Torres del Paine - Day Seven

The original plan was to cover the 19 kilometer stretch from Seron to Refugio Dickson. But we were now warriors and presumed that a 19 kilometer stretch rated as six hours had to be almost entirely flat. We'd play it by ear, if we made good time, we'd stop at Dickson for lunch and then get to Los Perros so we could have an extra day incase weather turned poor on the Pass.





The weather was incredible and the vistas a more subtle shade of stunning. With the sun bouncing off of everything it was impossible not to gawk at the shadows racing over the valley or the wind whipping across the ponds and daises below.





We can't be quite sure where, because our map was so poor, but about two hours from Refugio Dickson, we paused along the path. We both had heard a bizarre noise, but didn't speak. I thought a puma had gotten ahold of a boar. I didn't even know if there were wild boar in the park, but to me that is the sound I heard and so I became defensive. My senses hightened, I scanned the thicket. Nothing. We waited in silence, exchanging bemused glances.

Then more sound, something rustling through the brush, coming towards us. It was impossible to tell whether the movement was erratic fumbling or blind rage. I raised my trekking polls towards what I thought to be the origin of the sound. Moments later, no more than twenty yards directly infront of me, what appeared to be a llama appeared tromping through the grass, bleating aimlessly, the most unusual sound.

I would later find out it was a guanaco, but at the time I only knew it resembled a llama and that llamas were generally ill-tempered, they spit. Who knew what a wild llama, bellowing in this unnatural way, would do..

But it was not concerned with us at all. We stood there frozen as it lept, bleated, lept and strode, paused and bleated, then galloped across our path and down the valley.

Kaitlin and I laughed, wide-eyed and flush.



We destroyed the trail. We were champs. We covered the 19 kilometers in around four hours, but we weren't counting. We took off our shoes at Refugio Dickson and watched as two gauchos drove a train of horses carrying empty supply contains back to their stable.

We had seen these men leading day hikers on horseback up to see the Torres. I had scoffed at them then - they really played the part! And now I was feeling a bit ashamed. On the backside of the park there was no one to perform for. These guys were bounding through the forest leading ten beasts down loose and mucky slopes. They controlled them with calculated yells and cracks of the whip.

I felt like we were back in San Telmo on Museum Night, when the local youth poured in from the streets to dance to folk music. It felt real.



We had rested at Dickson for quite some time as more circuit goers began to arrive. Waheed from Portland, Jerry and Bethany from Seattle. They marveled at our pace and heads inflated. We strutted into the forest, self-assured.

Over the next four hours we would be humbled greatly. Weakened by our dependence on the map and our unfamiliarity with the terrain - weakened further by a weather system that moved in. We should have made it to camp by now. The sky was grey, we were rising in elevation, it was colder and starting to turn wet. We passed the bridge on the map, we should have been there already.

There were two bridges on the map and we crossed five. There was no way to tell just how far we were from Campamento Los Perros. We hadn't seen a single soul. The terrain turned to rock. Sleet was now coming at us sideways. We had every layer on and were starting to soak through with cold.

We kept pushing though and after two more mounds of rubble, I saw two figures in the distance. These lunatics were leaving Los Perros on their way to Dickson in the middle of what, for me, was armageddon. But I was grateful for their lunacy. They told us we were indeed on the right course, that camp wasn't much further, don't worry.



We stumbled into camp, what could have been an outpost on Mars or Tibet or post-apocalyptic anywhere. Everything was wet. People scuttled from their tents to this green smoking hut.

We set up everything, settled with the park ranger, bought two chocolate bars, and made our way to the hut. We were in the bar scene in Star Wars, minus the funky space music. The room was full of all sorts of people - none of them clean. We made our way to the wood stove and choked ourselves with chocolate. Nearly every other cooking shelter in the park had been a cramped three walled structure - this was luxury!

