Patagonia: The W Hike, Day 4
**Completed in November 2019, The Torres del Paine ‘W’ hike is Sylvia and Brian’s fifth BucketList adventure completed together. It is also the furthest they have ever ventured for a hike.
With three legs of our hike completed, we had only two more to go. One, really; the last of these was simply a return over the same ground covered by the previous leg. That last leg would end back at Refugio Paine Grande with a ride across the lake and back to the outside world.
We had only one more destination on our Torres itinerary that we had not yet seen…that being the section of trail that borders Lago Grey and the glacier that feeds this magnificant lake…Glacier Grey, the very tip of the sprawling Helio Sur Ice Field, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere outside of Antarctica.
We did not expect this to be an especially hard day. The hike would take us up to Refugio Grey, about 11 kilometers distant, for an overnight stay. Many hikers do this entire leg as a single day out-and-back trip. That being the case, we figured…how hard could it be?
One thing about this section we did know was that, because of the influence of the glacier, the Lago Grey area is well known for bad weather even by Torres del Paine standards. Especially it is known for high winds. We’d not seen much in the may of truly strong winds on the trip so far, but if we were going to see any, it would probably be someplace in the miles ahead.
We packed up from the sprawling tent city behind Paine Grande, which was itself rapidly vanishing like a mold in the sunlight as hikers decamped to go pursue their separate agendas. That done, we set out for the trail. The sky overhead was clear and we hoped it might stay that way.
The first mile or two of this trail is not especially impressive…it follows a gully along a stream where there many washed out and muddy sections, and more burned over dead trees. Soon it enters woods, crosses a creek beside or over a fallen tree, rises to an area of rock ledges at about the one third mark of the hike, where there is a small Lake — Laguna Los Patos, or Duck Lake. We saw no ducks here, but this deep blue lake and its rocky, piney surroundings did conjure up, for one of the few times on this trip, the alpine high country of the Sierra Nevada.
Here, too, the wind picked up considerably, and would blow strong for the entire middle portion of this trip.
Here too, we discovered (from a cartoony sign by the trail) that the Lago Grey section was NOT an uphill all the way to the refugio, but rather crossed a height of land in between. This meant up and downhills going both directions, and this often signals a tiring hike. Nothing about this concerned us at the time; but Brian wished still that he’d been forewarned. The Cicerone guide book had made no mention of it, and had failed to include elevation profiles for any leg of the trip. These had been very helpful in planning on the Tour du Mont Blanc. He was rapidly losing confidence in this book.
After Duck Lake the trail continues along a chain of grassy, windswept ridges, occasionally ducking into folds in the land where there are no views. Re-emerging from one of these were got our first look at Lago Grey…true to form, it is a strange whitish gray with a dark edge to it as if something lurks beneath its surface, something like the color of clouds before a snow storm. Even stranger are Smurf-blue icebergs floating upon its surface, fragments that have broken off the glacier at the other end of the lake (which was not yet visible.) Some of these were quite close to shore and our vantage point.
As we stood looking, Sylvia noted a red-hulled boat out on the lake which was none other than the Lago Grey Tour Catamaran, which runs out of the touristy Lago Gray Hotel at the southern tip of the lake.
(Sylvia, who is always looking for ‘alternative routes’ when we hike, asked later about the possibility of hitching a ride back on this boat from the refugio…she was advised not to do this, for while it is possible, it adds a lot of logistical complexity and expense. In fact, that’s the main reason the Grey catamaran is not more often used by hikers.)
With increasingly fine viewpoints at our left, we climbed toward the high point of land on the hike…which soon hove into view. Here it was…the Mirador Grey. And straight ahead we had our first glimpse of Glacier Grey itself. We climbed the fifty yards or so off the trail to the best viewpoint…here, the wind howled. These were the strongest winds of the entire trip, so forceful you had to fight to stand up. They even blew off Brian’s silly Peruvian hat.
There was also a hell of a view here. We doubt the photographs will convey the full sense of it…but it is quite impressive. At 100 square miles of ice, Glacier Grey is by far the largest glacier Sylvia or I have ever seen in person. Compared to it, Pastoruri and the Mer de Glace seemed like a few cups full of ice cubes.
Many of the icebergs that had broken off and were now floating in the lake like rubber ducks in a bathtub would have dwarfed our home back in Raleigh.
We braved the wind as long as we could, then continued on, knowing that from here on all was downhill to the Refugio. We were halfway there.
But we had not seen the worst section of trail. It appeared soon enough…a wicked downhill, quite narrow and steep and wet, with water flowing right down the trail in the form of a gurgling brook. It might well have been picturesque had it not been so likely to break our necks with one slip. To make matters worse, as we were descending, a pair of large groups were going up AND down at the same time…we were often marooned in place minutes at a time as water gushed past our feet, and confused hikers probed about for the best places to place theirs.
