Torres Del Paine (Patagonia)-5th Day of O Circuit

I woke up before the crack of dawn the next morning.  It was literally freezing out, and the last thing I wanted to do was crawl out of my lukewarm sleeping bag into the cold and break down my tent.  

I was halfway expecting a nice sunny day, and when I looked up at the sky it had a pinkish hue to it, which seemed like a promising sign, but really is nothing more than cloud cover

This was going to a very long hike in terms of time (10 hours), and not necessarily distance (only 14 miles).  I was to hike up about 1800 feet and then hike down about 3600 feet.

 

Right of the gate, the terrain was difficult.  It was muddy and rocky.  There were roots all over the place.  The trail was not well marked in some places.  

After I had to make my way through the muddy rooted forest, I had to climb up a fairly rocky terrain.  You can obviously see the cloud cover that would never really lift.

I did see a nice glacier near the top though. 

I still had a ways to go to get to the peak.  They say at times, the winds can be near 100mph  up here, at which point, hikers have had to literally crawl on their hands and knees to get to the top.  Although the weather was not great, I was fortunate that there was no wind to speak of, which is actually a rare occurrence.

. . . and when I finally did, I thought that the hard part was over, as it was all down hill from there.  But I was seriously mistaken.  Going down the other rocky side was more difficult than hiking to the peak.  But I had a great view of Glacier Grey.  This is a huge glacier that is 3 miles wide. 

I thought it was just a hundred feet to the glacier, but it was so deceptive that it is actually over 3,000 feet down to the glacier and about 3 hours.  

  

What you see is in the picture is what I saw.  The cracks in the glacier that you see are actually about 50 feet deep.  

As amazing as this view was, I was still wondering what it would look like in direct sunlight.  I was thinking more than amazing.  You can see a little blue in the sky, and I was praying that it would just open up.  But it never did, and I could only settle for the little sun rays that peaked though the clouds at times.

All the way down the terrain was relentless.  This is not an exaggeration when I say that 90 percent of this hike was straight up or straight down over rocks, mud, and roots.  With a heavy backpack, it was extremely difficult, and with one wrong step, gravity was going to do a number on you.  My feet were starting to kill me, and thinking like an engineer, I was just hoping to walk on ground where the force of gravity was perpendicular to it.

Eventually, I came to a series of bridges, which was quite nice as I did not have to go down and then up, but just straight across.

At the end of the glacier as it entered the lake, there was a cool little baby glacier.  I'm not sure if I could call it an iceberg as it wasn't really floating.

As I was walking away from the Glacier Grey and along Grey Lake, I kept looking back, begging the skies to open up.  Please, please . . .

I am a bit spoiled with scenery now, and perhaps even jaded, but this was an extremely difficult hike for me, so I deserved spectacular scenery.  But it never happened.

Eventually, I finally came to a flat spot with 2km left to go, and it felt like such a breeze.  When I got to my destination, I attempted to check into the camp site, but my reservations were not for the camp site, but for the lodge next door.  I have to admit.  I was not disappointed.  At this point, I was looking forward to a nice warm bed, and not having to set up and break down a tent.  My gourmet tuna fish was no longer, and I was looking forward to a warm meal, which I had not had for 5 days.  And that night, I feasted and slept like a baby. 

#torresdelpaine #patagonia #Chile