Atacama and Patagonia, part 2: Torres del Paine.

View from the Glacier Grey mirador.

The W route in Torres del Paine.
(view at full size)

The day before Mila's first birthday, we got on a van and a plane and a bus to get to Puerto Natales.  Puerto Natales is the gateway to Torres del Paine at the southern tip of Chile, where we planned a kind of spirit walk along the W route from west to east, stopping and making camp for four nights along the way.  Like San Pedro de Atacama, Puerto Natales is a small town, but instead of hot dry red dust and sunshine, it was all misty windblown emptiness along a bay dotted with black-necked swans.  We stayed in a little b&b on an isolated point a couple miles outside of town, and lit Mila's yahrzeit candle around 11PM that night, shortly after the sun went down.

D and Gustavo, the stern-faced proprietor of our b&b, spent the next day applying pressure to our airline trying to get our packs back after they had been separated from us in transit.  Gustavo warned us that the last guest who had lost his bags had waited for five days before they were returned.  I sat in the living room looking out the panoramic windows, anxiously hoping that our luggage snafu wouldn't cause the cancellation of the centerpiece of our trip, listening to the wind, watching the horses gallop around the field next door, and writing this post.  Mila's candle kept a comforting vigil all day, a stoic little presence in our room unruffled by the screaming winds outside or luggage logistics.

Puerto Bories in Puerto Natales.

As dinner approached, a van pulled up to the b&b with our packs - a birthday miracle!  D and I did a happy luggage dance, proclaimed it a narrowly averted disaster, and had celebratory dinner and drinks.  As it got dark, we packed and got ready for our last night in a real bed and the official close of one year.  I waited for Mila's candle to burn out at the twenty-four hour mark, but by the time I climbed into bed that night, it was still burning.  I answered well wishes from friends and shut down my phone, and it was still burning.  I closed my eyes but I hardly slept that night.  At 2AM, 3AM, 4AM, I cracked open an eye and saw the warm glow from Mila's candle continuing to cast a flickering circle of candlelight on the ceiling.  It was still burning when we woke up early the next morning, going on thirty-two hours.

Bridge to Campamento Italiano.

We left the b&b and a few hours' bus ride and catamaran ride later, we disembarked at our starting point at Refugio Paine Grande, at the bottom of the first stroke of the W.  It was a clear afternoon but tremendously windy.  The wind howled in my ears, blowing away all other sounds and the warmth of the sun, and pushing me from side to side along the trail.

The first couple of days on the trail felt hard.  My pack was heavy.  My new boots still pinched.  The winds pushed me off course.  The trail was rocky and uneven.  I was footsore.  I was too cold and then too hot.  I wasn't yet familiar with all my gear.  Although our first two days were our shortest, it felt like it took forever to get to our first two camps.

Lago Grey.

That first day we hiked up to Refugio Grey to get to the true "start" of the west-to-east W route.  I limped in, feeling a little desperate as I saw the roof of the refugio finally appear among the trees.  I hauled myself up the steps onto the deck and set down my pack with relief as D went into the office to secure a campsite.  I was stuffing a Clif bar into my mouth when D returned and told me he had discovered the refugio was hosting a "buffet sorpresa de Navidad" for Christmas Eve.  I'd forgotten it was Christmas Eve.  There were a few spots left for the feast, which he snatched up.  When you're in the woods and someone asks you if you'd like chicken, beef, or lamb, you accept.  All three.  We pitched our tent, got changed, and crowded into the packed lodge dining room with our fellow campers, where the staff had laid out a huge spread of salads, roasted meats, rice, and boxed wine.  It started out civilized enough, but soon ravenous hikers were going up for thirds and fourths and dessert, elbowing, self-serving, and pulling progressively larger chunks out of what one of the servers told D was supposed to be purely decorative bread.

The second day we backtracked back down to Refugio Paine Grande and continued along the bottom of the W to Campamento Italiano.  I was still feeling slow and sore, and when we arrived at camp and saw signs that the next leg of our hike into Valle Francés - the middle stroke of the W - was closed due to inclement weather, I secretly thought it might not be so bad if we didn't have to go.

View from the first mirador in Valle Francés.

Bound for Campamento Torres.

