Paine Towers, the universal deluge and 20.000 leagues under the sea.

The Paine Towers (Torres del Paine) welcoming us.

I've spent 10 days walking the Paine Towers, (TDP from now on) in the Chilean Patagonia and it's been one of the most humid experiences in my life. I only missed Captain Nemo in his Nautilus or Noah on his Ark, and even I saw a group of ducks having serious problems in crossing over a flooding river that almost wiped them away with its strong stream. Despite this, Torres del Paine will remain as one of my favourite walking rememberings.

View from Laguna Amarga (Sour Lagoon)

In the year 2000 I made in TDP the W circuit, so called because it goes up the valleys of the Ascencio and Frances rivers and ends in the Grey glacier, one of the 48 glacier including in the South Patagonic Ice, the 3rd largest reserve of fresh water in the world, after the Antarctica and Groenland. This is an ice tongue of over 400 km long and an average width of 60 km. The very Grey glacier is 16 km long and between 2 and 6 km wide.

Viewpoint at the Towers.

TDP is the jewel of the group of national parks in Chile, (31 in total) and known to all the trekkers and hikers in the world. The park atracts some 100.000 visitors every year but that really causes deterioration to the park. You can do a lot of things in the park, like hikes and horse riding with Chile Nativo; river descents in kayak, ice climbing with Big Foot Patagonia, and of course the main atraction for the many hikers, the easy W or the complete 150 km circuit, which was my original target. In the summer, between December and February, the park gets overcrowded and you must book the housing and the services in advance.Andescape is the official agency.

The Seron camp.

It is theoretically forbidden to walk alone in the park and after my experience here, I strongly recommend to hire the services of a professional guide to those who attempt to do the circuit. Unfortunately, it seems that no special credential is required to become one, and in ten days I've seen it all, from a group from the Azimut 3600 company leaving their muddy boots for drying in the shelter, to guides using so bad an English that would make blush even the Apache indians.

Boots drying inside the Dickson shelter (my Panama Jack aren't among them)

TDP, in my opinion, is one of the best places in the world devoted to hiking and trekking, because it offers all kind of levels, from short hikes to extreme climbing in the tough walls of Paine's Torre and Cuerno (Tower and Horn), not so much because of the height but for the changing wheather. The combination of pampas, valleys, rivers, waterfalls, glacier lakes, mountains and glaciers and the Patagonian wildlife, as well as the shelters strategically located to offer a good rest to the hiker, makes TPD a real pleasure for all the senses.

The Dickson shelter, an idilic place.

But not everything is paradisiacal in TDP. I've had the chance to confirm that the visitor's security system is not managed by professionals, in fact it is not managed by anybody, and according to the Forestal National Corporation, “you are responsible” of your behaviour. The CONAF (Corporación Nacional Forestal) is a corporation that is in charge of managing the National Parks in Chile and doesn’t have not one single rescue special brigade, the forest rangers are young and willing but they are only confined to roads maintenance and when there is an emergency, they only tell you: “the path is closed”.

During the days we spent isolated at the Dickson shelter, I asked the guides how it was possible that there were no rescue teams, and they answered that many times they had demanded CONAF to create them but burocracy was slow and eventually spoiled the whole process.

Los Cuernos (The Horns), from the catamaran.

Let’s take one day at a time, because in the days I spent there I took about 100.000 steps in my walks and hikes in the park. On Sunday the 2nd of March , at 7 a.m. we took a bus from Puerto Natales to TDP, some 2 hours through a gravel road, and we had the chance to watch a most spectacular sunrise tinged of red and blue that at the arrival to the park invited us to embrace the huge mountain towering before us, with the glaciers sparkling like diamonds in the morning sun. The operation to enter the park was as simple as paying the admission ticket, and there is no information about the state of the paths or any weather forecast whatsoever, for during the days I was there, was always “changing” or “variable”.

The Pehoe shelter, at dusk.

