Sunday, December 19, 2010

Torres del Paine - Day 4

It was ridiculously windy last night. We were both very thankful to be camping in a stand of trees and not perched on an exposed ridge somewhere. When I removed the ear plugs from my ears and listened for the sound of rain in the morning, I was disappointed to hear that the wind really hadn´t let up. BUT miraculously, the tent was DRY! We packed up in a hurry so as to avoid another wet tent, gorged on some breakfast and hit the trail hoping to get over the pass before conditions worsened. As we often do on mountain adventures, we got extremely lucky. Yes, it was windy but not nearly as windy as we would exerience on the last day of our trek. With a few snow flurries in the sky, we made it over the pass without a hitch and descended the knarly backside. The backside was a series of steep muddy stairs littered with rocks and roots. Yuck.

The reward for making it down the backside? Incredible(!) upclose views of the Grey Glacier. Wow. Seriously. I´ve seen some pretty impressive glaciers in Alaska and this one was definitely up there with some of the best I´ve seen. For the first night on the trail, we had blue skies and a great campsite beside Lake Grey albiet a crowded one with over 50 people. Go figure, it had a refugio (shelter), showers, flush toilets, amazing views, offered cooked meals to those who paid and it was part of the W trail. We were getting back to the touristy side of the park and while Graham loves mingling with people, I itched to get back on the backside where the camps were a lot more intimate and private.

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