Torres Del Paine

"The most beautiful 'jagged' mountains we've ever seen"

There are a lot of things to say about Torres Del Paine National Park. We started this trip with the thought we wouldn’t plan, we would go wherever the wind took us. Well the wind wasn’t very kind to us. In more ways than one. First thing we didn’t realize, was how far in advance you should book your trip to Torres Del Paine if you want to hike the W or the O. We weren’t able to hike the W like we wanted, but we settled for three nights in Torres Norte Refugio. We were able to do three day hikes from our Refugio and see the west side of the park.

We took a 7:30am bus from Puerto Natales and arrived at the park along with everyone else. We waited in line for over an hour to pay the hefty entrance fee and get a shuttle to our Refugio. By the time we paid and watched a video about not making fires in the park, we walked over to the shuttle bus. It was full and we weren’t sure if another one was coming anytime soon. But we had no choice. It was a 7km walk on the road and we weren’t too excited to do that. We were waiting by the side of the road when I decided I didn’t want to wait. I stood up and didn’t go as far as sticking my thumb out, but made myself look like I needed a ride from cars touring for the day. Three minutes later a family of three pulled around the corner and gestured “need a ride this way??” Peter and I jumped up and got into a little hatch back with a nice Chilean family. We ended up passing the shuttle bus that had left before us, on which people paid 7,000 pesos. It was a misfortune turned cheap adventure.

Our first hitch hiking experience was a success!

We arrived at our Refugio around 11 and waited an hour for our room to be cleaned before heading out towards Serón campsite on the O track. It was a beautiful hike past flower fields and a beautiful forest. We turned around after an hour and a half at a river that crossed he trail. We stopped and filled up our water bladder with the clean and drinkable water from the parks many glaciers. We dodged horse poop and scouted for pumas as we made our way back to our Refugio for a shower and waited until our scheduled dinner at 8:00pm! We met a couple from Plymouth, MN and New York and chatted about their vet school lives and our travel plans, then we parted and went to bed.

The next morning we set off for Mirador Las Torres. We had heard this was an 8 hour hike there and back. To date this is the “longest” hike we have ever done. We were very nervous before setting off, but couldn’t leave the park without seeing its main attraction. It started off with a steep incline on the front side of the mountain. We stopped every now and then to catch our breath but we’re generally passing people on the trail. We felt good about our pace and we’re almost enjoying the first real work out we’ve had in months.

Patagonia in general is known for being very windy, and Torres Del Paine is no exception. The whole way up the front face of the mountains we were thrown around by the wind. And Once we reached the crest, a huge gust of wind pummeled us into the rock wall. To our left there was luckily a rock face, but to our right was a straight drop to your death. We were told to stay low and if it was too windy, to just stop and wait until it passed. Yikes! We took the advice and kept pushing through the 60mph gusts and descended towards Chileno Camp, which serves as the halfway point. We stopped by a stream and had a meal bar and some water and pushed on. One of the best things about hiking here is that all the water in the streams is safe to drink, and is ice cold! Again, we stopped every now and then for photos or a break and made it to the last “checkpoint” before the base of the towers. From this point on was supposed to be a 45 minute hike, climbing over boulders and rocks. We didn’t time this last effort, but that’s probably for the best, as this was the most challenging climb we’ve ever done. Stopping to catch our breath almost every 20 feet, we slowly made our way to the top. We thought this part wouldn't be that bad, because we've scrambled over boulders and trees before and find it fun, but we sorely underestimated how steep and challenging this was. Finally, we made it. Our first glimpse of the towers was expected, but nevertheless incredible. We spent almost an hour up there and met a cute couple from England/Russia, and took photos for each other.

We made it! However, our happiness subsided when we remembered we needed to hike back. Down hill. It’s rough on the lungs going up and up for hours, but worse for us is going down hill and our knees screaming at us. We started our descent and made it to Chileno. We had a fast pace going and took a much needed break at the Refugio and ate some meat and crackers and snuck a potty break in the bathroom that you were supposed to pay for! What? Who pays to go pee? So we casually just walked back and did our business and continued our fast pace. By the time we reached our Refugio my legs were crying and we were exhausted. We showered and went early to dinner and got a reward drink. I was weirdly craving an orange Fanta and Peter got a beer. Typical. We met a family from Australia and chatted with them about our last trip, travel, and their hike to the towers the next day. We went to bed at like 8:30 that night and passes out instantly, even though there were very smelly French people in our bunk room.

The next day we took it easy and slowly hiked towards los cuernos, another Refugio about 4-6 hour hike away. We hiked for a couple hours then turned around. It was a fun laid back hike where we stopped frequently to watch the birds on the lake, watch a fox poop in front of us on the trail, and enjoy the scenery.

Our last day in the park we packed up and took a shuttle to the entrance, where we did a short hike to rocks with old drawings. The viewpoint from the end was stunning, but even cooler than the mountain views were the drawings on the cliff face made by early human settlers thousands of years ago. This was one of those things that made us feel incredible small. We called this hike the Death Valley hike because there were tons of guanaco carcasses from puma attacks. We didn’t actually see any pumas but we were on high alert! We saw a couple guanacos running and thought for sure hey were being chased. They weren’t and we were being paranoid. The views along gone way were some of our favorites and we were happy to get in one last hike before we had to leave at 2.

Overall we loved the park. Yes it was crowded. But the beauty helped us get over that. We would have loved to have hiked the “W” and more of the East side of the park, but there is always next time

We were able to go back for a day with Peter’s parents and hike to the Cuernos look out which was a great view of the front range of mountains. We stopped with Janet and looked at the “large waterfall” on the way to the look out, which was so powerful and turquoise!

We drove to hotel grey and had a very disappointing and overpriced lunch. The wait staff was terrible and our waiter was sick and had a constant runny nose. I was very disappointed with lunch and hotel grey in general. I was expecting this amazing gourmet lunch with excellent highly trained service, but got none of that.

On the bright side , we thought we had to drive another 3 hours back the way we came, but the other road seemed to be open so we took a chance and cut off an hour or so off our trip back to Puerto Natales.

You win some, you lose some!