D, however, wouldn't hear of not completing the full W.  The morning of the third day he pestered the guardaparque for updates.  Shortly after 8AM the trail into Valle Francés reopened, though the guardaparque warned us that there might be snow, rain, and not much of a view.  We hiked into Valle Francés with a Dutch couple, Maartje and Gert, who had pitched their tent next to ours at Campamento Italiano.  It was blustery and snowing in the valley that morning, and parts of the trail were steep boulder scrambles.  But despite the poor visibility and chill, once we arrived at the midpoint of the W something clicked.  As we climbed back down and moved on towards Refugio Los Cuernos, the weather started to clear and pulled back to reveal high mountaintops, deeply aquamarine glacial lakes, stony beaches, and rolling meadows covered end to end with round yellow shrubs.  My pack started to feel lighter as I got used to carrying the load, and I liked the feeling of carrying everything I needed on my back.  My footing felt more secure.  I loved walking the dirt paths through the woods and drinking straight from the glacial streams.  Our tent gradually started to feel more roomy as we figured out the best configuration of our stuff.  We saw wildlife - eagles, mice, and a bare-assed couple near Refugio Los Cuernos who looked to be about to start shooting a trailside porn with a selfie stick.

On the shore of Lago Nordenskjöld.

Heading from Refugio Los Cuernos to Campamento Torres.

At the end of each day there was camp, a hot meal that D would cook up on our camp stove, and faces that started to become familiar --  Chileans, Israelis, Germans, the Cocky American Bitch with her henpecked husband (who we saw at every campground where we stopped, but never, ever saw on the trail), and Maartje and Gert, who we kept running into all through TDP, and later, in Argentina.  And at the end of the evening, there was my sleeping bag in the warm tent with D.

D, my búho espíritu, at the base of Las Torres.

The fourth day was our longest day, hiking roughly twelve miles mostly uphill from Refugio Los Cuernos to Campamento Torres, where we planned to sleep and get up early the next morning to hike the last ascent to the mirador at the base of Las Torres.  Campamento Torres was a cool and shady campground with a small clear brook running through it.  We arrived there mid-afternoon, ahead of the wave of other campers, and pitched our tent in a private spot next to the brook, where we stashed a few beers D had sherpa'ed up from Refugio Chileno.  We changed into our night clothes and dozed off for a few hours.

Around 6PM, D rustled out of the tent to look around.  I was dreaming of hot chili and Oreos for dinner, with my brain solidly in end-of-the-day mode, when he returned, poked his head into the tent, and exclaimed that it was clear enough to see Las Torres and that we should go - now.

I scrambled to get my hiking clothes back on and get my head back into gear.  D stood waiting for me in the sun-dappled woods at the campground entrance, and as I approached, he looked, to me at least, like some kind of forest spirit guide.  I told him so, and he said, "Yeah, some people thought I was the campground greeter or something."

The beginning of trail to the base of Las Torres wound through the woods, scattered with the occasional rocks and roots.  We crossed small bridges over shallow, bubbling streams.  We passed maybe a hundred people who were climbing their way back down.  The trail wound around and up, and after about 20 minutes we rose above the trees and the trail changed from dirt to small rocks.  As we ascended, the rocks grew larger.  The last part of the ascent was a scramble over a large rock field, scattered with stones ranging in size from as small as a fist to some as large and flat as a dining table.  We picked our way over the boulders, turned a corner, and there they were.

Mist floated around the top of Las Torres, but we could see all three of the towers as well as the glacier whose snowmelt cut crevices into the rock and fed into a crystal blue lake in a basin at the foot of the towers.  We'd come after the rush, and the place was nearly deserted.

We found a big flat rock to sit on, pulled on our gloves and jackets against the cool breeze, cracked open a beer, and just looked.  I thought about what it meant to have made it to Las Torres after roughly fifty miles on foot, following the trail through uphill and downhill, through switchbacks and backtracking, through forest and meadow and rock field, and to feel like I could still keep going.  I thought about what it meant to have gone through a whole year without Mila, and to be still alive and strong and able to laugh.  I felt 2014 gradually stitching itself closed and wondered what would come in 2015.  We stank, we were hungry, and we were happy.

After a time, the sun broke through the mist.  It shone brightly through two of Las Torres and lit up the lake below.  The beam hit the middle of the lake, dispersed across the water, intensified for a bright minute, and then faded away again behind the mist.  I don't know if that was Mila, but in any case I like to think there's a little bit of her in everything beautiful: every soft breeze, every tree in the woods, every wildflower, every rolling hill, every mountain range, every stone, every stream, every calm blue lake, every mighty ocean, every great glacier, every starry sky, every sunrise, every sunset.

Related posts:
First birthday.
At the end of the world.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 1: The Atacama Desert.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 3: Argentina.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 4: Our trip in lists.