Torres Del Paine National Park, Chile

Hiking the W Trek was a challenging and amazing experience! For those of you unfamiliar with the area – Patagonia is listed amongst one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s full of mountains, glaciers, greenery, flowers, and clear aqua lakes (formed from the summer sun on the mountain ice). Most of the year it’s freezing here, but when the short summer comes, hikers from all over the world travel to the area to view the beauty. When we were booking our trip, we were advised that if we enjoyed hiking, the W Trek was a must, and I must agree!

While planning the trek, we had a lot of trouble figuring out how and where to sleep. Torres Del Paine (the National Park in which the trail is located) has campsites and refuges at several points along the trail, but you have to have a reservation to stay at them and open camping (camping anywhere) isn’t allowed. We happened to end up here right at peak season, so even though we were trying to book back in November, several of the sites were already full! We ended up settling for a 4 day/three night hike instead of the 5/4 we originally hoped for, and really, I think it worked out for the best!

This was my first multi day hike. After reading blogs and articles about the hike, I had decided that it was going to be a literal and figurative walk in the park since this is at a significantly lower altitude than we’ve been hiking the last two months. It turned out to be a little more difficult than I originally anticipated (mostly because of the additional weight my pack put on my not-so-great knee), but it was definitely worth the the few difficult points we encountered! Not to mention that Kirk was incredibly encouraging through it all. He was so patient when I needed to rest or go slow, and carried the large majority of our stuff in his pack so that less weight was on my knee!

Below is a map of the park with the part we hiked in red. Some individuals do the entire “O”. We didn’t quite finish the “W” since we couldn’t get a reservation on the left side of the park.

Day one: Bus from Puerto Natales to Pudeto, Ferry from Pudeto to Paine Grande, Hiking from Paine Grande to Camp Frances

Heading to the bus station! We were running late, but made it with two minutes to spare! Behind us is the neighborhood we stayed in in Puerto Natales.

Our bus made a stop between Laguna Amarga (the East end of the park) and Pudeto (where you catch the ferry to go into the park) to let us take a picture of the range. It was beautiful! The video I posted on facebook/instagram was of this site.

In Pudeto we drank a cappuccino while looking out over Lake Pehoe, then boarded a ferry to take us into Torres Del Paine.

The mountain view from the boat was beautiful! What is not pictured is the crazy wind that was spraying water all over us!

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We were thankful for our buffs. My friend lizzy warned us we would want these for our travels, and she was so right! It’s a wind shield, sun shield, scarf, or cover for dirty hair – these things are great!

Paine Grande – where we paused for lunch before beginning our hike. This was one of the sites we couldn’t get a reservation for – otherwise we would have dropped out stuff here and hiked up to see Grey Glacier, then back for the night.

Starting out!

I wish the pictures showed how windy this first leg of the hike was! At first I thought it was just me being blown over, but when Kirk took the lead I watched as he struggled to keep his balance too! It was like walking in hurricane speed winds – impossible to walk straight. I don’t know how strong they were while we were there, but I read that the gusts reach up to 110 mph! I would have been fully blown over had I not had trekking poles!

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This picture didn’t turn out near as beautiful as the scenery looked! We were walking through a white forest speckled with clovers and yellow flowers. The white trees shone bright against the grey sky and green grass!

After we arrived at Frances, Kirk cooked. We had the best meals… since we stayed our first two nights at the same camp, we only had to carry most of our meals for the first 5 miles. Kirk packed in wine and made this delicious lentil curry with couscous for the first night!

Day 2: We left our big packs at the camp and went up the Frances Valley and then back to Frances. We actually didn’t make it all the way up the valley – the amount of uphill to the first look out wore me out! Our next day was the longest hike, so we opted to save my knees for when I was wearing the big pack. Even with our turning back early, this was my favorite lookout point. Every side was beautiful from the top!

One of the many rivers we crossed!

Climbing up the rocks to the first lookout.

Those people are sitting on the first lookout point. As we were walking up I kept wondering how much better the view could get because the mountains were so beautiful even far away…but man, the closer you get, the beauty just grows!

Mountains to the right of the lookout (the green trees were so vibrant!)

Us on the lookout with the aqua lake behind us! Everywhere you turned, as far as you could see, was gorgeous!

We walked on a little past the lookout and got some pictures of the river with the snowy mountains :).

❤

It started raining on us on the way back down, but it was only a mist! We hit the weather perfect on this trip – it was really raining days before we arrived and days after we left – we only ever got misted.

