After our awesome night of Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas day promised to be much less cushy. The plan was to hike from Cuernos to Italiano (the only free campsite on our itinerary), set up camp, and then head out to hike up the Valle Frances and back to camp.
This is probably closer to what the hike really looked like...
But this is what it felt like. Because a large chunk of the W is on private land, different groups of people make different signs, depending on where you're standing. This is one of the signs made by the official park service of Chile. The more hand-drawn ones are done by Fantastico Sur.
The first leg of the trip was really smooth, we breezed through it. Well, aside from that apparent wall that we had to climb, that was rough. I think that image is just ever so slightly exaggerated, however.
As we were rounding the corner up to Italiano, the valley that we were about to explore began to take shape.
Nikki walking toward Valle Frances, Cuernos del Paine on the right.
Italiano is one of the two available free campsites on the W (the other one being close to the base of the final ascent to the Torres del Paine, which we skipped to avoid carrying our packs). We got there around 2, which was absolutely perfect timing. Some people arrive at the camp late, and hike through the valley early in the morning, so those people were just about finished taking down their camps when we arrived, so we got some prime real estate. We left at around 3, which gave us about 7 more hours until dark. Going later in the afternoon continually paid off for us, since the W is generally pretty crowded (not like midtown Manhattan, but more like car-camping in a national park in the states), and for some reason everyone just needs to leave at 7am, so the trails feel much emptier during the last 5 hours of daylight (5pm-10pm during December).
It's one of those valleys that are actually mountains.
The trail in the valley definitely had some of the most diverse terrain in the whole park. One of my favorite parts was when the trail just turned into a gentle stream, it seemed like something out of a fairy tale.
Get good hiking boots.
It didn't take us long to reach an unbelievable view, so of course, we took a selfie.
You'd think I'd be better at not cutting off anyone's head at this point.
The incredible thing about this spot is just how dramatically different the landscape appears depending on what direction you're looking.
Cuernos del Paine to our right.
Enormous glacier to our left.
More detail of the glacier.
The most impressive thing about this glacier is that since it's in a valley, you could hear loud, ringing thunder echoing around you any time a chunk of glacier fell from the cliffs. You can get a sense of how windy it gets in this neck of the woods by the amount of dirt and rock that has been blown onto the top of the glacier.
View behind us.
The river was a lot smaller once we made it up past the main glacier.
That shit is delicious.
As we were repeatedly warned, the weather can change in a heartbeat down in Patagonia, and this leg of the trip proved it. Pretty soon it started to rain pretty steadily, so we had to don our full rain gear.
Nikki rushed through the exposed rock field to get out of the rain, but I stuck around to take one of the many "is this an alien planet?" pictures.
Even though conditions were less than ideal, the view was still pretty spectacular in its own rain-filled way.
Despite being well-prepared, scrambling over loose rocks on a steep incline in the rain isn't that easy. We thought we'd never make it up to the top, and after making it to a pretty cool summit, we came across this subtly modified sign.
Those nails make me think this isn't temporary...
And just beyond that, additional subtle signage.
Warning tape and two more signs, seems like it might be a good idea to stop here.
We later found out that there was some rock slide activity and the end of the trail is closed until further notice. The good news is that we were standing in a pretty awesome spot, so it wasn't all for naught.
Standing on a cliff (well, from this angle)
We turned around after this, and began the fun process of understanding what our knees will feel like in 40 years. Everything looked a bit spookier on the way back, accompanied by the fact that we had the whole trail to ourselves. You can tell we were super thrilled about the weather:
Somehow, while the rain refused to stop directly over us, the sun was shining bright on the mountains to our left on the way back.
That is the place to be, apparently.
It wasn't too long after this that the combination of only eating a PB&J, my knees not being cooperative, and slippery conditions conspired to make me completely eat shit. Slipped on a root and totally bent my pole. I then had the brilliant idea to try to bend it back, which of course caused the tip to snap right off. Luckily I didn't get hurt outside of a scrape on my finger and some good old dirt battlescars on the jacket, so it could have been way worse. Glad I decided to get careless where the ground was nice and soft.
We finally make it back to camp with about an hour of daylight left to spare. We finished off the day with two more delicious PB&J's for our lovely Christmas dinner. Not quite as glamorous as the night before, but I'll be damned if that wasn't the best PB&J I've ever had.