I’ve been hiking for less than an hour, over a landscape of loose rock and lichen. Below the broad, snow-striped summit of Monte Almirante Nieto, I follow Paula, our Chilean guide, down the embankment. Hiking poles help me balance across the stream. Looking up, I see a suspension bridge, its steel cables still in place, but most of its wooden planks missing, some dangling.
“Get a lot of water here sometimes?” I ask Paula.
“No,” she replies. “That was from the wind.”
My pulse quickens as I try to calculate the force required to rip apart a suspension bridge. But I can’t. I can only picture planks peeling off into the sky.
I had come here in early October for five-day guided hike of “The W,” a signature trek in one of Patagonia’s most popular national parks, Chile’s Torres Del Paine.
Named for the shape it traces on a map, the 71-kilometre trail tramps past glaciers, jade-coloured lakes, the indomitable Andes and two iconic features, the Cuernos and the Torres. The over 2,400 square kilometre Torres Del Paine National Park, in Chile’s Patagonia region, attracts more than 150,000 people each year, though most only visit the vehicle-accessible areas.
In its peak December-to February season, the W trail can get busy. By coming in the off-season, I would avoid crowds, heat and mosquitoes. (According to the US Centers for Disease Control, Chile is one of only two counties in South America without the Zika virus; the other is Uruguay.) I also hoped to avoid the infamous winds.
I first got a sense of the wild place I was heading into from the window of the LAN Airlines flight to Punta Arenas. The vast sea of white, gnawing peaks and wide-tongued glaciers resembled a polar region: At 12,000 square kilometres, the Southern Patagonia Icefield is the world’s second largest contiguous icefield outside the poles.
In Punta Arenas, I was met by members of Fantastico Sur, a tour operator that runs four refugios, camping areas and guided tours of the W in Torres del Paine.
We hopped in a van and finally, after midnight, I arrived at Hotel Las Torres, inside the park, under the blaze of the southern Milky Way. I had reached the escarpment of the Andes.
By morning, my group of two Americans, two Germans and our guide, Paula, was travelling west along the first leg of the W, experiencing the details up close.
After passing the wind-broken bridge, the group trekked west along the shore of Lake Nordenskjold. Above, the three Cuernos, or horns, extended skyward, black shale turrets perched on pale granite flanks. Across the lake, the landscape revealed rolling green hills and rounded crumbling mountains. “Over there, it’s 80 million years old,” said Paula, an easy-going 28-year-old. “This side is only 12 million.” I took her word for it.
The terrain felt strangely familiar, like I could be hiking in the Rockies. But it’s different here. Here, I could fill my water bottle straight from streams. There was the soft cinnamon scent of calafate bushes. A group of gauchos, cowboys of the Andes, trotted past with laden pack horses, propane tanks swinging to and fro. Some four hours later, the group reached Camp Los Cuernos Refugio, our base for the night. After the solitude of the day’s trek, it was the first time I saw other hikers.
The main building held four mixed dormitories that slept eight each, a communal kitchen and cafeteria. A camping area was nearby. I opted for a small, slightly more private A-frame bungalow with views of the lake, ordered an icy Cerveza Austral and soothed my muscles in the wood-fired hot tub while the waning evening light coloured the Cuernos yellow, then amber.
Dinner that night was lentil soup, roast chicken and boiled potatoes. It was enough to fill me but bland, which I found amusingly odd, considering the name of the country. Over the next two days, I got into the rhythm of the trail. Paula encouraged us to spread out more. “It’s important to hike alone sometimes, so you can really appreciate the beauty of the mountains.” The trail was moderately challenging but well marked, so there was no risk of getting lost. The middle of the W meant our group now had to climb into the French Valley. I passed under a low, leafy canopy of lenga and nirre trees with hanging Chinese lanterns, fungi that resemble orbs of coiled yellow pipe cleaners. By the time I reached the rocky outcrop of the mirador, or viewpoint, I was trudging through ankle-deep snow. But it was worth the effort; I felt like I was in the centre of a giant alpine amphitheatre, seeing the less photographed back side of the Cuernos and Torres.
The west leg of the W traces Lake Grey to the final refugio and we reached the base of the 17-kilometre-long Grey Glacier. We’d be exploring this part of the Southern Icefield by kayak. Carefully. “The wind can pick up quickly and capsize you,” our Chilean kayak guide, Alexis, said. “If you fall in without a wetsuit, you won’t survive.”
It was raining lightly and I was soon paddling around blue bus-sized icebergs, shivering uncontrollably from the sub-zero air coming off the ice. But at least the breeze was light. The deadly winds that destroyed the bridge I saw on my first day are caused by the thermals of austral summer, when hot land air mixes with the cool air of the Icefields. In an effort to warm up, Alexis had us paddle into a small cove, to hike up a bluff for a better view over the glacier. But even the guide’s hot tea did nothing to warm me.
The next day was a rest day. We took a boat across Lago Grey, or Grey Lake, where we caught a bus back to the starting point of the hike, Hotel Las Torres.
We’d done the W as a young child might draw it. The last section, the right side of the letter, was left for our last day. Our goal, and finale, was the trek to the Torres from the hotel for a grand view. We traversed a black scree slope as clouds descended and rains started. Soon it was snowing. Big globby flakes clung to me. Soon, we took shelter in El Chileno Refugio, about 5.5 kilometres from our base. Wet boots and dripping Gore-Tex hung beside the wood stove and we warmed up with tea and freshly baked doughnuts and scones. An hour later, the weather cleared and we continued the hike in the sun up a snow-covered boulder field to the Torres viewpoint beside an alpine lake. Rocks unnervingly careened down around us, splashing into water. The spot was beautiful, but the Torres were enshrouded while everywhere else was clear. We waited for the clouds to lift for the famous postcard view, to no avail.
A few hours later we were driving by van to Puerto Natales, the W completed. In the distance, we saw the Torres were now clear. We stopped by a saltwater lake filled with pink Chilean flamingos to take photos of the peaks backlit by the setting sun. It wasn’t the vista I had hiked five days for, but I was quietly smiling.
The writer travelled as a guest of Chile Tourism and Fantastico Sur. Neither approved nor reviewed this article.