i made it Campamento Paine Grande in only 2.5 hours without any struggle due to the flat and even terrain. this trail was through the a portion of the park that was affected by the recent fire that was set by a tourist and it was very obvious how large of an impact that fire had.
trees were completely black and on the hillside you could see a fine divide between the dead and living trees. a huge problem with this fire is that the majority of the trees it destroyed cannot regenerate themselves, therefore new trees need to be planted in their place for the park to return to its former state :(
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| hiking through the burnt zone |
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| you can see the burn line, between the brown on the left and the green trees on the right |
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| dead everything |
Campamento Paine Grande was completely burnt black but luckily the refugio at the site was salvaged
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| burnt campsite, but still a beautiful lake and clear blue skies |
after lunch we left at 2:15 pm for our final destination Campamento Grey
along the trail was a lake "lago grey" with ICEBERGS! i had never seen an iceberg before and thought this was amazing.
the hike to the first lookout wasn't too difficult and we had an amazing view of Glacier Grey - the first glacier i'd ever seen!
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| almost to the lookout |
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| amazing! and fantastic weather. |
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| ¡Viva Chile! |
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| my new dysfunctional family |
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| rapha, nat, jules, keelin, me |
... and now presenting my glacier photo shoot ...
...then i decided to get slightly more creative...
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| yeeee |
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| sort of awkward. it was kinda difficult to get my leg up there with a messed up knee and hiking boots |
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| scorpion. |
after spending time admiring glacier grey we began the last leg of our journey for the day.
on the way to camp we talked to a Chilean man named Patricio going the opposite way on the trail who asked what i did to my leg. then we started talking to him about our universities, La Chile and La Católica and from there it led to the project "Revivamos Las Torres" which is a group of volunteers working to rebuild the park after the fire. we asked him who specifically started the fire and he confirmed the rumors we had heard that it was an Israeli man who lit his toilet paper on fire. dumbass.
Patricio also went into detail how Israelis have an extremely poor reputation throughout South America. the tourist only had to pay $10,000 USD (practically nothing considering the extent of damage his stupidity caused) and the Israeli government did absolutely nothing to assist in damage reparations
he also told us that when a Czech citizen accidentally started a fire, the Czech government contributed a ton to help repair the damages
according to Patricio, Israelis have bad reputations in Peru, Columbia, Argentina, and Chile, to name a few countries. i personally do not have any prejudice towards israeli people, but as numerous Chileans have said "these are just the facts".
right now there are 150 volunteers working in the park and in May there is a free trip to Torres del Paine to help out, all air fare, lodging, and food included. if i somehow find out how i can possibly join that group i would be ecstatic
after talking to him it took FOREVER to reach camp. my knee was starting to really slow me down as i couldn't bend it again without sharp pains. we literally had to scale an effing mountain to reach camp which was SUPER steep downhill with tons of rocks. i feel like that's how i have been describing every difficult part, but this time it really was the hardest part yet of the entire W circuit
i almost ate shit on a rock face. forreal.
keelin and i were both having knee problems so we fell behind and when we finally saw a lady on the trail going the opposite way we asked her how far we had to go because in my head i kept thinking we had to be 15 minutes MAX from camp. she said we had an hour to go and could probably make it in less because she was walking really slow
and...
it took us 2 more hours to get there.
around every bend my mind kept telling me
"it's gotta be at the end of this path
.... top of this hill
.... bottom of this hill
.... around the creek"
and it never was. i even saw these really pretty purple flowers that i considered stopping to take a picture of but i just was so impatient and had to get to camp ASAP that i kept going.
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| keelin and i walking up to the campsite. longest day of my life. |
we reached camp at 6:30 pm and hung our sweaty clothes on the trees
originally we had been planning to go an hour past camp to the final lookout but we were all so exhausted that we vouched to go to the closer lookout only 15 minutes away.
still had an incredible view!
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| Glacier Grey |
we borrowed this hilarious Chilean man's cocinilla to cook our pasta, which we dropped half of on the floor but ate anyway.
this man was camping with his two young daughters who obviously got mad at Rapha for not knowing the difference between Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus
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| dinner time! |
...but woke up before the sunrise to make it out of camp the next morning to catch the ferry out of the park!
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