We stayed there till our bones smelled like smoke - chatting with those that would tackle the Pass the next day and those who had already made it. Sharing information and hopeful expressions about the weather. Grateful to sit and be warm, but exhausted from the hardest day of the trip - we collapsed in our bags with the promise of an early morning and hope for good weather.

Torres del Paine - Day Six

I was having apprehensions about continuing. Everyone was leaving. Rob and Blanche had left the day before. Antti and Laura were leaving today. All with the promise of hot food and warm beds.

The forcast for us was the same as the five days prior. Uncertainty. We had heard from some climbers at Campamento Torres that the weather report for the next four days was stellar, that three days out the weather reports tended to be accurate. I played the skeptic though, falling into the horror stories we had heard about the tempermental nature of the Paine Pass.

Not to mention, Kaitlin's cough had flared up and I didn't want to turn our backs on the quickest exit incase things really got bad. We made a deal. If she slept through the night, we'd continue on..

I stirred in the daylight. Could have been six or nine in the morning. I stirred - Kaitlin stirred. I sat up and she coughed a liquid loose cough, but she had made it through the night..and that was the deal.

So we ate our last meal with Antti and Laura and accompanied them from Chileno to Hosteria Torres. We marveled at the truly clean toilets inside and twiddled our thumbs a bit before exchanging hugs and leaving them with the promise that if we didn't meet up with them in Peru - we'd see them in either Berkeley or Tampere.





Once we got away from the park entrance at Hosteria Torres - everything changed.

The people were gone and even the mountains were gone. For the first time since we had arrived we couldn't see the mountains for more than an hour. The land turned from Jurassic Park to Montana and we enjoyed the easy introduction into the backside of the park.

It was still a six hour trek and nearly all flat on the last half. Though our packs were lighter, shear distance wears at your bones. Muscles rebuild, bones just get sore. But we had left camp early and so we arrived at the immaculate Campamento Seron early. The sun was out and the wind was finally dead. We could take off our shoes and lay in the sun!

Bliss, just like pain, is only temporary in Torres del Paine. We would have soaked in the sun till midnight if we could, but the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up and we hid in our tent for most of the evening rubbing eachothers sore spots.

Around 9pm we emerged from our shell to prepare dinner - just one problem...

I had left the stove pump at Chileno. For five minutes we stood there staring at each other - trying to read what the other was thinking. We couldn't go back for it. It would waste a day, it wouldn't even be there, we'd lose two days of food and forfeit the backside of the park. No Glacier Grey.

Screw it.

We had been so fortunate thus far, we were hot, the odds of someone having our same stove were quite good - but we couldn't be sure because everyone had gone to bed. The attendent was nice enough to provide us with some hot water that made our soup warm enough to put our minds at ease and sleep away our worries.

A problem for tomorrow!

Torres del Paine - Day Five

This night, Kaitlin had another poor night with the coughing. With her now medicated, we blamed it on the cold air - never-the-less it would keep her from making the march to sunrise at the Torres.

So the five of us shivered our way out of camp as snow dribbled infront of our faces in the singular beam of light that was our headlamps. Once it gets dark down here - it gets dark.



The hike up to the base of the Torres was not exceedingly difficult despite being nearly straight vertical in some areas and the white blanket that made the path a wash at times. Still, I felt as if we were in some kind of danger. A combination of having no inkling as to what lay before us, having very little water, carrying what might be access weight in a scramble, and the impending sunrise.

..silly.



Here, I have made it to the base viewing area and the sunrise has just begun to show through the valley. We were early, perhaps the second or third group of people there.



After ten or fifteen minutes, the Torres themselves were looking fairly bleak. We had no idea when things should happen - how fast they would happen - or what exactly was even supposed...



However, as the minutes passed, we became aware of one concrete fact. We were too early. We could have left nearly an hour later than we did, forgone the standing in the snow and darkness, and not have missed a thing. Blanche and Laura turned back - convinced what, if anything, happened - was not worth losing their toes. I was enthralled...





