Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

I wish I could tell you that as expected, Torres del Paine National Park was one of the best parts of my entire trip. I wish I could tell you that I spent 10 glorious days backpacking around one of Patagonia´s, if not the world´s most beautiful mountain ranges. But alas, I cannot.

My trip to Torres del Paine turned out to be somewhat of a disaster. The park ate us up, chewed us up and spat us out. We originally were going to do a 10 day backpacking trip called ¨The Circuit¨but we had to abort when we received word that an avalanche had covered up a huge part of the trail over the tallest pass. We were then going to do a 5 day trip called ¨The W¨plus an extra day of hiking.

We started with an 18 km hike into the first campsite. We were a bit weary setting off in rain with near freezing temperatures but assumed it would pass. Unfortunately the rain continued for most of the day and we were pretty soaked upon our arrival to camp. That night, the rain and wind only intensified. At one point the tent started to leak on my head and we also found part of the tent to be sitting in a giant puddle. We decided that the best course of action would be to stay at camp for another day, hoping that the weather would break and give the gear a chance to dry out a little. Unfortunately, the weather only got worse. It got colder, it started hailing, the wind gusts were around 85 km/hr and there was even snow.

After several group discussions, we decided to pull the plug on the backpacking trip. Rangers had told us that the weather would last for at least 3 more days and that they could not make any kind of accurate predictions after that time period. Although we were very disappointed to make this decision, we all knew that since we were soaking wet and didn´t have the proper gear, it probably would not be the best idea to continue. On top of that, we could not see the peaks of the mountains (or much of anything else either), which was really the main point for visiting the park. Even if we had continued the trip in the park, we all would have wanted to return again in the future to see the park in clear weather (and actually see the mountains that make it famous - the Torres and the Cuernos). We decided that given various time pressures, everyone would prefer to abort the trip and hopefully check out another place in Patagonia with better weather. On the third day, we hiked out via the same 18 km trail that we hiked in on starting at 6:45 am in the dark and in a blizzard, eventually making our way back to Puerto Natales. In a typical sick twisted move by the park, the clouds parted for a brief 15 minute period as we were on the bus on our way out of the park giving us a look at some of the mountains. So beautiful, yet I really didn´t want to look.

Although I am still pretty bitter about this trip, it was still fun to be in a place that I have looked forward to seeing for the last few years and makes me really want to return in the very near future.