South America - Part 2

Day 2

Day two we ramped it up a bit and had 15.5 miles to cover. First we retraced our steps along Lago Grey back to Lago Pehoe and then had a nice flat section to Campo Italiano. The trek is called the "W" trek because, well, it is shaped like a W. So, day one was going up the left side of the W, day two is going back down and then over to the middle. We had more beautiful views of the glacier, the lakes, and it cleared up even more so that we got to see the beautiful mountains that we would be getting up close and personal with in the next few days. It was one of the less exciting days but still stunning all around. A few pics:

(in case you can't read it, the sign says 'only two people at a time on the bridge') A little sketch.

Lago Nordenskjold, on the banks of which we would spend the next two nights.

DAY 3

Day three was Valle Frances (French Valley in English) which was going up the middle part of the W and back. We had been told it was one of the more beautiful parts of the hike but also told that you can get some of the best views from mid-way up the valley and also that the mirador (look-out) at the very top was snowed in. To top it off the day started out windy and snowy. All told we knew we wanted to do the French Valley but didn't know how far up it we were really going to go. We had a steep 3-4 mile climb uphill before we even got to the valley and Valerie's knee started hurting her immediately. By the time we had almost reached the top she was in a lot of pain and despite the fact that 'valley' might sound nice and flat we knew it would be steep going for the rest of the day and that we had a big day the next day too. After all, we were in the middle of the W and you have to get out. Val made the sad but wise decision to turn back and give the knee a rest for the day to make sure it was up for the rest of the trip. Matt, Lance and I continued on as the weather continued to deteriorate. Despite the sideways blowing snow we got a great view of a mountain and another spectacular glacier, along with some cool waterfalls and miniature forests.

After an hour and a half Lance decided to turn back since we had already been gone 3 hours and Val would have been sitting alone at the refugio all day had he kept going. Matt and I decided to continue on "20 more minutes" and ended up not stopping. Boy were we glad we kept going. We had a nice peaceful walk in the snow through some cool forests and then stepped out into a clearing just as the weather was clearing...and had some spectacular view of the Cuernos. The mirador was a couple miles further up and in the company of a nice Australian guy we ran into along the trail we made it to the top just before the clouds and snow returned.

Matt and I raced back down the mountain and made it back to the refugio just as the weather began to furthur deteriorate. We were all tired (two 15 mile days in a row) and sprung for a box of wine that night. Yes, box. Stuff is expensive out there. And we were too tired to care. We had met two German guys who are our age on the trail the first night, and they showed up at the same place again that night....and followed us around for the rest of the trip. :) No, just kidding. But we did end up hangning out with them most of the rest of the trip, which was lots of fun. We learned lots of very useful German words like 'schmoshebearshin' (I'm sure I spelled that wrong) which means 'little cuddly bear' and 'bier' and 'wein', which are of course, beer and wine. No, I do not know how to ask where the bathroom is, or anything that might actually help me in Germany, but Lance can rap a little bit in German. That is way more valuable.

South America - Part 1

Well first off, we are back. Sadly. We had an absolutely amazing time and were not ready to come home. Getting settled back into work is taking some time, but thanks to all the veterans...I have today off. :) There is so much to say about this trip, so I'm going to take it in pieces, starting with our treking in Torres del Paine National Park. The whole trip was fantastic. We had amazing weather the entire time, saw so many new things, worked hard, relaxed, made some great friends, and learned.

Its going to take me a couple posts to get everything up here so just stay posted. I'll also be putting up a Picassa album with more of the pictures (don't worry there are only 175, not the 1800 that I took) so I'll post a link to that once it is up.

It took us 6 flights to get to our destination (thank you Alaska frequent flier miles for the free flights) which was Punta Arenas, Chile. Punta Arenas is on the Staight of Magellan and fights with Ushuia, Argentina over the rights to calling itself the southernmost city in the world. Either way, its wayyy down there. Upon arrival we discovered that one of my (Mackenzie) hiking boots was missing. Gone. It had come unattatched from my backpack at some point during the journey. Drama drama. Long story short I ended up doing 55 miles in my running shoes. It could have been worse, I almost didn't even bring those.