More sun began to show in the sky, the snow ended, and the shroud of stagnant cloud began to burn away from the face of the Torres. The rock face to the right of the towers visibily changed as the sun crept over its surface - this gave us some ideas and kept us confident in the necessity of our presence.



Now more than two hours had passed since we first arrived. The sun was obscured from the Torres by a ridge of rock. We told ourselves it just needed to eclipse the ridge and that if the clouds held off we would be amazed by this natural phenomenon.

But the clouds didn't hold off. A smattering of rogue clouds just thick enough to disperse the suns rays kept bolting over the towers and into the path of the sun's light. As we began to debate the legitimacy of staying and waiting, we overheard a group of locals discussing the morning.

The girl became conscious that people were listening in and turned our way:

"You really need to be here in February. The sun lines up with that valley and hits the Torres dead on.."

OH! ..how silly of us! We hadn't come too early. Our nearly (but not quite) perfect weather conditions were not the problem either.. We were an entire month too early!

We tucked tale and sprinted down the trail, skidding here and there on the slushy snow as day hikers began to make their way towards the Torres. Antti and I got in our tents to catch a few hours of sleep before we moved camp away from the cold of elevation down to Refugio Chileno. For Rob and Blanche it was time to pack up camp and begin the four-five hour trek out of the park.

We woke up later that day and Rob had left his green curry paste for us, beautiful man! Knowing that our soup and polenta for the rest of the trip would have at least some flavor and relieve our sinuses, we strolled casually down to Chileno, set up camp, and hunkered down in the Refugio with a book, some food, and no intention of stepping outside unless absolutely necessary.

We succeeded in this. Between the two couples left, we held our table all day. Reading some, but mostly planning future trips: Antti and Laura coming to the States to crash in our tiny fictional apartment in Berkeley - Kaitlin and I coming to Finland to ride bikes along the hills of Tampere and maybe the guys would take a few weeks to wander around the soccer shrines of Europe and maybe we'd go to Bosnia and Poland and certainly Sweden and Norway and probably Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania - one or all.

We shared fake Pringles and talked about the Holidays away from home. We talked about our families and I wished that I could speak Finnish so I could pry a little less awkwardly. I wasn't sure if we were just poor at asking questions or if we answered their's too thoroughly. The only solution could be that we exchange lives for some time. They come to our country and see how and why we live. We come to theirs and do the same - meet the parents.

It's a thought that keeps me smiling. When the hostel is flooding with new people and you keep asking the same questions and answering the same questions - it helps me, of course to think of my family and friends in the States, but also to think of the friends I have made while traveling - the ones that could be my neighbor anywhere.

Torres del Paine - Day Four

Day four was easily the hardest day thus far - perhaps why only one picture exists.

Every time we set out, we knew next to nothing about what we would encounter. Our map only gave elevation lines every 250meters. We left camp knowing we had over six hours on our plate - that it would be a rough one. But weather had been nearly perfect up to this point, so spirits were still high.



On the trail, I became a machine. After getting over the fatigue of the first two days - I was more or less fit. A hill meant nothing - just the left foot and then the right. Only processing where the best footing would be. Designate. Act.

So I was leaving everyone behind. Pushing the pace. After about an hour of steady incline, the angle growing increasingly intense - I was getting angry. I crept further into my head, pounding my trekking poles into the soil. The steady drizzle only served as a further annoyance. After beating one hill, I would make the mistake of looking up and curse the next hill. They kept coming and I kept cursing and kept pounding my poles.

Finally, from somewhere below, "Jack! A break! Please!" - Antti had rescued us from me.

From this point, I hopped in the back of the train. The trail was more or less a slugfest till we reached Refugio Chileno. We rested for a while here and I observed the day hikers and platinum hikers with disdain. This was our hardest day of trekking, so I could now afford to be jaded.

