Hiking Torres del Paine, Patagonia
In Patagonia a storm clears and the alpine monoliths stand like teeth set in a dragon’s jaw . . . The message broadcast from the peaks is as jarring as the scream of a train whistle. ‘Show yourself,’ they say.
Enduring Patagonia, Greg Crouch
Matt and I had been in Patagonia for almost forty-eight hours when we decided it was time to try one of the area’s most famous hikes: Torres Mirador. It’s important to know that Patagonia spans a region of South America, encompassing both Argentina and Chile. In Chile, where we were staying, most visitors to the area will set their sites on Torres del Paine National Park, which takes its name from the three famous, instantly-recognizable soaring granite towers of the Cordillera del Paine mountain range. Below are two vantage points of the towers, which dominated the view from our camp, Ecocamp, where we stayed for four nights.
“Torres del Paine” means Towers of the Paine, paine being an indigenous word for the blue color that defines and dominates the landscape–the bands of blue sky, the thundering azure waterfalls, and the milky blue alpine lakes. Look at that blue.
The Hike
The staff at Ecocamp offered a full-day tour of the Torres, a 15-mile (24km) hike to the base of the granite towers and its alpine blue lake. So, on the second morning of our stay in Patagonia, we woke up to a chilly blue summer sky after a cozy night. While we stayed warm in the king bed of our green dome, the infamous Patagonian wind had whipped around the campsite like a screaming banshee. When we went to bed the previous night, I had looked up at the towers and found them three giant, monolithic granite slabs. In the morning when I woke up, the slabs and their surrounding mountains were covered in fresh new snow, the aftermath of last night’s storm.
Because Ecocamp is the only campsite-hotel in Torres del Paine, it has the added benefit of being the starting point for the Mirador del Torres hike (the Torres Lookout hike). Every single other person who wants to do this hike must start their journey from Puerto Natales, a town at least 2 hours away by bus, and if the roads are bad (which they almost certainly are), the trip potentially takes 3 or 4 hours. That means a really early wakeup start and prayers that your bus doesn’t break down on the road.
Our hiking group were other members of our Ecocamp community. We met them for the first time at breakfast, where we sat at Ecocamp’s dining dome, the towers in full view, and stuffed ourselves with sustenance for a big day: eggs, hummus, bread, coffee, meats, cheeses, and lots of water. Lead by our native Chilean guide, 26-year-old Joaquin, the other six of us gamely set out on the trail with brave faces and high expectations. Of the incredible diversity of people we had met at Ecocamp, the six of us were more similar than not: four Californians and two Coloradans–Mike, Matt, Michael, and Matthew (the most confusing part of my day), Steph, and me.
Fast friendships formed as we packed little tins for lunch–homemade granola bars, eco-friendly dark chocolate bars made in Chile, avocado and hummus sandwiches, and thermoses filled with hot tea. An older Australian couple suffering from a cold lent me their very hiking poles after hearing that I had suffered a knee injury last year. They told me I’d need them. After Joaquin checked our hiking boots and Matt and I shuffled around our many layers of clothing (thermal underwear, SmartWool, sweaters, Patagonia jackets, and rain shells, with hats, gloves, sunglasses, sunscreen, water, and lunch packed into our Osprey Daypack), we set off on the trail.
Wanting to make it back to Ecocamp by 7:00pm, Joaquin set the first hour of our hike at what he called a “quick pace,” although it felt leisurely because the terrain was mostly flat. We weaved through fields of wildflowers to get out of our campsite and trekked across a stream before making a sharp turn into our first climb of the day.
The morning was bright and warm, and we quickly shed our layers. Matt was thrilled to get to carry all four of my jackets.
For the next hour of climbing, conversation was stilted as we huffed our way up the first major pass, seeing few others on the trail. At the top of the pass, we stood on the side of a cliff overlooking a deep ravine where the stream we had earlier crossed now snaked between the valley far below us. We all looked at each other, impressed we had gained so much elevation so quickly. The mood was elation and we were having a ton of fun.
The hike continued to meander up and over rocks, but for the most part we stuck to a well-worn dirt path that took us through trees, across more stream beds, and along the curve of a hillside.
As midday began to approach, we suddenly heard hoofbeats behind us. Joaquin gestured for us to yield the trail to a long string of pack horses trudging up the mountain. We asked him what they were doing.
“They’re headed to the refugio, the campsite halfway up the mountain.” He fixed us with a twisted grin. “If you get hurt up here, the horse taxi is your only way down!” Matt and I exchanged glances. When Steph asked Joaquin if the big, metal barrels the horses were carrying on their backs was water, he gave us another, wider grin. “Of course not. It’s beer!” Ahh, por supuesto. Nothing is more life-saving than a beer if you’re stranded at the top of a mountain.
At the refugio, we stopped to refuel with snacks and then plunged into the forest. Thick, green, carpeted with moss and ferns, it was a cool, shady respite from the sunny exposure of the first few hours of the hike. We were in the forest for about an hour or two. Every now and then, a break in the trees would give us sweeping views of glaciers in the mountains. We were steadily climbing up and up.
The path through the forest started to get rockier and less green, our way forward was clear: up. The last kilometer of our hike was a straight climb up a pile of morraine–pure rocks. Lively conversations turned into breathless thumbs-up to each other and silent encouragement. Every time I thought I’d reached the top of the pass, I saw Joaquin in the distance, unflappable, in perfect shape, waving us onwards. In his ineffable spirit, he didn’t let us stop for breaks. At the top of the rock stairway of doom, I could barely speak. The only thing that got me through those last few minutes of the climb was Joaquin’s promise that “we’re almost there!”
And we were there. Up another set of rocky stairs, sandwiched in between craggy peaks, and there was the blue lake and the three granite towers. I stopped dead in my tracks to stare in awe at the scene before us. At this altitude, 3,000 feet higher than we’d started our day’s trek, the Patagonian wind was fierce and snow had started to fall. I grabbed all four of my jackets back from Matt while Joaquin waved us into the shelter of a rocky outcropping that (mostly) shielded our group from the wind. From that vantage point, we broke into our lunches without saying a word. Joaquin whipped out a thermos of hot tea and passed around cups.
Once we’d eaten, we spent the next hour at the lookout, climbing higher up for more encompassing views and then scuttling down to the edge of the lake. We’d heard from other travelers that it is fairly rare to ever experience a cloudless day in Torres del Paine, and rarer still to see the towers unobstructed. On the snowy, windy day we hiked, we felt so lucky to see the outlines of the three slabs of stone peeking out from the lakeshore.
The hike down was more leisurely than the hike up, although the first kilometer down was a killer on the knees. I was endlessly thankful for a pair of hiking poles. It was 2pm when we started down the mountain, and because we were making good time, Joaquin stopped more frequently to show us native flora and fauna. When our water bottles went empty, he encouraged us to fill them with fresh stream water bubbling from glacial runoff at the top of the mountain. Further down the trail, he cautioned, would not be a good place to fill them up, since the horse taxis ran past the halfway point.
At dinner that night, over endless glasses of Chilean wine with friends, we sat around the table and laughed until our stomachs hurt as much as our feet. The day stretched into night and the wine kept coming early into the morning hours. We had all accomplished something big–15 miles, 3,000 feet of elevation, and 10 hours of hiking (mostly uphill). But more than that, we were now all bonded for life. When the day started, I didn’t know a thing about the people I was walking with. By nighttime, we were old pals, a friendship forged in the trekking lanes of Patagonia, blessed by snowflakes and sunshine, and cemented forever in those mountains.