Day 3:

From Camp Frances to Chileno Refuge. In Frances we rented a tent and mats, but carried our own food and sleeping bags. Chileno, on the other hand, only lets you stay for full board – although you can still opt for a tent (which we did). This was our longest day hiking, but we knew we had a hot meal waiting when we arrived!

That view 😍

Crossing rivers was always a challenge for me with my little legs! Later this day I made a few wrong steps and my shoes got soaked!

This time I made it though 🙂

Our path this day led us right down to the lake. We skipped a few rocks and stared at the glossy blue.

We were informed when we got to the park that all the water in the rivers was safe to drink. We filled our bottles up in the steams and never got sick. It was the best water we’ve had all trip! Even the stuff we filter out of the sinks still tastes like chlorine, but this had no taste!

So many rivers! We never had to worry about running out of water!

This was towards the end of our hike this day. We walked through a bog (with much difficulty and no pictures) and then through an open field before arriving at our final mountain. We went up…

And found ourselves overlooking the river we would sleep next to that evening. This part of the trail was the most dangerous. We were next to the edge the whole time and the wind was almost as gusty as it was that first day!

This is us at the campsite. We were sitting, waiting on dinner when a person we’d encountered on the trail earlier that day walked up and said, “Do you have a camera?” Kirk said yes, and then person asked if we wanted a picture of ourselves. This is how it turned out 😂. I mean, we were pretty tired 🙂

This was our tent for the evening. The one the prior two nights was a little smaller, but also on a platform. We slept terribly the first two nights, but when we opened this tent, we were delighted…

Those mats might as well have been mattresses! They were super soft, and we couldn’t feel the ground at all! This place was significantly more expensive, but we ate a four course dinner, slept the whole night, woke up to breakfast already made for us, and were sent off with a packed lunch! We would have chosen the cheaper option had we had one, but a little luxury was nice to have forced upon us!

Day 4:

Hiking Chileno Refuge to the Torres Mirador and back. Then hiking from Chileno Refuge to the welcome center, bus from welcome center to Lago Amargo, and bus from Lago Amargo to Puerto Natales.

Final day! We really lucked out with the weather. Not only did the sun shine most of the time we were there, but it was in the 70’s! We were anticipating possible freezing temperatures (which it can actually get down to in the summer there!)

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The forest we walked through on the way to and from the towers was such a vibrant green!

The first 3 kilometers of our hike this day was a pretty even up and down, but the final kilometer went straight up! We climbed rocks for a least an hour before reaching our final destination.

The picture does not show the grandness of what is before you. This peaks are huge, the glacier is melting into tons of waterfalls (which are thin, but also very tall), and the water is a glowing teal, which particularly stands out against the mountain grays. We ate lunch sitting in front of of this :).

Selfie before heading back down. We went back to Chileno, grabbed our big bags and started down the mountain we had climbed the previous day.

On our way out we passed horses taking supplies up. A Gatorade at the top of the mountain was $10! Even more than beer ($8.50).

One of our final views of the mountains.

This is the hotel on the edge of the park. You pass it walking out to the welcome center and it is gorgeous! If you aren’t up for camping, and have some money to spare, you can stay here and take day hikes in! Although – this was the most windy place we walked. It’s the only time I was actually blown of the path (and the path was a road big enough for a car – it was so strong I just couldn’t walk against it! Kirk also had to chase his hat for a while here 😂)

Overall we had a wonderful time! If you are interested in hiking the W sometime, you are welcome to ask for advice! As I mentioned, we had a lot of trouble navigating the park and refuges from so far away – and even once we got in the park, we found the information to be incorrect (for example, you’d start a trail that said it was 9 km to the end, and at the end there would be a sign saying you walked 11 km 🤷🏼‍♀️) We also joked with a lot of fellow hikers about the “hiking time” listed on the signs (5 km, 2.5 hours). You’d think – 2.5 hours for two and a half miles – no problem, but we actually had trouble getting it done that fast! At first I thought Kirk and I weren’t making the times because of my knee, but it turned out that no one we got to know on the trail was making the time. One guy said he thinks they had a race and wrote the winners time on the sign 😂. For an average hiker with a pack, you can add at least a hour to the times they list – more if it’s majority up hill.

I leave you with a picture of a statue in Puerto Natales – the city is known for the discovery of a nearby cave with the remains of a giant prehistoric sloth – I think he looks like he dancing 😉

That’s all for now! We are currently in Punta Arenas resting and relaxing. We have about two weeks left before our time in South America is over – then onto New Zealand 🙂