plus another 35km there and back from the visitors centre to the main trails. Shortly afterwards, I met up with Jonas, a Swiss guy who was also going to do the Q, and the trekking team was sorted. From now on, I'll go with a day by day, blow by blow account of the hike.

Day 1: Administration - Refugio Paine Grande

We were dropped off at administration at around 12ish, ready to start our adventure, with blue skies welcoming us into the park. There were 4 fools that started the trek that day; myself and Jonas, along with David & Hayley, a Canadian couple who were also at the talk. These 2 had the extraordinary ability to walk at the speed of light, so after 5 minutes we didn't see them again for the rest of the day.

The first day was a very simple, and very pleasant walk, heading into the park, with lovely clear views of the Paine Massif ahead of us. We actually reached the proposed campground in just over an hour, but as it was a nice day, we decided to push on. About 45 minutes from Paine Grande, where we eventually did camp, was an incredible mirador over the turquoise Lago Pehoe, with the Cuernos and Paine Grande looming in the background.

We reached Paine Grande just after 4, and would have pushed on to the free Campamento Italiano, except we'd heard it was closed, and people who got there to camp were being evicted (this turned out to be untrue). So we pitched, and had a nice evening talking to people who had just finished the circuit, and said that the weather had been perfect for the last week. It rained quite a lot that night. Typical.

Day 2: Refugio Paine Grande - Refugio los Cuernos (via Valle Frances)

It was sunny in the morning, so after a bit of tent drying and fixing, we were ready to hit the trail. Just less than 2 hours later, we arrived at Campamento Italiano, where we dumped our stuff and headed up the Valle Frances. It's hard not to be impressed by a valley with glaciers on one side, and the Cuernos on the other, but if you weren't, all you had to do was turn around and see the views of the valley descending towards some of the parks multitude of lakes. If you still aren't impressed, either you aren't a real person, or it is a very cloudy day.

We probably went a little bit too far up the Valle Frances, continuing over an hour beyond Campamento Brittanico trying to reach a pass to see over the other side. We did make it in the end, but couldn't see anything due to the quite rapidly descending cloud. By now, it was about 5.30pm, and we realised 2 things: 1. We still had 2 hours of trekking to do with our bags today, and from here to our bags its about a 2 hour walk... and 2. It was bloody cold.

The combination of these two things made our descent a lot quicker than the ascent, and it was just after 7 that we started on the stretch between Italiano and Cuernos. This section is particularly exposed to the strong winds that blow of Lago Nordenskjold, so it wasn't overly pleasant, and it was also not overly pleasant arriving at the campsite at 9 to find that there wasn't really many pitches remaining. We wedged ourselves in somewhere, needing to pitch by torchlight, and went to sleep.

Day 3 Refugio los Cuernos - Campamento Los Torres

The weather wasn't quite sure what to do today, but we were... we had to walk. We got our earliest start to date (10.30am) and headed off towards our next destination.. the camp at the base of the Torres. Between Cuernos and Hosteria Los Torres there is a shortcut that saves you about an hour walking up a rather steep section. However, the clever folk at Conaf decided that instead of signposting this at the point the shortcut leaves the main path, they'd put one up about 5 minutes later, thus lots of people miss it. We would have too, if we didn't see a few folk coming the other way.

It was a pretty steep climb upto Campamento Torres, and we were relieved to chuck down our stuff at around 3.30. For the first time since the administration we saw Dave and Hayley, the rather speedy Canadian couple (they later confessed that at first they weren't sure if we were wierdos or not, so wanted to suss us out before saying hello). Having some spare time in the camp, myself, Jonas and an Austrian guy Petr decided to climb upto the mirador to see if we could see the Torres, despite the weather not being great. We couldn't, but were confident that all would be clear at sunrise tomorrow.

We had quite a nice evening at camp, as there was a couple of Israelis there who had just finished the W, and were cracking out their Jack Daniels to celebrate, but being as we all hoped to make sunrise tomorrow, it wasn't a late night.

Day 4 Campamento Los Torres - Camping Seron

I hate early mornings. At around 6ish, we set off guided by flashlight to find the path upto the mirador. At 6.15, we had yet to find our way out of camp. Not a good start.

Once we eventually found the path, you had to look for the bits of yellow reflective tape which marked the way up the trail. This should have been an easy task, considering we went up yesterday evening aswell. Convinced I knew the way, & wanting to keep moving, I bounded ahead of the others. However, about halfway up, there was a fork in the path and I was stumped. Guesswork, & a slight hint of yellow, meant I took a right. Ten minutes later, when I was scrambling over boulders, I realised that left might have been the proper way to go, but by now it was a bit too late. At the top, I heard many people talking about seeing some idiot miles off the path. That would have been me.

I did arrive at the Torres though, and they were all but clear, which was a great sight to see. Seeing the colours back down the valley was also incredible, and gave everyone hope that we might actually see the Torres turn red. And we did... well at least the bases. You see, in the period between getting there and sunrise, clouds had come to spoil the party. It was disappointing, but having heard many stories of people not seeing the Torres at all, I wasn't too downhearted.

After breakfast, we stomped down the hill between Campamento los Torres and Hosteria los Torres and started on the path towards Seron. This was it, we wee now off the W and on the backcountry. Throughout the first couple of days, I'd been keeping a check of our hpm (holas per minute), as its only friendly to say hellp to people you pass on the trail. From averaging at least 2 hpm coming down from the Torres, we passed 2 people in 4 hours going between the bottom of the valley and Seron. Quite a difference.

Seron wasn't a particularly nice campsite, the owners were rather unfriendly, and the place was plagued with mosquitoes. Therefore, it was a night of hiding in tents that ensued.

I'm going to split this one up into 2 entries, so there will be more Paine to come

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Photos

View from Mirador Pehoe
Pretty nice yeah?

They start to go red
Damn cloud!

First view of the Paine Massif
Apparently in Spanish Massif means mountain range, and not a group of people all wearing kappa.

Lago Nordsjekeld
Yes I can't spell it properly