DAY 4
Day four was another day of beautiful scenery. We were headed from the middle of the W to halfway up the last (right) leg. The weather was perfect and we had a great view of the mountains and the surrounding plains. We were able to find the fabled shortcut, which was glorious until we got to some really wet/muddy parts (path not maintained as well as the real route) and my tennis shoes failed me...wet feet. We met an older German man along the way and we were asking him about the Torres (the crazy cool mountains we would see on day 5, the namesakes of the Park) and he says 'the torres, they are ok. We have mountains like that in Europe too'. Please please God, let me never be that spoiled. They were fantastic.
About a mile before we arrived at Refugio Chileno, where we were to stay for the night the wind picked up. And when I say it picked up...I really mean it. When we were going uphill, we could barely move. When we were going downhill, I just acted as if I wanted to fall forward on my face. But I never did because the wind always held me up. Everyones glasses got big nicks in the from the dirt/rocks that the wind was throwing at us. All this on a 1ft wide path on the side of a sheer cliff. It was fun. The weather got pretty nasty after we got to our refugio and we were glad we got an early start. Chris and Bernie (the Germans) joined us later and they had slept in and thus endured some much more intense weather. We had told them about the shortcut the night before, except all we knew what that it was a left that was 'obvious, but not marked'. They took a different left than us and ended up on the edge of a cliff. Bernie got knocked over by the wind, and then pinned to the ground by it. It was Halloween back in the U.S. and the six of us managed to consume three boxes of wine that evening and we taught them Egyptian Ratscrew (a card game, for those of you who don't know).
DAY 5
Our last day in the park was stunning. It was the day we hiked up to the Torres, which is what people do if they are only going to do one thing in the park. We woke up at sunrise, (early) where we could partially see the torres from our refugio. The way the sun shines on them it turnes the torres a crazy red/pink color just as the sun rises. I wish I had a picture. They are all on Val and Lance's camera, and I don't have theirs yet. After watching that for a bit we headed out for an early start. It was a relatively short hike up to the torres, but extremely steep and we were all totally winded by the time we got there. There was not a cloud in the sky and the torres were amazing. It was frigid and we were all starving (no breakfast yet), so we stayed for 30-45 minutes and then headed back down. We could not have hoped for a better last day.
The rest of the day consisted of hiking back to the park exit where we sat around for a few hours waiting for our bus, and then heading back to Puerto Natales. We all enjoyed some hot showers and then went to gorge ourselves on pizza and beer after living on oatmeal, tuna, and dehydrated food for the last 5 days. Except for the Germans. They had been living on things like 16 hardboiled eggs, pickles, peanut butter, avocados and...anything else you can think of that you wouldn't normally bring hiking.
Clean and happy
Matt, Chris, and Bernie
My pizza. It was delicious. And it had a fried egg on it. Which was odd.
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