Matt standing in the Straight of Magellan

Punta Arenas

      Next we headed up to Puerto Natales, Chile and then into the Park. We had better weather than we could have ever hoped or dreamed of. In Patagonia, the weather changes every 5 minutes and most days include clouds, rain, snow, LOTS of wind, and perhaps some sunshine. We read multiple trip reports of people who trekked for 5 days and were so excited that "that weather cleared for 20 minutes on our last day and we were able to get some great shots of the torres!".  We did actually encounter all of the above weather, but mainly we encountered sunshine. Sunshine and wind. Patagonia frequently has winds up to 100mph, often sustained winds of 60mph. We had three perfectly absolutely sunny days. One beautiful day that turned into rainy windy madness a about 20 minutes before we arrived at our destination, and one day of snowy windy madness that gave us a beautiful hour of blue skies right at we reached the top of valley. We could not have been luckier.

DAY 1

We took a bus ride from Puerto Natales into the Park on the way saw some cool Patagonian wildlife. The bus windows were not very conducive to taking pictures but we saw guanacos (kind of like a llama, google it) and a mama rhea (kind of like an ostrich) with 20 babies. Once we got into the park we took a catamaran across Lago Pehoe. The lakes are all glacial lakes which have the crazy turquoise color that humbles even Carribean water.

This was our shortest day. After the boat ride we had a 6.5 mile day along Lago Grey, up to Glacier Grey. It was incredible. Glacier Grey is part of the Patagonian ice field, which is the third biggest ice field in the world, the largest outside of Antarctica. It was stunning. None of us had ever seen huge icebergs, and gigantic snowfields before and we were awestuck. Everywhere we turned was something new and amazing.

Matt and I with the glacier in the background

 

We made it!

We just got back to Puerto Natales after finishing the ¨W¨ trek in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. It was an absolutely INCREDIBLE experience. We had an amazing time, saw the most beautiful scenery ever, and had better weather than could ever be hoped for in Patagonia. Fifty five miles later we are all very tired and sore, but we all managed to survive our various injuries and illnesses (of which there were many) and had an amazing time. It was insanely beautiful. No pictures uploaded now and there are a bunch of people behind me waiting for the computer so I will keep this short but everything is wonderful.

Patagonia - Itinerary & Map

We leave in six days! Here's a quick run down of where we will be, and what we will be doing:

Sunday Oct 25th: Fly away
Monday Oct 26h: Arrive Punta Arenas, Chile (after 6 flights)
Tuesday Oct 27th: Explore Punta Arenas, take a bus to Puerto Natales, Chile
Wednesday Oct 28th: Begin the W trek. 50 miles total in 5 days.
Thursday Oct 29: Trek
Friday Oct 30: Trek
Saturday Oct 31: No Halloween for us, we will be trekking!
Sunday Nov 1: Trek
Monday Nov 2: Take the bus back to Punta Arenas and embark in the afternoon on a zodiac to Isla Magdelena in the Straight of Megellan to see a penguin colony of 150,000 pengiuns!
Tueday Nov 3: Morning flight back to Santiago, Chile, explore the city
Wednesday Nov 4: Rent a car and head over the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina. Awesome scenery along the way, and then some fabulous wine tasting.
Thursday Nov 5: Spend the day in Mendoza, head back to Santiago in the evening.
Friday Nov 6: Keep the car, head to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, on the Chilean cost for some relaxing beach time after our hard working adventures.
Saturday Nov 7: Beach day. 10pm flight back to home sweet Seattle

Here is a map showing all the places we will be!
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=105410165168989088692.00046f664bc870f0daf61

Granite Mt., WA

Ok, so we didn't quite make our goal of hiking every Saturday before our trip. Not even close. We have been busy, busy with other stuff. But we did head out on Saturday morning for Granite Mountain, which is 8 miles roundtrip (not bad) and 4000 ft of elevation gain (alot). There were high clouds so we didn't get to see Mt Rainier, but we saw a lot of other closer peaks, so we weren't too disappointed. The fall colors were amazing!