We finished off our weary bodies with another hour and a half to Campamento Torres. We knew as we climbed up and up and drizzle turned into snow, it would be a cold night. We arrived and everyone set up camp, ate, and got into their sacks as soon as possible. In a few hours we would attempt to make the forty-five minute hike to hopefully see the Torres made into three bright red pillars by the sunrise.

Torres del Paine - Day Three

Kaitlin was naturally torn between the desire to continue on, not wanting to abandon the trek so soon and not wanting to jeopardize her health in a fairly isolated place.

We struck a deal. She would ask the park ranger if he had antibiotics. If he didn't, perhaps we could just skip Valley Frances and head toward Refugio Los Cuernos if there were a doctor there.

The park ranger didn't have any medicine and there wasn't a doctor in the entire park. We were completely on our own.

By this time Antti and Laura were up and while Kaitlin started breakfast, I explained the situation. We didn't want to risk it getting worse. She had taken the cold medicine we had brought and it didn't work - it could only be bacterial.

Antti, "Ah, but Laura has antibiotics! So there is no problem."

The word "prodigious" flashed through my brain.

We were saved by the unforseen third option. And then I was a bit spooked. How fortunate could we be, meeting Rob and Blanche at Administration - Rob and Blanche meeting Antti and Laura at Pehoe - Antti and Laura having antibiotics...

But, things like this happen...



So, the plan was then that we would all leave our tents at Italiano. We would hike up with only our lunches to Campamento Britanico and then another twenty minutes to the outlook of Valley Frances.









The trek was rather easy on the way up. We bounced from boulder to boulder - led on by the ridiculous geology before us. Becoming, very simply, that quintessential experience that defies words, pictures, videos, etc...

We arrived in the hollow of what seemed like an advancing wall of stone, snow, and cloud. You couldn't stare at one spot too long for fear that you would be engulfed by the looming peaks in your periphery. I kept smiling and hated myself when I spoke. It was so quiet there and it should only be quiet.

It is a place that I would go back to at any time in my life and I would stay there. But we eventually left. We had to make our way down, pack up camp, and get to the next camp before sundown.





From Italiano we skimmed across Lago Nordenskjold again, but this time the trek took us down to the denim colored pebble beach and up into the hills where I could see just enough of everything to feel like I was stealing or special.

I didn't want to think the things we were seeing had anything to do with Christmas, but I couldn't help it. It was a gift to be here. It was a different contentment. I justified being happy without my family, by vowing that I would somehow share some substantial percentage of my feeling in that moment - with them.



That night we made dinner outside of the Refugio. The let us eat inside. We stayed till late. Sharing box wine and salami and sweets. We indulged as best we could. It felt good to be warm and in good company, though it was impossible to ignore the staff and structure of the room..and to know that our families were not in the next room.

My belly full of wine and pasta and deli meat and chocolate, I smirked at the intensity of my happiness and slept deep and hard.

Torres del Paine - Day Two

The night before we (Kaitlin, Blanche, Rob, and I) had discussed our plans. Since we would ultimately make our way up to Glacier Grey, we would only tackle the trail to Campamento Italiano. Since Rob and Blanche only had time for the "W" (Glacier Grey to the French Valley to the Torres) they would hike to Glacier Grey and back early in the day, but make it to Italiano for camp.

We had told Rob and Blanche about Antti and Laura, about the peculiarity of Finns (in particular Finnish) that made them, in many ways, more interesting than any Scandinavians we had encountered. Before we parted ways in the morning, I jokingly (again) told Rob that if he saw a blonde couple speaking softly - if he "saw any Finns" to tell them Jack and Kaitlin would be waiting for them at Italiano...



So Kaitlin and I set out, to get in early and relax. Kaitlin had been coughing quiet heavily - so we were thinking hit it hard, then rest.

The path from Refugio Pehoe east was rather tame as we snaked through the foothills between Glacier Frances and Lago Skottsberg. My body felt good, the views were incredible, dynamic peaks and milky aquamarine below. Kaitlin was steady, but clearly nowhere near fit. We stopped periodically for her to clear her throat, to blow her nose, as her cough got deeper and deeper.



