This my good brothers and sisters, is a land of harsh extremes… Here is a place where it can (and will) rain, hail, and snow on you in a single day. Here is a landscape where the (weather seasoned) people of Tierra del Fuego determined it was too inhospitable to live. The wind blows pretty fiercely down here: It’s relentless, bone chilling, and quite nerve racking for anyone trying to hike along the edge of a steep and slippery slope. So why would anyone in their right mind come here? To answer this question, one only has to open one’s eyes. It is gorgeous here… just breathtakingly, heart-achingly gorgeous. I mean, you just want to yell out at the top of your lungs, “Are you kidding me right now?”… halfway expecting an answer from whatever all powerful force/entity created such a spectacle. This place has it all: Lakes of sparkling sapphire and glowing turquoise… towering peaks of black and tan granite… snow covered mountains… psychedelic forests of red, yellow, and green… And towering hulks of glacial ice that threaten to devour anything that lay in it’s path. If you can brave some of the elements, the poet in you (not to mention the photographer) will be much obliged.
Parque National Torres Del Paine
- Ana wanted nothing to do with it, as it requires some sleeping in the cold.
- Hiking on my own would be hard because I had no camping gear.
- We only had 1 clear day before the weather turned absolutely miserable.
Seeing as we only had one day to really see most of the park (before the clouds shrouded everything), we opted to sign up for a full-day tour which would cart us around to some of the more photogenic spots. We probably could not have picked a more perfect day for this. The skies were clear and blue and not obstructing any views. Even the few clouds that remained were wispy and swirling… creating interesting visual effects. Some of the most incredible photographs I have ever taken have come from this day, and the pictures just really do not do the scenery any justice. The mountains are just so immense and jagged and imposing… it is impossible to get the correct sense of scale and the proper perspective from seeing it on the screen.
The next day we made it out to the park to hike the eastern leg of the “W” as a day hike. We were pushing our luck a bit as there was a storm coming in later that afternoon, and we were kind of racing to beat it. We got as far as the 1st pass before Refugio Chileno as the storm came in much more quickly than we had hoped. At one point Ana wanted to smack me silly as she thought that I had been blown off a cliff by the 60MPH+ sustained winds. Not that she had anything to worry about… The only reason that she couldn’t see me anymore was because I was crouched on all fours clinging to a boulder after almost getting blown off a cliff!
Parque National Los Glaciares (Perito Moreno)
Ok seriously… what is up with this weather? We took a look at a few different weather forecasts and saw that it would take nearly a week to wait out some of the storms passing through the area. What ever happened to spring shoulder season? No such thing I suppose. Instead of hunkering down and waiting around for 5 days (or –gulp- hiking in a torrential downpour) we decided to roll the dice and see what the weather was like on the Argentinean side of Patagonia. It couldn’t be any worse than Puerto Natales… Right?
After a 5 hour bus ride east, we were back in Argentina at the tourist town of Calafate. Here we signed up for a bus transfer to take us to see the glacier Perito Moreno: The natural wonder that every guidebook insists is a must see to any trip to Patagonia. We got there and discovered a remarkable winter wonderland. It was snowing. Hard. Like Lake Tahoe in the winter hard. We could barely see a thing; I couldn’t believe our miserable luck. The glacier itself is still pretty impressive, even through all the thick grey clouds of snow. The ice is noticeably blue and rugged… like the crooked teeth of some gargantuan predator perpetually frozen into a terrifying howl. They say that this glacier is very important, as it is one of the few remaining glaciers that is still advancing. Obviously it can’t be bothered with all of this global warming talk. As you stand and gaze at the endless expanse of ice, you can actually hear the glacier at work: the silence interrupted every now and again with the clapping thunder of expanding and cracking ice. If you’re lucky, you might even see a piece break off and float away down the lake.
Parque National Los Glaciares (Fitz Roy)
Next up, we headed north to the town of El Chaltén, home to the northern part of Parque National Los Glaciares. This is where the famous Fitz Roy mountain peaks call home and is kind of the Argentinean equivalent of Torres Del Paine. The hiking here is much better set up for tourism and day hikes, as most trail heads actually start at the outskirts of town.
We rushed off the bus and headed (more or less) straight for the Sendero al Fitz Roy to get a hike in right away. As was becoming (unnervingly) common, we were trying to beat a storm that was due in sometime the next morning… We wanted to try and get a look at the Fitz Roy peak before it was completely shrouded in clouds for the next few days. And we did beat the storm in… kind of. I think that I got a glimpse of the peak for all of about 30 seconds before the clouds swallowed the mountain whole. The hike itself was incredible though. The thing that struck me the most was all of the completely unusual colors seen along the way. The rocks were tan, and green, and black, and sometimes (in the case of the glaciers) blue. The trees and grass were red and yellow, where green leaves should have rightfully been. and the waters and streams were green and turquoise due to the milky glacial fed waters. This must be quite an impressive sight to see when the sun is actually out once or twice a month. Similarly to our Torres Del Paine hike, we didn’t actually make it up to Laguna del los Tres because of waning daylight and a quickly building weather system. Of note: This part of Patagonia shares the same high wind conditions as its Chilean counterpart.
Click Here to see a map of Patagonia near the end of the world.
… and here are some pictures to see what we’re talking about:
http://www.picasaweb.com/richmosko/TorresDelPaine
http://www.picasaweb.com/richmosko/PeritoMoreno
http://www.picasaweb.com/richmosko/FitzRoy
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