There was some seriously crazy ice going on.

On other notes, we leave for Patagonia in less the two weeks, which we cannot believe! We have been planning this trip since last Christmas, so it has been a long time in the works and we are so excited. In the coming week or so I will be posting some info on where we will be, and what we will be up to, and we will post as often as possible while we are gone. Trekking is not very conducive to the internet though, so we will see.

Matt has been studying like mad for about 5 months now for CPA exams, and has successfully passed two of them (yay!!!!) and takes his third Oct 23, two days before we leave. Think happy thoughts for him next Friday. If we are anti-social until January (last one should be Jan 8th) this is why. And why we have been anti-social (at least not as social as we would like) for the past five months. This too shall pass....

A Look Back at the Summer, WA, OR, & TX

Ah glorious summer. My favorite time of year. We actually didn't have a camera most of the summer (it mysteriously disappeared after our Ireland trip) but here is a quick look back at some of the highlights we were able to capture.

Just prior to startin' up our blog I (mackenzie, solo) took a weekend trip out to good ol' Texas to be at my cousin Jeff's wedding to his beautiful bride Katie. I got to see all the fam and had an awesome visit.

Yum, yum, Tides Tavern. My parents took us to their favorite establishment in Gig Harbor for lunch. It even has its own dock so we just boated right up to lunch. Neat.

Matt catching some sweet air on the wakeboard just in front of my parents house.

We took a day trip with Valerie + Lance in the kayaks to Blake Island. The whole island is a state park so you can boat up, camp, hike,etc. Its beautiful. A bit of a long (challenging) kayak trip but thoroughly enjoyable.

Seafair! Seattle's ultimate summer-fair. haha.

While we had seen the blue angels a number of times we had never been to the pits to watch the hydro-plane races, so this year we scored some cheap tickets and got to watch these boat w/ jet engines go 200+ mph in the water. Cool

Some of our awesome friends who joined us at the pits

Val, Lance, Steven, and Jenna

The Blue Angels. Always amazing.

Well, our camera was MIA. But we drove to Walla Walla, in Eastern Washington and did some amazing wine tasting.

On top of Black Butte, in Bend, OR one of our other favorite places in the world besides Seattle.

We went on an awesome river rafting trip on the Deschutes with our friend Chico and his family.

We went camping at Dungeness Spit up in the Olympics and took a walk out on the spit which stretches FIVE MILES out into the ocean. It was a cool experience.

baby cairn

Enjoying some of the first sunny weather of the summer out on the spit.

There were many more amazing moments but there's some highlights for ya!

Melakwa Lake, WA

After our backpacking trip last weekend the four of us decided a training regimen was in order. The plan: Saturday morning hikes every weekend until we leave! Week #1: Melakwa Lake, off the I-90 freeway, 9 miles roundtrip, 2300 ft elevation gain.



Our plan to get an early start was somewhat thwarted by our wonderful friend Jaci's awesome b-day celebration Friday night, but we were on the trail by 9 am....in the pouring rain. Welcome to fall in Washington. We all started out with good attitudes: what a great opportunity to test the waterproofing capabilities of our gear before we get to South America. The mood itself turned somewhat south when a few rain jackets began to let the water in. Lance's especially. He was absolutely soaking and ended up hiking in a t-shirt for a little while through the pouring rain. Until a mile later Matt realized he actually had another rain coat with him. Way to save the day!

Lance & Valerie, Our rainy beginnning, but before anyone had a chance to actually get too wet

We hiked under I-90. It was actually pretty neat.

Waterfall round 1: wet, trying to look happy.

4.5 miles in/up finally made it to the lake to eat lunch. The lake was beautiful!

Purdy!

Falling apart?

Waterfall round 2: everyone is much drier and happier.

The rain tapered off (as promised) just about the time we finnished our lunches at the lake and by the time we got back to the falls everyone was recovered, dried off, and a couple other hikers had even ventured out so we were able to coerce someone into taking one of the four of us. Fun!