Into Chile our first destination was the awesome Torres del Paine National Park, the location for four days trekking on the W Walk, a trek shaped like the letter W that goes up and down three separate valleys that enables you to view the Paine Massif in all its glory from many different angles.
The first day’s trek up on the West Side takes you up to where Glacier Grey meets Lago Grey. This glacier is connected to the same source as Perito Moreno, but flows into the Pacific as opposed to the Atlantic Ocean, this being the fundamental driver between which part of the Andes are in Chile as opposed to Argentina. While the glacier, at only 50 to 60 metres, is not quite as high as Perito Moreno, nevertheless it makes an impressive site, with again massive icebergs crashing off the end. The Lake itself has incredible colours and wonderful reflections of the surrounding mountains and countryside, however due to the amount of sediment in it, no life can be supported. That day’s walk was around 33 kms and went through some of the land that still shows the devastation caused by a massive forest fire by a careless tourist back in 2011, allegedly caused by him burning some toilet paper.
Day two of the trek took us up the Valley del Frances, where there are spectacular views of the Glacier Frances in Paine Grande to the West and the main Towers to the East. Periodically loud explosions were herd, which was the precursor to a large avalanche of snow breaking away from the glacier or the snow falling off the rocks of the mountainside. The colours of the rocks, especially the main towers are incredibly varied from dark browns and blacks, to the very light almost yellowy browns that reflect the varied geologies that make up the mountains. The days hike was 25 kms as we could not visit the highest pass at Campamento Britanico due to the high Patagonian winds, appropriately called Escoba de Dios or God’s Broom in English, which cause many of the trees to grow horizontally and many of the old bushes to be simply silver skeletons. Our campsite on night two was perfectly situated on the shore of Lago Nordenskjöld and the slopes of Cuerno Principal. To complete the day the campsite staff served a massive piece of slow cooked beef with sweet potato mash.
Day three was a more gentle walk along the shores of Lago Nordenskjöld, starting with undulating forest scenery, that was not affected by the 2011 fire, before moving into a drier landscape in the lee of the main mountains. The walk was a more modest 20 kms in preparation for the major hike up to the main towers.
Day four started with a gentle trek across the flood plane before climbing up to the Chilean Refuge some 90 minutes into the ascent. After the Chilean refuge the path goes through a large wood interspersed with many mountain streams delivering clean fresh mountain water to the lakes below. The climb was pretty steep moving up to 600/700 metres above sea level before moving to a fragile rocky climb for the final 200 metres to the big corrie lake underneath the three main towers. The towers were spectacularly jagged, jutting steeply out from the snow covered mountainside, and surrounded by glaciers flowing from the nearby mountains.
The way down was pretty slow, a combination of pressure on the knees that come with steep descents together with the continual flow of trekkers climbing the mountain. This was bay far the busiest part of the W Walk, as most visitors do not have the steamier to do the full four day long trek. Day four was 28 kms, making a total of distance walked over the four day of 106 kms as recorded by my FitBit, on one of South America’s premier treks.
Date: 14/03/2018 to 17/03/2018