Just as fatigue began to creep into my calves we caught sight of a river, a bridge, and campers milling about on the other side.







Here Kaitlin captured one of my favorite moments of the nine days. With our tents up and stomaches full of peanuts and raisins we had nothing but time to kill. Scanning the rocks along the river, I found what I suspected and confirmed to be two rocks molded by time into the perfect lazy seat for watching snow pack slip down the south face of Glacier Frances.

I'm not sure how long I sat out there. Hours? Eventually, I went to get water upstream from camp and when I came back - who is strolling slowly into camp, but Rob and Blanche. I go to meet them and ask them how their trek went. Everything was great, but the trek was long, and... we found the Finns!

Apparently, after hiking up to Glacier Grey, Rob and Blanche had returned to Refugio Pehoe for a meal. Before they left, they saw a young, blonde couple walk into camp. Rob eavesdropped on the almost murmuring couple - now convinced. And in this moment, proved why I had a good feeling about him from the beginning. Rather than shrugging it off and psyching himself out. He approached the couple and asked if they were from Finland (..yes..), did they know Jack and Kaitlin (YES! We're worried about them!), and told them that we'd all meet up at Italiano.

Kaitlin and I were electric. It worked!

We waited impatiently for another two hours. We started to worry. The sun doesn't set until 10:30-11pm here, but it was getting colder and dimmer. We decided to set out just a little way down the trail to see if we could see Antti and Laura approaching.

We made it across the bridge and around the first bend..and who was there infront of me, but a flushed and smiling Laura with Antti just behind.



I'm horrible with candid photos. It's hit or miss as a general rule and you take what you can get. What mattered was that we had managed to coordinate a fairly complicated rendezvous with friends we had made over a thousand miles away - both pairs at the mercy of pay-as-you-go internet cafes and tens of hours on buses that are chronically late. And none of that mattered now, because we made it work.

I must have been smiling the rest of the evening, smiling in my sleep. That is until Kaitlin woke me up in the middle of the night. Her cough had weight, but was also violently staccato - like a dent popped out of a sheet of metal. She said she couldn't breathe.

Torres del Paine - Day One

"Ode to the Backpack" - I had been ruing the title of this blog lately. It's cliche. It's ambiguous. I teetered on the brink of being perceived as a poser, a lemming, naive.. and now.. there is no intimidation, no pretention - the Paine took it from me.

I may still know comparatively little about the life of a backpacker, about mountaineering, about outdoor subsistence, but in the park - for myself - I became a warrior, an animal. Two days removed, I still feel it in my stride as I fight the sporadic winds that crash through the concrete lanes of Puerto Natales. I might as well be charging across the foothills north of Lago Nordenskjold. But I'm getting ahead of myself...


This is a rather poor facsimile of Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. It is surprisingly difficult to find a current and/or accurate trail map for the park online. Even the map you receive upon entering is filled with errors...

Day One

There are two roads to Torres del Paine. One is a relatively "new" dirt road reserved for buses. The other is an older and slightly more uncomfortable (but half the distance) dirt road reserved for cars.

Entry to Torres del Paine is like entrance to Peninsula Valdez or Glacier NP. The admission fee is incredibly inflated to be dispersed amongst the other national parks with less traffic. Between transportation and entrance into the park - you're already looking at over fifty US dollars.

Since we're feeling frisky and confident, we let the hostel staff plant the seed in our minds that there are "alternative" methods of travel. So we decided on hitchhiking. Since there are only two roads leading out of town..and one of them goes straight to the park..and there are two of us.. we figured the odds of catching a ride were better than average.. and the odds of that would-be ride being a psycho murderer were slim.

We were right on both fronts!

We left early in the morning and walked for over an hour as locals made various hand gestures (pointing left, pointing right, horizontal circular motions, finger wagging, the "wait a minute" frontal index finger, and so on...), that we can only assume meant, "Sorry friend, we're just going around the corner..." - but each one made a different signal..and we crossed the road multiple times, uncertain which side of the road was customary for hitching and unsure whether they hated us - if it even mattered at all.

