Blog | Torres del Paine- Days Three and Four

October 23, 2008

Torres del Paine- Days Three and Four

written by Spencer Alexander on October 23, 2008 at 11:06PM in Traveling

Days three and four were an incredibly enjoyable part of the entire journey, and the landscape was completely different than the other two days. For days three and four, we hiked out to glacier Grey and back. The glacier was incredible, and I’m very happy to have taken the extra day to make the journey out.

The beginning

We started out by meeting up with two of our new English friends, Alister and Will. We had briefly met them earlier in our trip, but had not spent too much time with them, mainly because they were staying in the cabins along the route, and Nicole and I were staying in the free camp sites.

We started out at an incredibly fast hiking pace, and kept the pace for the next five or six hours. This unfortunate pace[(yes, the pace was so fast as to use adjectives such as unfortunate, unreasonable, ridiculous, and silly)] was caused by a huge misunderstanding: us Americans were under the impression that the English dudes enjoyed a brisk hike, and the English dudes were under the same impression about us Americans. Fortunately, we sorted everything out that night, and the final day was set at a much more reasonable pace. Hey, who doesn’t want to sprint up mountains with a huge pack on the back?

The path

The hike to the glacier was quite windy, blowing us all over the place. A few times, we actually had to grab a hold of the hillside and wait until the wind settled before continuing for fear of being blown off of the path. We hiked through the upper section of the mountain, much like the first day, but this time covered in small ponds and lakes instead of a cutting river.

The glacier

The glacier was incredible; it was shocking to hike up over a mountain peak and see a slab of ice, larger than I ever imagined. The glacier moved down through though a mountain valley, with it’s elevation slowly decreasing towards our hiking path, and the face of the glacier split around an island. While the face of the glacier was only 30 or 40 meters (by my estimation), the middle section of the glacier rose to an massive height.

First shower in three days

We finally made it to the campground, and decided to stay near some of the cabins rather than at the free campsite; while we had to pay a few bucks each, this gave us access to warm showers. We took our first showers of the trip, a glorious, glorious feeling. After spending three days hiking in the cold, a warm shower cleansed the spirit.

Good bye Torres del Paine

Our trip ended with us taking the Cataman, or boat, back to the entrance of the park. I am glad to have taken the boat as the last piece of our trip; it gives a great view of the entire park, with most of the famous features visible at some point at the ride. I much preferred being able to discover each of the parks pieces over a four day period, rather than seeing a quick overview from the beginning.

Overall, the trip was incredible, and I’m happy to have done it. It was definitely a life changing experience, and I hope to experience similar trips in the next couple of years. If you have any recommendations… let me know!

Tags: torres, hiking, Park, Fun and glacier

show permalink