Walking

Torres Del Paine, Chile

At Torres del Paine I walked a lot.

The first day I showed up deathly hungover and laid down on a bed at my refugio for a few minutes before heading out for the first hike. After that it was all walking.

I spent the first evening hiking 25km out to Glacier Grey and back. By the time I got there I had sobered up. The weather was beautiful. On my return trip it was getting dark and I was the only one out on the trails.

Some of the refugios in the park do serve beers, but they're expensive and the bars close early. So I kept it dry for my entire stay.

Day 2 was a little easier - 22km to a different refugio and a different glacier. This time there was some rain, but nothing too unbearable. I finished hiking by late afternoon and had a bunch of time to kill reading at my refugio.

Day 3 was intense. I spent the morning hiking with a German Sabrina who had lost the trail at the same point I had. Most of the trails in Torres del Paine are really easy to follow, but there are a couple points where it's not so obvious.

Sabrina suggested to me that I just hike to the next refugio that day and save the torres themselves for Day 4. There was a bus back to Puerto Natales in the evening, and if I tried to cram everything into one day it would be a 36km hike.

It ended up being 37km, because I lost the trail again after Sabrina and I parted ways.

I was checked into my refugio by 3pm, and I had nothing else to do besides buy $7 beers or read a book. So I headed back out and set off for the torres.

The weather had turned awful. It rained all the way to the torres, and once I started climbing the mountain the rain turned to snow. By the time I reached the base of the torres I was in the middle of a snowstorm, and I couldn't even see the torres. Supposedly they are 3 monolithic mountains.

But I didn't much care about that. As I've blogged before, hiking for me is 90% the journey and 10% the pretty view at the top. I can live without the photo ops. I felt pretty good about having hiked almost 40km in one day.

Can't say I had any profound revelations inside the park. I was 3 days without booze and internet. I barely spoke to anyone the whole time I was there. Mostly I just walked. It was meditative.

That can be nice for a while. It's relaxing. Three days felt about right. By the time the bus picked me up on the 4th day, I was ready to return to civilization.