After about an hour with no success, we thumbed a blue two-axel flatbed lorry charging over the hill we had just wound around while staring at the horses in the field - staring at us. The lorry slowed and settled about twenty yards infront of us. I'm not even sure what was said, I was so excited, skipping under my nearly fifty pound pack.

I did my best impression of an Italian footballer pleading for a penalty as I prayed to the man and the boy that smiled as we slung our packs onto the bed and jumped onto the wood planks. They were just going to Milodon Cave, where ever that was, but it was closer to the park and we didn't have to walk! Success!

The feeling as we sat with our backs to the cab and watched field after field come over our shoulder - was freedom. It was warm milk or coffee that you roll around your mouth, tasting, carelessly - then swallow.

Within fifteen minutes we felt the throttle kickin and the steady application of the brakes. We pulled over just as the road forked three ways - one way Milodon Cave, one way another 170 kilometers on the bus route to the park, and the car route only 66 kilometers to safety.

Everyone was beaming, none more so than the adolescent boy in the passenger seat of the cab, as we hoisted our packs and made our way across the empty highway to the grey gravel road that led into the vista of mountains.



We walked this road for no more than twenty minutes, surprised by the amount of traffic, but not so surprised that most vehicles were freshly washed vans shuttling people that pay - with no room for us. We kept our thumbs out though, until they fell upon a small white Fiat with two passengers. It slowed. It stopped. Everyone spoke a sentence of Spanish..and then we all realized we were tourists and reverted to English.

We found that the couple, from Rome, were on a delayed honeymoon. The husband works for Pfizer and the wife an Italian equivalent of Mary Kay. We chatted about the usual topics, studies, work, football, pulled over and took pictures for them. We eventually arrived at the park entrance and I still was uncertain if we had taken them out of their way or if we were even in the right place. Disoriented and still processing that our plan had worked.



After paying our entrance fee, we were dropped at "Administration" the first stop for cars coming into the park and the last stop for buses. From here we tried to pass the couple money for gas (more than a bus ticket would have cost), but they refused - only asking that we have a picture with them.

From this point, the day became a bit of a whirlwind. As the Italian couple pulled away, I looked over my shoulder and noticed people filing off of a bus.
The night before we had discussed our plans over dinner with a couple traveling south from Santiago - she originally from Melbourne and he from England. We wished each other well, I threw out an empty, "maybe we'll see you around the park."
And that is exactly who I saw. We had beat their bus by a matter of seconds. We stood in the parking lot and recognized that we would now have to walk together.



Our original goal for the day was to walk from Administration to Pehoe and then on to Refugio Grey, in order to meet up with Antti and Laura (our Finnish friends from Buenos Aires). We set out on the mostly flat, but long trail, and the foothills inched closer as we paired off and I rattled on and on to Rob (the very jovial and polite gentlemen from Sheffield) about things I hadn't talked about in a while.

At this time, I was concerned with conserving my camera's battery life and perhaps carrying some pretentions about my "mental camera" - needless to say, no pictures exist of our introductory hike into the heart of the park.

No matter, what need be known is that we had begun what would prove to be a very fortuitous partnership and though our hearts sank a little as we realized we were unfit to carry on another four hours to Refugio Grey - we were in good company, the weather was pristine, and our views invincible.



Arriving in Pehoe, we threw down our packs, set up our tent, and collapsed under its canopy. Bones aching, muscles burning, I contemplated what we had gotten ourselves into. The physical challenge being more than anything I had encountered in months, but the promise of commiseration, managed equilibrium and got me up - intent on feeding my face before sleep, sleep, sleep.

We ate and hobbled back to our respective tents. Tomorrow would be a short day for us. Only two hours to Campamento Italiano. I slept greedily, knowing the punishment had just begun and could resume at any moment.