Torres del Paine W Trek, Patagonia, Chile (Part 2 of 3)
Highs and lows in Patagonia
Torres del Paine W Trek Day 2:
Walk from Refugio Grey to Mirador Grey (4km, up 307m down 38m)
Walk to Refugio Paine Grande (14 km, up 405m down 705m)
Listen, I understood that the refugio was isolated, 11 kilometers away from the closest point of transport connection. And there were no sherpas in Torres del Paine. Still, I confess to feeling a bit upset at having instant coffee packets for breakfast. We macgyvered an oatmeal of sorts with oats, nuts and raisins, and hot milk. I made N. have a roll up of ham and cheese for some protein.
We were headed 4 km away, for a closer look at Grey Glacier.
I was tired and cranky yesterday. Today, I was in a better mood, but the trail did not get any better reviews from me. N. kept oohing-and-aahing at the first lake, at the mountain views, at the ice floes in Lago Grey, at the glacier when it finally came into view at a rocky outcropping. To me it didn’t look much different or better than the ones we had seen in elsewhere in our travels.
The most exciting things were the two suspension bridges we crossed, both scary in different ways — the first because it was the first, and the second because it was over a deeper gorge and it had a few missing planks, like the smile of a young child who was owed a lot of quarters from the tooth fairy. We kept trading places with the same hikers who passed us and whom we passed throughout this stretch.
We didn’t linger too long at the Mirador Grey — we had to make it back to the refugio in order to make it in time for lunch at 12pm. The thought of missing lunch and having to hike another 11 km back to Paine Grande put an urgency in our steps. So back in the same way we came.
We arrived at 12:16 pm, headed straight to the cafeteria, to a bowl of soup/stew with a big piece of beef, a mini corn cob, chunks of pumpkin, potatoes and rice. Although those ingredients should have added to something delicious, technique matters: as far as I could taste, they had taken a big pot, added all the ingredients and water, and boiled the concoction — and forgot to add any salt. We should have asked for the boxed lunch instead.
We took a few minutes to re-pack our bags, filled our water bottles, strapped all our junk onto our backs and took off at 1:20 pm.
What is there to describe about the rest of the day’s trek? We were retracing yesterday’s steps. After the halfway point, we were so tired we kept tumbling into rocks, which I kept thinking should have been stamped down with a few passes of a bulldozer. (In the photo below, I have no idea from where I scrounged up energy to jump…).
We arrived at the Refugio Paine Grande at 5:30 pm. Even the views of the Cuernos were not impressive enough to make us want to linger.
The host at the refugio escorted us to our room — bless his heart, it was a tiny room with just one bunk bed, so no need to share with strangers. And because we had heard that Paine Grande had the nicest showers (relatively), we didn’t let that go to waste.
Dinner, unfortunately, was again a meal that is making us think that our experience at Grey might be the rule: choice of carb (mashed pots, plain spaghetti, rice with canned mixed veggies), tasteless and unseasoned chunks chicken or beef (pass), salad (shredded cabbage, carrots, canned peas, and here, canned beets). It seemed as we could not even trust the wine — I saw a woman with a full glass, and by the end of the meal, she had left the glass untouched.
Before getting ready for bed, we sat by one of the communal rooms with a fireplace and basically tried to cook ourselves to medium well.
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Torres del Paine W Trek Day 3:
Walk from Paine Grande to Mirador Britanico (13km, up 790m down 77m)
Walk to Refugio Frances (7km, up 40m down 620m)
After a breakfast that was a repeat of yesterday’s bleak meal, we picked up our bag lunches — ginormous sandwiches, trail mix, granola/chocolate bars that felt as old/hard as rocks (no fruit, so I feared getting scurvy). We sighed and headed outside.
And lo and behold nature was trying to make up for breakfast: the sunrise over the Lago Pehoe, behind Cerro Grande and Los Cuernos, was all lavenders and pinks and oranges.
We made our way around an easy trail through the bushes, on the skirts of Lago Skottsberg, making what we thought was good progress. One of the trekking maps showed that the expected time to cover the distance between Paine Grande and Guarderia Italiano was 2.5 hours — we had made it in 2 hours and 20 mins. So far, so good.
However, upon arriving at Italiano, we saw hundreds of packs (we could leave our heavy packs here and go light to Britanico) that made us feel as if we were playing catch up. There were no bathrooms, no water. It was not the first time that we wondered what the heck park management did with all the fees paid by hikers. (Signage in the park was also unhelpful: in spots where trails split, it was nonexistent, and when we found signs, more often than not, they were in spots that didn’t need them, or they contained incorrect distances.)
