Torres del Paine
CHILE
The Great Schcha Hike
By LYNDI
Friday, December 3, 2010
When I reached the peak at 5am – having roused myself in the middle of a frigid night to begin an uphill hike at 4am – it made the past week completely worth it. All the uphills, and the sometimes-worse-downhills, the wind, snow and rain and exhaustion had not been in vain. The four of us were gazing up at the enigmatic granite towers at Torres del Paine National Park in southern Chile and watching in awe as the tips turned from a slate gray to a vibrant pink as the sun rose behind us. A perfect ending to a near perfect 6 day hike.
So now that you’ve heard the end – how did we get there? I guess that’s where we start at the beginning.
We crossed into Chile late on a Friday and arrived in Puerto Natales – the base town for the world-famous Torres del Paine (pronounced “pine-nee”) National Park. After seeing epic views in Bariloche, hiking for four days through the magnificent Glacier National Park in El Chalten and visiting several glaciers up close and personal, I was skeptical as to how amazing Torres truly would be. How could I possibly be more impressed than I’d already been in Patagonia? Nonetheless, visiting Patagonia without doing Torres is like visiting Peru without going to Machu Picchu – it’s the reason you’ve heard about it in the first place.
In Puerto Natales we stayed at an excellent hostel run by three former Oregonians called Erratic Rock that is something of an institution in town. Always booked out way in advance, you have to call ahead about a week ahead of time to get space – but for a reason. These three friends showed up in Patagonia way back when with a million questions – how to get to the park, how much it costs, what’s the weather like, other conditions, how to pack, what food to bring, etc. and decided that every other person that visited the park would have the same questions – and the legend was born. Today they are THE resource in town for all matters Torres del Paine and even give a free 1 hour informational talk every day in the high season to give all the info and answer any questions.
The day we went to the talk it was a full house – at least 20 people in the room – and I honestly think the briefing should be a requirement for anyone headed into the park. The guys also run a guiding service, a rental center and a recycling center to make sure they stay plenty busy.
So after getting all the necessary info and waiting for our fourth trekking partner to arrive (we met Tonni in El Calafate and invited her to come along with us if she wanted – she was partner-less and tent-less), we went grocery shopping and started packing and water-proofing as best we could. As our Info Guru had told us, we unpackaged everything and just packed naked granola bars, candy bars, and nuts into zip-loc bags, we put everything in black garbage bags and lined our backpacks in garbage bags, wore one set of clothes, packed the other set, food on top and we were set.
So Monday morning we took the bus from Puerto Natales to the entrance of the National Park and then stayed on to the last stop where we began a 5 hour trek towards the mountains looming in the distance. The most famous hike in the park is quite simply called “The W” since that is the shape you make as you hike up and back different valleys. But since we were adding an extra day at the bottom, it looked more like a “Щ” because of the little tail we added on. So our hike therefore became known as “The Schcha” (according to Wikipedia, it’s is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, today representing the sound / ɕɕ / in Russian. Whatever that means).
It’s a good thing we were bright-eyed and anxious as we set out, because the first day kinda sucked. The wind was unbelievable – whipping across the open plain with incredible force. We knew it would be the least scenic day (the other option was to take a $22 half hour ferry ride to the start of the trek – a scam we were not about to be taken by) but with 80km/hr winds whipping rain pellets into your face, it didn’t take long to not be too much fun.
With winds at that speed, you have to struggle to put one foot in front of the other, one trekking pole in front of the other, and continue in a semi-forward manner. A couple times the wind tripped me up – one time literally blowing me 5 ft off the trail – and our faces quickly went numb with the cold rain hitting it at gale force speeds. The worst part was probably that you couldn’t talk to anyone due to the wind whistling around your face and making any sort of conversation impossible. So it was a slow, quiet 5 hour walk to our first campsite on Lake Pehoe.