We made it to the bottom, but that was some rough real estate…and there was another section, very steep but not quite as bad, just past this. We were past the worst but it had taken its toll. No, it wasn’t as bad as the French Valley, but we had traversed it with full packs, and so it felt worse. It’s Brian’s opinion that his knee STILL hasn’t fully recovered from that particularly grueling descent, the worst by far we did fully loaded.
We staggered on to the Refugio…fortunately there were no more obstacles, and it was not long before we arrived.
There is no view from Refugio Gray itself, apart from some glimpses of the adjacent peaks above such as Cerro Paine Grande, Cerro Catedral and Cerro Blanco Sur. Still, we found this Vertice-run little collection of buildings nestled in the trees to be the best Refugio overall we camped at. The staff was helpful, the food good, the crowds largely absent, the camping a little better and less open than Paine Grande (there was a deer wandering around, probably a Huemel) and the worst of the tourists groups were not to be found (this is a walk in only Refugio, like Cuernos.)
Climbing up the steps we found our first surprise. A woman seated in a rocking chair on the porch of the Refugio asked us, “Did you find your luggage?”
We recognized her as one of the people whose luggage had been lost along with ours. As with many treks, you end up bumping into the same people again and again. She’d eventually gotten her stuff, but not before the entire itinerary of her hike had been upended. She had tried to rent gear but that had failed, and so she’d done what she could…but here she was, smiling and apparently happy. She’d made it this far, to where most tourists never did.
Se reminded us of a very important fact — good attitude and a sense of humor are as important as anything else on a major trek. Especially one where bad weather and transit problems are almost a certainty.
After setting up our tent, we chatted with some returning hikers who assured us that just 15 minutes down the trail was an excellent viewpoint of the glacier. Sylvia confirmed this with the people in the Rifugio’s mini mart.
(The small mini mart, by the way, has a lot of important supplies for sale, incidentally…like wine, beer, donuts, about four shelves full of tampons, and all the Pringles Potato Chips you could stand, as long as you don’t mind a crushed canister.)
We debated going to the Mirador immediately — which might take half an hour — or straight to dinner. We were tired; Sylvia lobbied for dinner, as we’d been advised to eat immediately when the kitchen opened, and Brian was in no mood to argue. We’d rise early and pick the Mirador up in the morning, when the light promised to be good and the crowds hopefully nil.
As we stomped down toward the Rifugio, we heard yet another voice from the past. “I see you’ve completed your hike!” someone said. We looked up and saw yet another of our fellow lost-luggage passengers. This man, out of the Washington DC area, had been doing the O with a small group in an 8-day marathon. He had gone ahead to the park a day before us and we were now catching him on the return; he had already done the entire back side of the O, all the sections we didn’t see, including infamous John Gardner pass, which he described as ‘scary’ and ‘crazy steep.’
He also confirmed that, primitive as the trails on the W were, those on the backside of the O were in much worse shape. Before parting and wishing us luck, he thanked Sylvia for translating on behalf of all the other passengers.
We headed to the refugio and waited for dinner to be served, enjoying some glasses of wine…Brian’s knees were in such bad shape that when he rose from a leather couch his left ‘trick’ knee buckled and he fell sideways, gasping in pain. (Some fellow travelers politely pretended not to notice.) His pain, and the travails of once again setting up camp, had made him moody and short, and Sylvia had grown very tired of dealing with him. No wonder she wanted to take the ‘alternative route’ back.
There were real concerns about tomorrow. Namely, could we return to Refugio Paine Grande in time to catch the 11:30 ferry? If we missed this ride, the next Catamaran did not leave until 6:30 pm…and we’d lose our reservation on the bus. Perhaps we could get on a later bus…but that would still put us in Puerto Natales quite late. Maybe after dark.
This was not what we had hoped. We had planned to get into town with enough time left to do some laundry and have a meal. If we missed the early Catamaran, all that was in doubt. Our next opportunity we come in Argentina…we had almost no clean clothes by this point.
It would be no easy thing. We had to rise at 5:30 am, head down to the Mirador as soon as it was light, then return and break camp, head to breakfast, and leave no later than 7:30 am. This would give us four hours to reach Paine Grande…book time was three and a half. But it had taken us a good five on the way out, and we knew that some of that was due to bad terrain which we would have to cross again. Brian thought our realistic chances to be less than fifty-fifty. He was almost resigned already to missing the ferry…oh well, whatever happened, happened.
We went early to bed knowing tomorrow would be a race if we wanted to catch that early boat.
***Did you know? Paso John Gardner is NOT named for the American Writer (of “Grendel”) nor the British Writer (of James Bond serial novels) nor the famed 19th century Egyptologist. It is named for an obscure British mountain who, in the 1970’s, helped pioneer the O Circuit.***
Next Up: Paine Grande