My hiking mate, Marion, told me that she wished the weather stayed like this during the week we intended to spend there, but I told her: “psych yourself up to having rainy days and be thankful if you don’t have them!” Damn prophet!. We took advantage of the fine weather to climb from the shelter up to the TDP balcony, situated at the foot of the 3 main towers. The way was a 4 hour trip by a steep path parallel to the river Ascensio that ended at the moraine of the glacier, which was the last hurdle / obstacle to enjoy the view of the towers and the emerald glacial lagoon at their feet.
The comeback was easier because it was almost all the way downwards.

Sunrise from the Pehoe.

At midnight it started raining and never stopped in four days. On Monday we walked 4 hours to the Seron camp heading to the wind in a persistent rain that made it hard to go on through the exposed stretches. Tuesday dawned sky-cleared, but it was a mirage; shortly after we finished breakfast, we had to dismount the tent under a impresive deluge, and the 6 hours to the Dickson shelter were a tough exam for my Gore-tex jacket, that didn’t pass and for my Panama Jack boots, that passed it and with an A! If it wasn’t true I wouldn’t say it although they are sponsors of Vagamundos, but after 2 days in the rain, the only one with dry feet at the shelter was me, and that is very important to avoid blisters and shoe rubs.

The spectacular view over the French valley.

At Dickson we got the news that the river Paso (Pass) was impassable (how ironic!), so we decided to stay one more day at Dickson, day that I spent crossing the river and visit the Dickson glacier, in a nice hike of 6 hours. There were little visibility at the balcony of the glacier, so we were somewhat disapointed, but our sadness was alliviated by border guards at the Chilean border post when they invited us to some soup Although Argentina is at a stone’s throw, there is no pass through the mountains, so they really got bored during the 45 days they have to remain here until the next shift, and the only human beings that they see are the few hikers that come up to see the glacier. They even taperecorded our impressions on Chile, in a sort of a Babel tower, because we were one American, one Swedish, two Englishmen and one Spaniard.

The crossroads in Grey.

The next day, while having breakfast and deciding whether to go on or not, because it was still raining, the radio news cleared our doubts. Our next destination, Perros camp (Dog’s camp) now was called Patos camp (Duck’s camp), because the river had flooded all over the camp, and the 25 people there were soaked to the bone. And on top of it all, they were isolated by the river Paso and the river Cabeza de Toro on either side, that couldn’t be crossed over. While the Dickson shelter employees were deciding whether to go rescue them or not, Patricio and his team -the people from CONAF- repeatedly said the same: “it’s better for them to remain where they are”. A wise decision for themselves, but not for the people who are soaked to the bone in a camp that has almost turned into a lake. Several peoplo were missing for 24 hours and no alarm of any kind was activated. Incredible! The comments on CONAF, in all the languages from all of us people who had been staying at the Dickson shelter for three days weren’t precisely words of praise.

The walk on ice at the Grey glacier.

For us, this episode drove us to go back to Torres del Paine, but we had to wait one more day because the river Paine had flooded and cut several stretches of our path. We set out on Friday anyway, walking cross-country parallel to the flooded path that we originally wanted to follow. We spent the night at Serón shelter and the next day we had to figure out a way of our own to the Torres shelter . Not less funny was the method wa had to use to get to Laguna Amarga, because from the iron bridge that is some 300 mts from the entrance, we had to be carried on Zodiacs. We decided to try and do the other side of the park, the west sectionm, crossing our fingers hoping that the wheather would get better. The only way to go to the entrance at Laguna Amarga was by Zodiac (inflatable boat), the original 30 meters wide river was around 300 meters. We boarded a catamaran to Pehoé, and I think it was the best choice we could make.

Practising ice climbing at the Grey glacier.

The wheather granted us a 3 days truce, and we took advantage of it, we visited the French valley, with a impressive view from the balcony of the British camp. It was a tough 9 hour hike, really hard for our knees.The next day we went up in 4 hours to the Grey shelter and the Guardas camp to admire the Grey glacier from above, sparking in the sunset light.