In the National Park – even though you have to pay $30 to enter – you also have to pay to camp at certain sites. Our first campsite was about $9 per person – but it also included real toilets and a shelter to cook your food (a God-send in wind and rain like we had) so after setting up camp we headed into the cooking shelter for warmth and free gas for cooking. Aaron and I had to set up camp twice because the wind changed direction at some point and bent our tent sideways – nearly in half – so we had to move the winds to our tail. All in all it was a nice campsite and we looked forward to better weather and more scenic days ahead.
The next five days became very pattern-like. We woke up around 7 or 8am, made a delicious breakfast of peanut butter and jelly tortillas (hey – that’s what you get for trying to grocery shop in a small town on a Sunday), broke camp, packed up, hiked for 5-8 hours stopping for photos, snacks and lunch enroute (lunch always being salami and cheese sandwiches on increasingly stale and flat bread), arrived at a new camp, set it up, cooked dinner (spaghetti noodles with a packet soup sauce) and cleaned up and went to bed.
Granted, reading that back it sounds like the most boring thing you could do for a week, but with unparalleled views, pretty decent weather and good company – it was one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Instead of a day-by-day itinerary, let’s just stick to the highlights:
Gray Glacier that connects to the vast Patagonian Icefield – the world’s second largest extent of ice in the world next to Iceland. To give you an example of how big that is, if the huge Perito Moreno glacier that we had oohed and aahed at in El Calafate was a pinky finger, the Patagonian Icefield would be your entire torso. That’s alotta ice! We also saw a giant chunk crash into the lake below, which was pretty cool.
Hiking uphill for two hours in the snow and sleet to a viewpoint only to have the skies part and the endless vista of mountains and glacier lakes appear for the 10 minutes we had reached the top in the Valle Frances. Most hikers didn’t even get out of bed that morning because the conditions were crap and they knew there wouldn’t be a view at the top, but we carried on and were rewarded with one of the most impressive views I’d ever seen. On our way back down the snow started again – our hike could not have been better timed.
Aaron finding a large stick to use as a trekking pole and becoming a bit too close to it. By the end of the trek, it was named “Spotswood” and had a happy face carved on it. It also slept in the dorm with us when we returned to Puerto Natales.
Hiking alongside a deep valley carved out by glaciers a bazillion years ago on a beautiful, crisp summer day.
Watching the local swallows try to beat our thrown out noodles to death because they thought they were worms. Hey – we’re easily entertained.
Talking about anything and everything as we trekked through spectacular scenery.
Running into fellow trekkers following the same route each night and catching up with them.
Seeing the sunrise over the park’s featured icon – the Torres del Paine.
And that brings us full circle. As the sun rose overhead and we sat at our viewpoint in our sleeping bags sipping our hot coffee and tea (oh yeah – we packed our stove for the hike up), it dawned on us (get it???!!) that Torres del Paine definitely lives up to all its hype. Even though I didn’t think it was possible, the views and scenery were better than anywhere else we’d been – and the weather was worse and changed more than all of our other hikes combined. But the benefits were far greater than the costs (though when you’re packing a tent on a freezing cold morning and your hands feel like stumps as you shove your sleeping bags into their stuff sacks, it’s hard to think of benefits) and all the snow, wind, rain, falls, blisters and sore shoulders were worth it in the end.
The four of us were happy to have completed the 6 day trek, but every single one of us wished we could keep going. After a day or so you get into a certain rhythm and the days just flew by in a blur of ice-carved mountains, glacier lakes, wildflowers, deep valleys and monotonous soup packets.
But we returned to Puerto Natales thrilled with our little adventure. After hot showers (we were all pretty ripe after nearly a week of no showers – though daily “baby-wipe-showers” did diffuse the stench a bit) and clean clothes, Tonni and Cal went in search of burgers while Aaron and I hit up a local joint for steak and potatoes (I think I hit my tolerance level of spaghetti and packet soups), enjoyed some wine, and called it a night.
Torres was everything we thought it would be and more. Rarely can you say that about a country, a park or a hike, but now – just over a week before returning home – we knew we could return having done the biggest and the best.
