Torres del Paine - Day 1

The bus to Torres del Paine park was scheduled to come at 7:30 in the morning and we over slept the alarm, so there was a bit of a fuss grabbing all our stuff and getting on the bus, but we made it none the less. It was a 1.5 hour bus ride to the park, and to that point we had not completely decided where we were going to start, or which direction we were going to hike once we got there, however on the ride over we finalized that we were not going to take the boat ride to the optional start due to the cost and we were going to hike counter, or as they say here, anti-clockwise on the park loop, the reason for this was if we hiked clockwise we would see all the famous sights first, where as if we hiked anti-clockwise we would save the really nice views for the last two days of the trek. There are two main classification of hikes in the park, people either hike the W, which is a series of three legs of the trail that go up into the Torres, or they hike the O which is the loop that goes all the way around the park. The W is much more popular because it is much shorter and still has the really nice views, we of course opted for the longer O version which incorporated the longer loop and the W.

Once we arrived we decided to hike up the right most leg of the W because it was later in the day and that would give us a casual first day of hiking. As we headed up into the valley the sunny weather turned into gusty hail and snow flurries. We reached camp and right before we went to set up our tent, who do we see coming up the trail but Rok, we laugh and say hello, he still hadn´t gotten his bag and just hiked up the right leg of the W in hopes of seeing the towers, before going back down to get his bag. At this point having run into him 3 random times now rather than saying goodbye, we say see you again and he´s off to the towers and we set up camp and hunker down for some cards in the tent hoping the snow will stop. After Greta winning a couple games of rummy the snow does break and the sun is shinning so we head up to the towers. It takes about 45 minutes to get up to the Torres and when we arrive they are so socked in that only 100 meters away and you can´t see a thing. Some people that are heading down say that it cleared for them and we should wait by the lake and see if we get lucky and sure enough after about 30 minutes at the mountain lake, the clouds clear and we got a nice view up close of the three Torres.