We arrived in El Chalten, the jumping off point for Parque Nacional Los Glaciars (North), in the afternoon via boat, foot, boat and then bus. I had crossed the border with only Chilean pesos thinking I would be able to change them into Argentinian pesos in EL Chalten. Well that was unfortunately incorrect and the 1 and only ATM was not working. Only a few hostels, restaurants and luckily one grocery store accepted credit cards. So after a few frustrating hours of figuring out what to do, where to stay etc, and trying to stay on foot and not be blown around by the incredible winds that blow in this valley (from my experience, Chicago does not even compare). I am surprised it is not named for the wind as opposed to the translation of smoky mountain or peak of fire, we settled down in a dormitory.
Charles and David, the Frenchman from the Villa O’Higgins, happened to be our dormmates. That evening after some wine and discussion with 3 Aussie girls, we all decided to go on a 3 day trekking adventure and what an amazing adventure it turned out to be!!!! So the seven of us, Dylan, Charles, David, Helen, Danielle, Shannon and myself took off the next morning. It definitely goes down as one of the best backpacking trips ever. All you hikers and backpackers need to come down here!!! Ignore the difficulties of the actual town and often extreme rudeness of the people and get out and hike.
WOW, WOW and WOW is all I kept saying for 3 days straight!! We hiked through valleys, forests, clear sparkling springs and rivers, saw many glaciars, jagged mountain peaks, rounded mountains, valleys filled with luscious hues of blue lakes and of course SNOW. Yipppeeee. I got to make another snow angel in the belly of Mt FitzRoy! The first day we hiked to Laguna Capri, ate lunch, stopped and climbed a small hill for better views and then headed up to camp at Camp Poincenot. Now the 2 campgrounds we camped at were free so that was nice but if you want to camp alone, this is defiantly not the place. So we set up in our little camp city, 20 - 30 tents and then headed up Mt FitzRoy to Laguna de Los Tres and the smaller Laguna Sucia. WOW, it was gorgeous! We hiked up, scrambling along the rocky trail and once we reached the ridgeline we got a tremendous view of FitzRoy with Laguna de Los Tres at the base of his main tower. Phenomenal. We hiked behind a large moraine to Laguna Sucia and enjoyed the incredible views.
The next morning, Helen and hiked up in the dark to see one of the best sunrises ever.
After breakfast, Dylan, David and I then hiked to Laguna Las Piedras Blancas. Now we had seen this glacial field with a waterfall cascading down the day prior when we hiked up the hill and we wanted to go get a closer look. We had a gentle hike along a rushing river and then came to an enormous boulder field, After scrambling across fro about 15 - 20 minutes, we came to the blue glacial field, waterfalls and a gray, sediment filled Laguna with some small floating icebergs. Now when I first saw this, some of autistic tendencies came out and I started flapping my hands in excitement. Quite funny must I say when I realized what I was doing. But this was the first time I have seen floating icebergs in a lake. Beautiuos. We sat just mesmerized by the view. We saw AND heard some of the ice break off and become icebergs and weathered the wind because it was just so damn gorgeous.
We hiked back to camp, packed up and then moved onto Laguna Torres. We hiked in forests, along 2 other lakes, some savannah plains (or at least that is what it seemed to us), mountains, rivers and hiked past the Dead Marshes of Lord of the Rings fame. The landscape reminded all of us of Lord of the Rings which makes sense because I have heard Patagonia be compared to New Zealand where the flick is filmed as well as British Colombia. Anyway, a wind storm blew in for the last hour of our hike and we were walking directly into the headwind. WHEWEE. This reminded me of another excursion I had gone on 2 years ago, where me and 2 of my buddies decided to climb up Mt Bachelor because we wanted to keep skiing despite the fact that all the lifts closed down at 10 am. That day we did not even make it to mid mountain because the wind, we later found out, was blowing at 60 - 80 miles an hour. Hurricane winds - we were crazy, getting blown all over the place and not being able to see much because of all the blowing snow sideways, up, down and all around. Needless to say, there was no snow blowing, only a bit of precipitation and some sand, in Patagonia but I was thankful to have a full pack on my back to keep me somewhat steady on my feet. The winds seemed to be a bit less, so maybe only 40 - 60 miles an hour but we made it to camp with only a bit of a struggle. At camp we set our tents up next to our Aussie friends who decided not to trek to Laguna Las Piedras. But after about an hour of blowing sand we decided to move camp. So we took some cover with the other campers behind some bushes/trees. The wind still blew but at leasr the foliage cut the sand from blowing everywhere. It was really quite funny to pick up our tents, one by one and move them over the campground. After dinner, we decided to hike up to Cerro Torre and the Laguna Torre. Boy the wind was whipping up there. We were leaning into the wind and being able to stay upright for about 3 - 5 seconds. FUN! There were some icebergs here too and I was able to stay a little calmer, keeping my hands down and only giving a few hoots and hollers!
The next day we hiked back up (it was really close, only about 15 minutes or so) and we got a rare, clear view of Cerro Torres. As the name depicts, it also has some spires. After that we hiked out the last 3 hours and got back to town. I loved just hiking right back into town. Usually after a backpacking trip, I hike out to the trailhead, get in my car and then drive to the nearest town. Here you hike right back to the center of town if you choose. We first went to the ATM which was working (YEAH!!), got food, showered, packed up and got on a bus to EL Calafate.
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