The trail up to the Mirador Frances was not easy even without a full pack; it was a steady elevation gain, but at least the trail was easy to spot, fairly clear, wide in many places through forests that reminded us of the outskirts of Ghandruk during our Poon Hill trek. The closer we got to the mirador, the louder the cracks and shifts on the glacier; a certain points, we heard what could only have been small avalanches of the snow and ice giving way to all that push-and-pull.
This section of the trail did not completely hide the glacier, but the mirador was well situated and offered a close up view of the many different sections of the mountain topped by snow and ice in all nooks and crannies. At the foot of the mountain, it was easy to imagine the snow and rock ‘parfait’ being layered as avalanches brought snow and then were covered by layers of cascading eroded rock.
Beyond the mirador, the trail was a different beast altogether.
More trekking time had to be added to the estimated 3 hours it took from the Mirador Frances to the Mirador Britanico (1) because of muddy sections which required picking through carefully, (2) because of a section in which the trail was, literally, a shallow river over rocks, and (3) because of a scrambling section which required careful climbing.
When we finally reached the mirador, it was not dissimilar to a couple of open areas — before Mirador Britanico — that had provided a similar panoramic view of the mountains. (On the way down, we ran into a couple from Russia who had started their journey with us, all the way from Puerto Natales. They asked whether we had reacher Britanico and whether it was worth it. Later, they overtook us as we hiked back down, and it was clear that they had done the cost benefit analysis and found that it was not worth trekking all the way up).
We learned that a trail that was muddy and rocky and wet going up was also wet and rocky and muddy going down — and that it was worse going down. There was the added challenge of gravity — at any moment with any misstep, we could be falling down, down, down, with no opposing physical force to stop a falling hiker except hard rocks, which tend to be much stronger than mere human bones and muscle.
The descent also aggravated N.’s knee pain and by the time we got back to Italiano, he was hobbling noticeably. Needless to say, our packs were ones of the last few left under the eaves of the useless bathroom building. I spotted a sign on the wall that indicated that the trail to Refugio Frances — about 3 km away — was officially closed at 19:00 hrs. It was now 18:09.
By the time we walked and hobbled to Refugio Frances, it was getting dark and we were miserable, N. more so. I asked the young man at the check in what options we had if we needed medical care. He asked what kind. I said, my husband hurt his knee. He rummaged through his first aid kit and gave me rolled up gauze and suggested I ask other hikers for some cream. Yikes.
To make things more challenging, the grounds of the camp were at a steep incline everywhere — to the cafeteria, to the bathroom, to the tents on raised platforms and, to misery and pain for N., to what turned out to be the refugio dining room — different from the more conveniently situated “cafeteria” (coffee bar). We almost missed our scheduled 7:45 pm dinner because we first thought we were supposed to be in the cafeteria AND the person who worked there mistakenly told us we were in the right place.) We had to hobble to a very steep downhill closer to the lake — a pathway that was unlit and rocky.
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One bright spot for the day was getting to know other hikers. For dinner we were seated at a communal table and were joined by a couple of young men from Melbourne and with whom we traded our trail experiences and tips. The Chinese-Australian of the group groused that he had just come along for the ride with his friend, but that he had never done anything as difficult in his life —last night, he had got back into camp at 9 pm, scared that he was going to be eaten by wild animals.
This same dude waxed poetically about trails in Australia where, he claimed, emergency buttons were located every couple of kilometers and where rangers did the last trek of the day to make sure all hikers were off the trail safely. Wow.
Merciful gods, dinner here (managed by a different company from that running Lago Grey and Paine Grande) was a proper meal of appetizer soup, main entree of salmon and mashed potatoes, and a piece of cake for dessert. We were so hungry and surprised we forgot to take a picture! And out of sympathy for the young Aussies who were hiking east-to-west and who were yet to experience the joys of eating in Paine Grande and Grey, we didn’t tell them anything about what awaited them there.
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I thought I had been forced to get the “premium” tents because dorms were full; in actuality, dorms are non-existent in Frances, and tents were the only available accommodations. Granted these were on raised platforms and offered privacy, but for some reason I had imagined clean sleeping bags, liners and pillows.
There were two sleeping bags in the tent, all right, along with pillows — no liners in sight — but everything felt damp, sleeping bags were ratty, ripped, and with real wet spots (“Please let it be water, let it be water, let it be water…”). No matter, I suppose, since we were too exhausted to wash up, so we just slipped in fully clothed; I made sure to put up my jacket hood over my head. Sigh.
After a grim assessment of N.’s knee — the only thing we had to give him any semblance of relief was Tiger Balm — we decided the best course of action would be to hike tomorrow morning back to Paine Grande (7 kms vs. 20 kms to Refugio Central), catch the boat back to Pudeto, and the bus back to Puerto Natales.
We would tap out.
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