Torres del Paine Part II

Well, that was a bit of a break from blogging. Thought I gave up, huh? Where was I? OK, when last I did something on here, we were heading up to Campamento Britainico. We just kept going up and up forever.



We passed really close to a huge set of hanging glaciers that would regularly calve off and crash down the cliff.





Naomi wanted to quit.



It was getting close to dark and we had to make it all the way back down the hill, so we agreed to stop after 10 more minutes.

And we were there in about 7:


From up there you can see the back side of the Torres and this huge valley surrounded on all sides by cliffs.












When you are planning your hike around Torres del Paine, I recommend not camping at Campamento Italiano. Why? It is shitty.

Literally. The sewer had backed up and the whole place smelled like a sewer. Most of the campground had been closed due to the sewage, but the part that was not was conveniently infested with mosquitoes. Also the actual campground is just a bunch of dirt in trees without a view.

Just across the river though is a pretty nice bug-free spot where we had dinner:






The next day we headed towards Cuernos Camp.

I think I had a Trapper Keeper with a picture of the Cuernos in grade school or middle school. I know for sure I had a Trapper Keeper with a cool looking mountain on it, but didn't know where it was until the Jeff Barrow-No Snowshoes- Almost Die of Hypothermia-Snow Cave trip in college. It was Mt. Shuksan. Anyway, I'm sure you are happy to know that, so here are a few pictures of the hike to the Cuernos Camp.




Another reason why you should push on to Cuernos and not stop at Italiano is that the Cuernos camp is awesome. It is a nice campground with a lodge, but the setting is spectacular.





We only had time to stop at Cuernos for a little bit because we had a really long way to go. 19k with packs on is hard. The hike was really beautiful and for quite a while that made up for the constant up and down.




But after several hours of this, it was getting pretty hard.




After hiking through a windstorm and a giant rockfield,

we could see the campground.


My feet and one knee hurt worse than they ever had before and I was pretty much hobbling into camp. But it was a really really nice campground.

Naomi found some crazy yellow branches that she was hoping to make a potion from that would cause a heavy downpour the next day so we could stop hiking.



I would have been disappointed if it rained the next day because I really wanted to make it to the Torres. But, my legs were incredibly tired, and the thought of not hiking 22k the next day was pretty attractive. It didn't look like it was going to rain, anyway.


It was really nice the next morning. So we started up towards the Torres. This is the only picture we took on the way up the first super steep and pretty long section of the hike.

That's because when we stopped it was to catch our breath to avoid passing out. If you started with this hike as your first day (which is possible) you could make it up with a pack, but it would be brutal. On your 5th day, it would surely be your worst hiking day ever.

We drank all of our water in about 45 minutes. Luckily, you can drink the water in streams down there. There are no little animals to deposit giardia. There are just birds and guanacos.


A steep, but spectacular hike:

After a long time, we could see the Torres:


Here, we were just .75miles from the top of the trail.



But that 3/4 mile had 3000 feet of elevation gain. The map said it would take an hour. After about 20 minutes it looked like we'd make it in 25. We made it in about an hour. There are no pictures of that part.

But it was easily worth the effort. There were lots of people with guides up there. One of the guides said he does this all the time and that day was the clearest he had ever seen.


Pretty cool.










Team Puppy!


Guanacos hang out all over the lowland areas of the park. Orange camels:




We stayed at the same campground after the hike. The next day we headed back to Puerto Natales for a day of relaxing and then hopped on a bus to Punta Arenas.


Movie Review: Hot Fuzz 3
Tonight (in real time) I watched this movie. Isn't horrible really and there are a few funny parts. One part in particular has a really funny ridiculous graphic scene where a guy has a church tower land on him. Mostly it is just sort of boring. I stopped paying close attention and started working on this blog post.