Chilean Patagonia

Yesterday we wrapped up 5 days of pretty intense hiking in Torres del Paine National Park, considered the 8th Natural Wonder of the World.  We covered more than 50 miles amidst wildly varied terrains, and wildly different weather conditions, including the entire “W Trek” (in red on the map above), the most iconic hiking trail in the Park.

The W Trek starts on Grey Lake which sits below the Grey Glacier, one of 48 glaciers in the southern ice field of Patagonia.  Though it is easy to track how the glacier is receding over time due to global warming (apparently nobody told the glaciers that global warming is fake news,), it’s still mighty impressive - covering 100 square miles and 300 meters thick at its deepest point!  Unfortunately, our itinerary did not leave time for ice hiking on the glacier, so I guess we’ll have to leave that for our next trip.

 The glacier is known for its dramatic calving events where large chunks of ice - up to 100 feet tall - break off and fall into the lake and eventually melt in what is colloquially known as “the iceberg cemetery.”

One of the benefits of hiking amongst melting glaciers is that there is always a ready supply of clean glacial water to refill our water bottles!

While our hiking days were long - often 9+ hours - the days here are even longer, as the sun rises at 5:30 a.m. and doesn’t set until after 10:00 p.m.!!!!  Our accommodations were as luxurious as one can find in this pretty remote area, and I think the biggest risk I’ve taken to date was climbing down from the top bunk at night in the dark. 

Our hike into the Frenchman’s Valley was quite strenuous - more than 12 miles with pretty decent elevation gain (strenuous enough that it almost had the Ironman athlete in our group down for the count - likely from dehydration).  But the views were definitely worth it!

The craziest day on the trail was our third day of the trek when the wind gusts reached close to 100 km/hr.  So many hikers were injured - literally blown off their feet by the wind - that the park rangers ended up closing the hiking trails to new hikers in the afternoon.  While a number of our group suffered some minor scrapes and bruises (and Melanie was more than a little stressed crossing a suspension bridge that was blowing like nobody’s business), not everyone was so lucky.   We witnessed one hiker who had landed face first on a very sharp rock and was being tended to until she could be evacuated by rescue personnel.  The quandary was that if you were knocked over you could either fall on the very rocky trail, or try to land on the side of the trail in the omnipresent “mother-in-law’s pillow” shrub, which as its name suggests looks very inviting but is actually quite thorny 😜 .  I stayed close behind Melanie on the trail so that I could catch her if she started to go down, but unfortunately for her the biggest gust hit me from behind and I landed on top of her!  By the way, feel free not to share this part of the adventure with my Mom….

The most strenuous day on the trek (I have a feeling I may be repeating that phrase at least a couple more times yet) was yesterday - 12.5 miles from our lodging to the lake at the base of the famous “Three Towers” - huge rock formations that seem to reach to the sky.  The upper parts of the trail were boulder-strewn.

And while the light snow, wind and cold added to the ambience, unfortunately the towers were completely shrouded by clouds…..

This morning we left Chile by bus bound for El Calafate, Argentina where our hiking adventure will continue in Los Glaciares National Park.   And while we are looking forward to all of the adventures ahead, our advice is:

ENJOY THE PRESENT!

We’ll be back with another update after the next leg of our adventure.  Wishing all of our family and friends a Merry Christmas and/or Happy Chanukah!

With Love,

Elan and Melanie

P.S.  While I am trying hard NOT to follow the news, I did happen upon this story this week in the Boston Globe.  But not to worry, we don’t go to Bolivia for another 2 weeks….