We took our time waking up on the last morning in the park, since all we had to do was take a boat and then a bus back to Puerto Natales. There are three or four boats from Paine Grande to a bus pick-up every day, the schedules are subject to change, but they usually were at 9, 12, and 5 while we were there. There isn't really much of a system to ensure that the boat will be able to fit everyone, it follows the same general rule of the park, which is "things tend to work themselves out". Which actually does seem to be true. All of the buses wait for the boat to arrive before leaving to their next pick-up, so we didn't have to worry about them leaving us. The boat ride back was absolutely astonishingly beautiful, and I'm glad that we decided to end the hike that way, because we were able to get an amazing recap of the park from a new perspective. Which brings me to the theme of this post:
How did we plan all of this and what would we do differently if we were to do it again.
First, here's a current map (as of December 2014):
If you're going during summer (December-February) I would recommend making reservations ahead of time wherever you can. But that is mostly just for peace of mind, because it really seemed like most people were just winging it, and it did appear to work out, more or less. In fact, the night we had a reservation for a platform to camp on in Cuernos (same price as regular camping), when we got there they said they were out of them and that they give them to whoever gets there first. But they did clear out a pretty decent location for us to set up camp, and at that point most people were setting up camps sardine-style in other sites or walkways, so it did still make a difference. There are two main companies that either own the land, or run the refugios/camps, in addition to state-owned free camps:
Fantastico Sur, they own a bunch of the land in TDP, including:
- Refugio/Camp Las Torres
- Refugio/Camp Chileno
- Refugio/Camp Cuernos
- Refugio/Camp Frances (Between Cuernos and Italiano, not shown on this map)
Vertice, they run:
- Refugio/Camp Paine Grande (formerly called Pehoe, which is what many of the signs on the trail still say)
- Refugio/Camp Grey
State Owned, free, no way to make reservations ahead of time. They include:
- Campamento Italiano
- Campemento Torres (not to be confused with Las Torres at the bottom of the mountain)
Those are all the camps along the W, there are a few more if you plan on hiking the O, more state-run ones as well as a couple more owned by Fantastico Sur/Vertice.
We chose to hike East to West, and to do it over 7 days and 6 nights; 5 days of hiking, 2 for getting in/out of the park. A lot of people seemed to be doing it faster than that, but I felt this was a great pace for two people that are in decent but not excellent shape. We definitely took our time with breaks to take in the scenery and take pictures, and this rate allowed for plenty of that. Here's a quick recap:
- Day 1: Took the 2pm bus to the park, arrived at Refugio Las Torres, set up camp, hung out.
- Night 1: Camped at Refugio Las Torres, ate the prepared dinner.
- Day 2: Left our camp all set up, hiked up to Torres del Paine and back, took us about 9 hours total.
- Night 2: Camped at Refugio Torres, ate our own food.
- Day 3: Hiked to Refugio Cuernos, took us about 5 hours.
- Night 3: Camped at Refugio Cuernos, ate the prepared dinner (the food on Christmas eve was great!)
- Day 4: Hiked to Campamento Italiano (2.5 hours), set up camp, hiked up Valle Frances and back to Italiano (6 hours). Note that Campamento Britanico and the end of this trail is closed as of December 2014.
- Night 4: Camped at Italiano, ate our own food.
- Day 5: Hiked to Paine Grande, took us about 3 hours.
- Night 5: Beds in Refugio Paine Grande, ate the prepared dinner.
- Day 6: Hiked to Glacier Gray and back, took us about 8 hours.
- Night 6: Camped at Paine Grande, ate the prepared dinner.
- Day 7: Took the boat and bus back to Puerto Natales.
I almost forgot, YOU HAVE TO BRING IN CHILEAN PESOS. If you're staying in Puerto Natales for a few days, take out cash as early as you can. We ran into the situation where it was the day before we were supposed to leave, and all of the ATMs were just out of money. We found a secret one in some gas station, which ended up being a huge life saver. We brought in about 175,000 CLP (about $280 USD) for the two of us, and we used every penny. Although, we could have spent way less than this if we skipped out on beer, but it's hard to resist a delicious beer after a long day of hiking. And I should add that we paid for our lodging and most of our meals ahead of time, so if you aren't reserving ahead, make sure to bring more (the rates will be on the above sites).
This whole trek is pretty flexible, so if you're in a hurry, I might recommend the following route. If you go faster than this you are either a complete beast, or will be cheating yourself out of really taking in the scenery. I should note that there is no way I could have pulled this off myself at the time, I was definitely not in good enough shape. You can definitely make your own agenda too, just be careful of underestimating how demanding it can be if you aren't in peak physical condition. Times are less precise than above.
- Day 1: Take the early bus to the park, hike up to Refugio Chileno (2.5 hours). [Or if you want to save some money and are feeling hardcore, go all the way up to Campamento Torres, which is just before the steep climb up to the mirador at Torres del Paine (1.5 hours from Chileno). This is particularly tough if you're bringing all of your own food, since this is the heaviest your pack will be and this is all uphill.]
- Night 1: Camp at Chileno [or Campamento Torres].
- Day 2: Start early, hike up to the mirador Torres del Paine (2.5 hours from Chileno, 1 hour from Campamento Torres) [the sunrise is supposed to be amazing, but you'll only have a chance at seeing that from Campamento Torres], come back down, pack your camp up, take the shortcut to Cuernos (4 hours from Chileno, 5.5 hours from Campamento Torres).
- Night 2: Camp at Cuernos.
- Day 3: Hike to Campamento Italiano (2.5 hours), set up camp, hike up Valle Frances and back to Italiano (6 hours).
- Night 3: Camp at Italiano.
- Day 4: Pass through Paine Grande and hike to Refugio Gray (7 hours).
- Night 4: Camp at Refugio Gray.
- Day 5: Hike back down to Paine Grande early enough to catch one of the boats back to the buses (4 hours).
It's definitely not a race, so I wouldn't personally recommend the second one unless you are an experienced backpacker, but we really did take our time, so doing some kind of combination of the two isn't a bad idea.
There's a lot of debate on the trail over if it's better to go East-West or West-East. I think the biggest arguments for either direction are: going West-East gives you a way better view between Paine Grande and Italiano, the wind generally goes West-East, so having that at your back is nice, and going East-West saves the beautiful panoramic lake ride for the end, so you can admire how far you've gone. These directions should work just fine in reverse, just study that map while you're planning it out and you should be ok.
It wouldn't be a post about Patagonia if I didn't include a bit about the weather. The weather can turn on you in a second, so prepare for the worst, just in case. You could tell who all of the new hikers were because they all had these giant neon sails on their packs called "pack covers". We entirely skipped that and just lined our packs with heavy duty garbage bags, which did the trick. Although, we got INSANELY lucky in that we had uncharacteristically fantastic weather for almost our whole hike. We had one day where it was raining, but it never got too bad, and we had already set up camp, so we weren't carrying our full packs.
Hopefully someone finds this informative, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out!