Much Like Pimpin', Trekkin' Ain't Easy

On Saturday, we went to a talk about trekking through Torres del Paine. It’s a national park here in Chile. We thought there might be some day trips that we could take to see glaciers or something. About 10 minutes into the talk, I realized that the only way we were going to see anything cool was to spend a lot of money on a paid tour or to go on a camping trip. Knowing that there were better glaciers to be seen in upcoming towns on our trip, I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money to see these. And, knowing that Stefani hated camping, I quit paying attention to the guy almost right off the bat. To my surprise, the first thing Stef asked me after the talk was, “Do you want to do that five day thing on the ‘W’?” This was shocking to me, but a pleasant surprise. We went to the talk again on Sunday to take better notes.

Monday – Day 1.

We caught the bus from Puerto Natales to Torres del Paine at 7:30 am. After a two hour bus ride, an hour wait for a ferry and a short trip across a long lake we were ready to begin our voyage.

Usually, I think of solitude when I think of camping out in the middle of the wilderness. The ‘W’ at Torres del Paine was anything but. On the first day we passed around 40 people. I kind of lost track somewhere in the 20’s. Most of the people we saw only briefly, though, as we passed on the long, long trail to our campsite. The pack I carried weighed around 40 pounds and we went 15 km (That’s 9 miles to you and me Russ) in about five hours. I seriously thought I wasn’t going to make it towards the end of the first day. It seemed like we would never stop going uphill. I have to admit that Stef was a champ that day and totally kicked my butt going up the mountain. I guess I should have taken some spin classes with her because my legs were dead the last hundred meters up that mountain.

We set up camp, ate some delicious instant pasta alfredo with a mix of boxed vegetables and then went to sit and watch the glacier during sunset. The glacier was quite magnificent with blue and white jagged rows going back for several miles. We had hoped to see a chunk break off, but it didn’t happen before it got dark, so we went back to our tent to catch some sleep before starting off the next day. About 10 minutes after we left the glacier we heard a few thunderous crashes that we knew were chunks falling off of the glacier. Icebergs floating in front of the glacier the next day served as evidence of the scene we had missed the previous night.

Tuesday – Day 2.

After 15 km the first day, we stepped it up to over 22 on the second day. The pack was a little lighter, but my legs and back were a lot more tired. Never-the-less, we made better time the second day and set up camp with hopes of staying there for two nights with a day of rest before our next long hike. We hung out with our new Scandinavian friends, drank a little bit of crappy box wine and took a muscle relaxer and/or pain killer to help with the soreness/back-spasms/knee problems/shoulder problems that tend to occur when trying to hike over and around mountains with no experience.

Wednesday – Day 3.

After sleeping for around eleven hours and taking our time we decided to pack up and head on down the trail to a campsite a little closer to our final destination. It was a pay site, but we felt it would be best to cut the length of our hike down for the next day. It was a good choice to head down to the pay site. There was no way we could have gone any further than we did. At this point we were both feeling the burn of carrying too much crap over tough terrain, but at least our clothes smelled like the inside of a locker room at the end of a long season. We actually cheated on the third day, because the pay site had had bathrooms with showers and we partook.

Thursday – Day 4.

Once we put our stinky clothes back on, the showers we had taken the night before faded into non-existence. We were immediately hit with an 800 meter climb that was as steep as anything we had come across. We were on our way to Camp Torres, where we would spend the night before climbing to a lookout point before sunrise for the climatic conclusion of our trek. Watching the sunrise onto the Towers was supposed to be incredible. We decided to hike up to the lookout point in the daylight before we attempted it in darkness. It was a difficult climb and Stef had enough about halfway up. I continued on my own and finally made it to the lookout. I was rewarded with a view of the the towers, a glacier and some waterfalls flowing into a lake over 2000 feet above sea-level. The descent, like the climb, was not easy. There were loose rocks and me being tired and sloppy didn’t help.

We ate our last instant pasta dinner and went to sleep knowing that we were almost done. We heard one mistaken trekker and several mice throughout the night trying to get into our tent/backpacks. This attempted intrusion seemed to be amplified by the side-effects from the combination of painkillers and relatively empty stomachs.

Friday – Day 5, The last day.

I woke up at 5:30 and saw more stars than I had seen in many probably ten years. The hike up to the lookout point was a lot different then it was in the daytime. I completely missed the marked route, but got up there without too much trouble. I hung out and watched the sunrise, took some pictures and then headed back down the mountain. Nobody else was leaving, but it was cold, I had to go number one (and halfway down the mountain it was numero dos) and it was light out, so I didn’t think that the show was going to get any better. I was about ten minutes down the mountain when I passed someone looking up at the towers that exclaimed, “wow!” I turned to look back at the towers and saw them glowing an incredible orange. I guess I should have waited a little longer. We had perfect weather for four days and even got a perfect view for the sunrise at the towers. How could I miss the best part. Oh well, I just made my way down the mountain. Long story short, I got back and had no regrets about missing the after-sunrise effect because I made it to the bathroom in time with about two seconds to spare. We broke camp and booked down to our bus stop and wound up waiting for a few hours, had some of the best, most expensive beers we had ever had and then headed back to Puerto Natales.