7 days of trekking, carrying all your equipment and food, unpredictable weather from sun & rain to snow & 100km winds, undulating terrain and plagues of mice at campsites!
7 days trekking in fantastic scenery, glaciers, crystal lakes, stunning campsites and a sunrise over the most majestic of peaks! However you look at the Torres Del Paine trek its going to be an amazing adventure and it sure as hell didn’t disappoint.
We set off loaded up with over 40kg of stuff between us and looking to trek the full circuit in a day less than the recommended 9 days! We camped on site first for one evening before starting any trekking then headed off bright and early on our first proper day… the plan was to try and cover one and half days of the trek today and do the same tomorrow therefore saving a day!! This would have worked fine had we found an alleged campsite that didn’t exist! This meant that we ended up trekking 2 days in one on our very first day, bad move really! About 10 hours of trekking with our bags at their heaviest and we were feeling it. We also experienced the wind that everyone talks about today, coming over a small ledge along a beautiful lake we were nearly being blown over! Settled down for the night very tired but strangely full of laughter… well it was about all we could manage as everything hurt so much! Woke up in the morning to find that we had been robbed… by a fox! The little bugger managed to get at our food – we’d tied in a tree to stop the mice eating it, some ironic amusement there somewhere. Oh well at least day 2 is now much shorter plus our bags now weigh less thanks to Mr Fox. The 2nd days trek took us from a stunning lake up to a small glacier and a campsite at the bottom of a mountain pass, it was a cold night spent huddled round a small fire before snuggling into our sleeping bags. The 3rd day of trekking was meant to be the toughest and also coincided with my birthday. Striding up the mountain with a spring in our step, racing up the most difficult part with icy winds in our faces then reaching the top and having the most fantastic view of glacier Grey laid out below us – it was absolutely breathtaking but also bloody cold so we didn’t hang around long. Charged down the other side of the pass and stopped for lunch at a campsite. Could have stayed here the night and just chilled for the rest of the day but instead we decided to push on for another 3 hours or so to reach the main campsite at the bottom of the glacier because it sold beer! Sad I know but hey it was my birthday and you only turn 21… erm 13 times so far! Day 4 started slowly as the lure of our first shower was too much, leaving the glacier behind we headed out along the lake and round to the next pass – today wasn’t a difficult walk but the fun and adrenalin of yesterday had left us a little drained so we took our time and had plenty of biscuit stops to help regain our energy (we’d luckily managed to restock since the fox incident)! Day 5 took us up to a viewpoint along Valle Frances and back down to the campsite, this meant the joy of walking for the first time without our packs – it was so nice, boulder hopping our way up and down to the viewpoint in no time at all. Packed up the tent and donned the backpacks again before moving on round to the next campsite, on the way though we heard a girl scream just in front of us and when we got round the corner she was laying on the floor in pain! The only thing we could do was get as quickly as we could to the next campsite and get them to call for help, we later heard that they’d set a tent up around her for the evening as she broke her ankle and it was too late in the day to move her! Day 6 was a very long and weary trek up to the campsite at the very bottom of the main torres (tower peaks) of the range, we arrived mid afternoon and skipped the opportunity to climb to the mirador keeping our fingers firmly crossed that we’d still have nice weather first thing in the morning for sun rise. Day 7 started at 5:30 and involved trekking in the dark up to the mirador, it took around an hour and all you could do was try and follow someone else’s head torch in the distance! We reached the base of the torres and the sun still hadn’t started to show its face so we sat patiently and very coldly on a boulder waiting. When the sun finally started to rise the torres slowly started to light up, glowing more and more red the higher in the sky the sun got, within 30 minutes or so they we’re completely bathed in a red glow, it was truly stunning! We sat there in awe and very cold just watching them change colour before finally heading back down to the campsite and making our final trek back down to the finish.
In only 7 days (a day less than we’d anticipated) we’d covered over 130km, watched the most amazing sunset, camped by a glacier or 2, eaten far too many ‘pasta and cuppa soup’ dinners and had an amazing time doing so. We sat in the bus chatting to some friends we’d met on route (Rob & Gemma) about how cool the trek was before making our way back to the hostal, the comfort of a bed for the night and the joy of cooking proper food again not pasta and cuppa soup! We were two very happy trekkers (and slightly merry on a couple of beers!)