The Circuit of Paine.. the "e" is optional!
Trip Start
Nov 09, 2010
1
4
5
Trip End
Dec 22, 2010
Puerto Natales, Patagonia, Chile
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Aaah Beautiful Pantagonia. We had already decide on what to do here: You see t here is 2 ways to trek in Pantagonia, The "W" very easy, touristic, boats bring you to locations, you almost always have hot showers, restaurants and than you have the "O" more independent, cold showers for the first 3 days, half to bring your own food, alot harder, but the views are suppose to be breath taking.... so you can guess that there is no choice in this matter :)
The "O" it is!
The first day we arrive in the Park and we were litterary hit with what was going to be our "buddy" for the next few days: wind. But we mean like over 100km wind, gusting so hard that you fall over, you get blown off the mountain kind of wind. Our first day we walk for almost 5hrs in those hurrican speed winds... just insane. We all were talking about it non stop, we were also hoping that the tent would survive it´s incounter!
The next 2 days were good, weather here is very confusion. There no clouds yet it rains, the sun stays out litterary until 11pm and yet it get really cold after 6pm, you see clouds and yet all of a sudden a gust of wind so fast and hard that it knock you on your side... but this is nothing compare to the Pass..
We arrive at the camp in the afternoon, the idea is to sleep here and make the Pass. The pass is really why not alot of people do the "O" Circuit: its a 1km up, 1km down Passage between mountains, the wind is hard here and usually there snow, this time was not an exception. At camp we were atleast 5-6 different party. But by morning we all went together to try and accomplish this task, we became a small expedition force.
6hrs.. we walk either up or down. There were so much snow that we had problems finding the path at the beginning. Once we started going up we were in knee deep snow. Trail blazing in this kind of weather is not easy and takes a long time, for a while we took turn breaking ground for the team, luckily for us a guiding service eventually arrived and the guide blazed a big part of the uppper pass, much to our approval :) If you´ve never seen this before, imagine Lord of the Ring kind of mountains, winds... Your half expecting to see Sam and Frodo trying to bring the ring to Mordore! But we made it... Winds were just screaming out us... but we made it!
The rest of the hike was alot nicer, we met with the "W" circuit. But you might wonder why would you want to do that. Well for when it was not raining or blowing at you, when you were not trying to do over 2km of elevation in less than 5hours, the views were just mind blowing. The towers of Paine our incredible, the glaciers were immense and the dark blue lakes were pretty amazing! I say they were worth a bit of pain and sweat !
Sum up of the trip:
-Over 100km winds
-6 days of treeking
-96km by foot
-Over 2km of elavation
-Breath taking views
Icy, Bring it on mother nature... Bring it on!!!, Frosty
PS: But we are not masochistic all the time! we our ending Caroline last few days at Valparaiso, beautiful beach town where we can relax and enjoy the sun. Soon she will be going back home and me and Philippe will be heading off to Easter Island!
