Torres del Paine

I survived my 6 day trek into the Patagonian wilderness (also known as Torres del Paine National Park)! We completed the classic W trek adding on an extra day to do the tail of the Q. (If that doesnt make sense to you, have no fear, a month ago it wouldnt have made sense to me either.) Essentially all the really cool things to do in the park are in the center and you can trek around them all, creating a Q shape, or you can do half of the Q creating a W shape by taking 3 day long side trips into the mountains to see glacier Gray, the French Valley, and the Towers.

We carried all of our gear with us, tent, sleeping bags, food, etc, and set up a new camp site every night.

Patagonia didnt let us down in respect to its volatile weather! Our first two days were windy… even windy for Patagonia. After the first windy but clear days, rain was added to the wind on the fourth day. We tried to hike up into the French Valley despite the weather, but could only make it up so far before a clearing left us too exposed to the strength of the weather. On the fifth day essentially all of our belongings were in varying states of damp to soaking wet. I reminded myself that at some point in the future I would again be warm and dry… though it felt very far away at the time. And of course this would be the day that the Las Torres Hotel came into our view as we were heading up to our final camp near the famed towers. It was hard to resist the urge to run toward the hotel rationalizing that even though the whole national park is named after the towers (torres) that I didn´t really have to see them, right? Well I resisted, and even made it up to the towers early the next morning to see the towers at sunrise, when the light makes the towers glow! That morning I bundled up in all of my remaining dryish clothes because it had been lightly snowing since the night before. We brought our small stove along with us on the 45 minute vertical hike from our campsite and tried to stay warm with coffee as we watched the light change on the towers. Then we headed back down to pack up our campsite and then finally all the way down to the fancy Las Torres Hotel where we would catch a transfer back to the entrance of the park. Just a few hours after shivering in the snow next to the towers I had shed my bulky wool sweater and hat for a t-shirt as we neared the bottom of the mountain!

A character building, once in a life time experience to be sure!