Sunlight glints mirror-like off glaciers melting between jagged peaks reaching up to penetrate the clouds. Cumulus puffs dance atop and then descend down mountain valleys. No amount of words can describe the beauty and majesty of these mountains that rise up from the grassy plains and rocky foothills to tree covered ridges before yielding to snow then ice that never melts tucked in the crevices and contours of these serrated peaks.
Early man that found his way down to these wind blown valleys and mind blowing mountains of Patagonia did not wear clothes. Hard to imagine when on a good day you can experience all four seasons but rarely does it get warmer than 60 and almost always the wind blows fiercely. When it rains before it turns to sleet, depending on your elevation, the wind can send these drops horizontally to penetrate cold to the bone.
We hiked for 5 hours in wind yesterday, of which for 4 hours, we were accompanied by rain driving fiercely into us, pelting in its attack. Our destination was Campo Italiano, a typical round trip of 5 hours once you are dropped by the catamaran that delivers you to the other side of Lago Pehoe and Refugio Paine Grande. From there we started hiking. The ascent is gentle compared to typical Patagonian ascents and runs up and down around a lake from where we could see literal swirls of water being carried upward by the wind, whirlwinding across the lake.
An American hiker did not have the proper appreciation for the wind here and unexpectedly started a fire back in 2008 that took the tree cover out, so we hiked through stands of dead timber parched white by the winds, an eerie but interesting foreground to the rugged peaks in the background. . .our destination was over the tree lined ridge that hosted Campo Italiano, said to be one of the most beautiful camps in Chile.
The clouds descended so that by 2.5 hours in we had lost all visual contact with the mountains ahead and could only see grey heavy clouds as we finally gained the trees that had been saved from the fire. At this juncture the point of going to Campo Italiano which was just beyond, for the views was mute.
The rain had penetrated all our rain gear and my cold which has stuck with me for almost 3 weeks made me fear pneumonia, so we turned around and hightailed it back down the trail for a 2 hour walk back to the catamaran landing. Needless to say we were wet and miserable but glad we had the views we had on the outset of our hike.
While we were standing in line for the boat at 5pm, having arrived on the 11am boat, we chatted with two guys, one in gym shorts, who were cold and wet and joking with each other. It turns out they had gotten up at 4am and with no packs had left the northern end of the fabled W hike and walked/ran the entire 26 miles to arrive at the catamaran landing for the 5pm boat. It was amazing, unbelievable that anyone could do that intense a hike which usually takes 4-5 days, in one day. One of them was a doctor getting ready to do his residency program and the other one worked for Disney. They have been friends since high school. We saluted their crazy achievement and watched them fall asleep immediately on the half hour trip back to the boat landing at Salto Grande, heads lolling with bone tired weariness.
We are pacing ourselves for one more hike tomorrow, estimated to be a round trip 9-10 hour day up to the far Northern part of the W where most people who have permits to camp along the W start their North to South hike. They call the 4-5 day hike the W because it traces that letter more or less around the peaks and through the mountains from north to south in Torres del Paine.
You see about 90% of the visitors hiking here are young, agile, fuerte twenty and thirty somethings. The remaining 10% are folks like us from all over the world who have the time and have earned the mountain trail hiking temperament to attempt to continue to foot one foot in front of the other, uphill over rocks and roots that test your agility, ascents that take your breathe away literally, and bone jarring scrambles. Those still agile enough to use their legs as vehicles of transport defy the creakiness of knees or the old sports injury that wants to continually talk back. Us “retirados” who refuse to retire to a rocking chair continue our headstrong tenacity upward, over, around and threw to whatever destination we aspire.
