Torres Del Paine National Park is the most famous and visited national park in Chile. it is home to the O trek and the W trek. The O does a complete circuit around the mountains while the W trek follows the bottom and goes up two canyons for different view points. The most famous being the Torres.
The logistics of this hike are a bit cumbersome. You have to reserve campsites months in advance and there are two main booking company’s to go through that own the prospective campsites. The above campsites in blue cost about $12/person to set up your own tent, while the campsites in green charge $50/person. We had originally planned on doing the entire O trek but only staying at the cheaper campsites as we thought it was crazy to spend $100 to pitch our tent. This would mean we would have a couple days around 20 miles but we preferred that to spending so much money on a campsite.
However, days before we were to leave, 5 tourists tragically lost their lives on the John Gardner pass on the O trek. With wind speeds of 120 mph and a white out blizzard condition, things turned bad quickly. I guess there were no rangers stopping people from going up the pass that day and one survivor reportedly said that a ranger told them it was safe to proceed.
They shut down the back half of the O trek while the incident is under investigation so we had to change our itinerary to doing the W trek.
We stayed in Puerto Natales the night before and took a bus into the park at 6am. We got there at about 8:30 and took another shuttle to our starting point around Las Torres (see above map). The star attraction is the Torres there at the beginning but we realized that might be too big of a day because we had to get to Paine Grande (far left) for the night. We had underestimated how long that would take us and found out the night before that to go up and back on the trail to the Torres would take 5/6 hours and then we’d still have 9 hours of hiking to go to get to Paine Grande.
We decided we would skip the Torres and maybe find a way to get back there before we left. We hiked 16 miles that day over very rocky terrain, it ended up taking us 9 hours. The whole trail basically was right next to an enormous sky blue glacier lake on the left and giant mountains on the right. There were a lot of blooming red flowers that provided a sharp contrast in the colors. Upon getting close to our campsite there were huge gusts of wind around 40 mph that would knock us off balance.
It was a long day but eventually we arrived at Paine Grande campsite. I was really excited for my dinner, I was going to start with a squash soup base, cook some cous cous and then add in mashed potatoes. However, during my cooking process a piece of plastic fell in unnoticed and I burnt it and it spread to all of my food. I had to throw it all away. Luckily, I had a little more cous cous but when I went to cook it again I realized I hadn’t cleaned out my pot good enough and there were still shards of plastic mixed within it. I had to throw it all away once again, and was officially out of my cous cous. It was tragic but fortunately I had brought some extra food.
After that whole fiasco we set up our tent. The night before we had gotten 2 hours of sleep because the wind was so intense that our tent was constantly flapping in the wind. Paine Grande is notorious for being the most windy campsite on the trek so we were in for another rough night. I ended up using my noise canceling headphones and Nick abandoned the tent in the middle of the night and went and slept outside next to the dining hall. The wind had knocked our poles over a couple times, tearing some small holes in the mesh and the tent.
The next morning we had coffee and breakfast then set out to hike another 16 miles. This time we would leave Paine Grande and go up to the Británico lookout then return to Paine Grande for the night. We repeated the last 5/6 miles the headed up the side trail towards the Frances Glacier Lookout and the Británico Lookout. It was steadily uphill from there. Halfway up we had the Mirador Francis, a lookout to this huge beautiful mountain and glacier. We then continued up the valley to incredible 360 Mountain View’s.
We had our peanut butter and jelly tortillas up there the began the 8 mile journey back to Paine Grande. I was once again excited for dinner, this time I would make my favorite, buttered noodles. It had been a long, hard day and I wanted some comfort. I made a little bit extra to treat myself, yet somehow, once again a piece of plastic fell in and ruined my entire dinner. I felt like such a rookie. In all my hiking and camping this had never happened yet somehow it happened three times in a row. Instead of my buttered noodles I carefully made a couple packets of ramen, but separately in case something bad happened.
After dinner we decided we would just cowboy camp to not risk ruining our tent further and to be able to sleep decently. We found a spot tucked away among all the nice tents (you can pay extra to just rent an already set up tent). We slept peacefully that night and were grateful that it didn’t rain.
The next morning we set off to Grey Glacier and campsite. It was only about a 6/7 mile day and halfway there we got our first view of Grey Glacier. I had seen glaciers on mountains before but this was my first glacier over a lake. It was incredible how large it was. It had been receding over the years and little chunks still remained in the lake. We got closer and closer and arrived at the campsite around 11/12, just before it really started raining.
We waited out the rain a bit, had our lunch, and played some cards. Once it let up a bit we set up our tent and then went to the viewpoint of the glacier. It was so cool to be hiking on the rock that the glacier carved out so many years ago, you could see the cracks and curves in the rock of when the glacier slowly moved over it. I also loved seeing the little floating icebergs, remnants of the once all encompassing glacier floating in the lake!
The following day we hiked back to Paine Grande, which took about 2/3 hours.Then instead of doing the entire first day again, which would be around 9 hours, we hiked out a different way that was about 5 hours of hiking. This hike led us around a lake and then through some flat grassy fields. We would then take a shuttle back to the beginning and try to camp somewhere near the base of the Torres so we could do it then next morning. We had a couple hours until the shuttle so we tried hitch hiking. The first car gave us a ride partially down the road to this really beautiful hotel on this island.
I thought it was also a shuttle spot so worst case we’d still get on the shuttle but could try hitching before then. It was a bad spot to hitch hike though as it was at the bottom of a hill. We decided to go on the fancy island and we bought and shared a fancy brownie then went back to try to hitch hike. We were unsuccessful and then I realized we were at the wrong spot for the shuttle. Luckily the bus still stopped for us on its way. We then had to wait an hour at a different shuttle spot then go back to the beginning. Then we had to pay another shuttle to take us back to the base of the Torres where we camped for the night. All in all had we took the long hike around, we would have arrived back at the same time and have saved $10 ($16 if you include the brownie). But we did save another 4 hours of hiking which would have felt pretty brutal at the end of the day.
The next day we woke up at 6 and were hiking by 7. We hiked up the side trail and arrived at the campsite halfway in about an hour and a half and then the trail got steeper from there. It took us another hour and a half to get to the top. The top half of the trail was pretty steep and filled with varying sized rocks. We made it to the Torres del Paine around 10. To my surprise there wasn’t that many people. I guess there had been a large group for sunrise but we missed that group and got there before the first buses entered the park. We had unintentionally found the sweet spot. We enjoyed the views a bit before heading down. On our way down, an estimated 300 people passed us going up, I’m not exaggerating. We weaved our way down through the mass of tourists and caught the shuttle then our bus and went back to Puerto Natales.
Discover more from Trekking Home
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