The next day, Tuesday, early in the morning, we made for the Big Foot Patagonia shelter, where, after having crossed over on Zodiac to the other side of the Grey glacier, we made a 2 hour hike , plus another hour of ice climbing and it was really wonderful to see a glacier from the inside, it is almost like a living thing that whines, roars, creaks, it has streets, drains, buildings, waterfalls, something that our guide Mariano compared to the Gaudian architecture only in ice, with turquoise light trapped in the huge ice blocks. Unfortunately, this glacier, like other in the rest of the world, is in recession, something that you can appreciate with your bare eyes.

The grey Glacier from inside.

After the hike, we recovered with a warm soup at the Grey shelter, and went on to Pehoe, where whe came just in time to take the catamaran to the Pudeto shelter, where we got on the bus to Puerto Natalas at 11 p.m., all knackered after 10 days of struggling with the water, the wind, mud, rocks, steep ascents, kamikaze descents, crossing over wild streams and flooded rivers, exhausted but happy for finishing our adventure safe and sound and having seen so many wonders of Nature and met so many wonderful people. Puerto Natales is the best place to recover, a place where you can hear the sound of silence, according to my friend Claudio, who says that in the Patagonia, when you open a door in a warm, calm morning, you can feel the silence coming in and invading the house. Nice definition! And when in Puerto Natales, staying at Residencial Bernardita guarantees you feeling yourself like home and eating the best patagonian salmon.

Incredible view over Grey glacier.

During the last days we were there, we met again people who had stayed at Dickson and had decided to complete the circuit at their own risk; all of them, without exception, told us how hard times they went through, how they had to cross over rivers with the water up to their chest and how they sometimes arrived to camps at midnight and that they never found anybody of CONAF that could inform them about what they might encounter in his way ahead. I guess there will have to be a tragedy at Torres del Paine to realice that something must be done, but I have no doubt about the fact that although they lay the responsibility on oneself, in emergency situations like the ones we lived, somebody will have to assume the penal liability.

I consider INACCEPTABLE that the only means of evacuation at TDP be the horses, and even it’s you who have to pay for them, at a US $70 /day fare. In any other developed mountainous country, like Switzerland, France or Spain, specially trained people from the firemen, police and the army are in charge of the rescue missions, and also professional alpinists used to these kind of operations.

Turquoise blue scattered around some places.

Xabi, a basque guide that I met at Grey and has over 10 years of experience in TDP, told me that in 1998,
On one specially hot day, all the rivers flooded simultaneously and tore down all the bridges, isolating all the shelters and camps for at least 3 days. On another occasion, two basque alpinists died when climbing one of the towers, and the retreiving of their bodies was a mess, because CONAF took 3 day to bring in a dog to locate the corpses.

My friend, the patagonian fox.

I want to finish thanking all the people who helped and supported me by giving me information, specially André from Chile Nativo, Sergio from Big Foot Patagonia, Carola from Andescape, and Patricio and his Dickson shelter team for their smiles, the pisco sour and the “Gato Negro”. You carry the Patagonia in your heart, you love your work and that shows! Congratulations!

Also the restaurants Concepto Indigo. in the seaside walk, and "Living", in the main square, for feeding my body and my soul.
To see the Torres del Paine photos, click here.
To see the photos with sound (spanish) from Torres del Paine, click here.
To see the Patagonia videos (wide band recommended), click here.
Click if you want to know more about Torres del Paine and other national parks in Chile.
Click if you want to know more about Puerto Natales.
To feel at home away from home, nothing better than Residencial Bernardita, where you will be deligthed with the best patagonian salmon.

See you soon!

From Puerto Natales, Chilean Patagonia.

TRANSLATED BY
LUIS GÓMEZ
15/04/03
E-mai: luis_el_unico@yahoo.es

Published: 29/07/2003 13:02
All times are MET (GMT+1)

Previous log entryNext log entry

---

Please visit our sponsor. Without advertisement Vagamundos could not offer his travel experiences.

---

© Vagamundos.com, 2000-2003 • Contact

Production, design and technological sponsorship for Vagamundos.net