28 February–1 March 2014
There is a bucket-list-worthy backpacking route through Torres del Paine called "The W", but alas, backpacking was not in the cards for this trip. Instead, we hitched a ride on the only other way to get where we were sleeping: a catamaran.
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| Our sweet ride |
The word "catamaran" sounded so swanky to my Midwestern ears, I half-expected mixed drinks and nautical-themed pashmina afghans.
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| I'm on a boat |
In reality, it's a boat. Nothing wrong with it, perfectly sea-worthy, but basically just a passenger ferry. Can't complain about the view, though.
Soon our destination was in sight. See that building on the left? The one between the super-blue lake and the big pointy mountain? That's the one. Refugio Paine Grande.
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| View from the front door |
After a night eating our rather expensive cafeteria food and sleeping in our rather expensive bunkbeds (location, location, location), in the morning we took the advice of basically every hiker we had met and headed down the trail to Grey Glacier.
There were no longer any cautionary "fuertes vientos" signs, but that didn't stop the wind from being even stronger than yesterday.
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| This flag got its artful wear-and-tear look honestly |
So, the trail. There was a flat part, then some not-so-flat parts.
There was windy little Duck Lake:
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| No ducks were spotted in Laguna los Patos |
...and a peaceful, mostly wind-free section with some flora that didn't burn down recently, for a change.
Once we came within occasional sight of Grey Lake, this became a common sight: little icebergs, just floating along.
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| Excuse me, I think you dropped something |
As we came to the top of a rise, it got really, really windy, and then we saw this:
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| Lego Grey and Glacier Grey beyond |
On this overlook, I was comforted to know that at least the gale-force winds were blowing away from the precipitous drop-off, and we would merely get banged up on the rock in front of us if we lost our shoving match with Nature.
Grey Glacier is huge. Like, giant sheet of ice-blue prehistoric ice huge. I've never been to Alaska, but the glaciers in Washington and Montana have got nothing on this mama-jama.
It's possible to hike all the the way to, and even onto, the glacier, but we had a catamaran to catch, so we headed back.
Have I mentioned how windy it was? I have honestly never felt anything like it. This photo is not staged; I am braced and angling my shoulder forward in fighting stance in order to take a picture without flying away like a rejected nanny in Mary Poppins.
Thankfully, we kept our literal feet on the ground. If you want to get metaphorical, Torres del Paine pretty well swept me off my feet.
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