Mountain smackdown

We´re back from our ten-day Torres del Paine trek. It lasted, instead, one day.



Blake and Rebecca did a great post on our preparations (with pictures and everything) so check that out if you´d like to see our hours of planning menus, calculating cups, converting to metric, making lists, buying food, sorting food, packing, and re-packing.

Fortunately much of this occurred at a very convivial hostel, owned by a friend of a friend, and we could do some of it over impressively good beer.

Because all that work was for naught.


Optimism on a bus: Z, Marty, Rebecca

Short version: The weather was just too horrendous for us.


10 minutes in, and some of us still have some dry garments

Longer version: We set out in high spirits. Even the dead horse next to the trail didn´t seem like a bad omen. But it rained all day, we all got as soaked as if we were wearing bikinis instead of Goretex, and with the high winds, we each took turns flirting with hypothermia. Just for fun, a few old injuries flared up too. Suddenly 10 flat miles didn´t seem so easy after all.

And -- this was the clincher -- we never saw the mountains. After we got to camp we did get a couple of glimpses of the bases of some of the peaks, but the clouds stayed constant in spite of the equally constant winds.


2 hours in: hallelujah, a temporary shelter

Luckily, the camp we reached that evening was a very comfy one, complete with hot cocoa for sale. This fortified us so that we could put up our tents without their sailing into the lake (though Rebecca and Blake´s tent fly made a break for it, actually pulling out most of its stakes!). We took off our sodden clothes, and were even able to take showers and cook in an enclosed space (in some weird outfits!). But an easy day it was not. It was pretty demoralizing.

So we left. We got back to Puerto Natales, found a hostel with a puppy, and regrouped.

Now we´re trying to eat our way through 10 days of backpacking food (¨More polenta, Blake?¨ ¨Why, thank you, Rebecca.¨ ¨Perhaps some oatmeal, Marty? Or powdered drink mix?¨) while appreciating being warm and dry.

And we have decided to console ourselves with penguins.

This afternoon we arrived in Punta Arenas, a rather large Chilean city on the Strait of Magellan. Tomorrow morning, quite early, we´ll take a boat out to Isla Magdalena tomorrow to visit a colony of Magellanic penguins! I´m excited.

In a couple of days, we´ll return to Puerto Natales and we may take another crack at the park. Purportedly the weather should be better. We´ll see. It is a place that holds great attraction for all of us. Just think if we were actually able to see this!

In the meantime, I´m looking forward to those pinguinos.

* I apologize for the lack of photos, and many thanks to Blake for the ones I do have here. Chilean computers don´t always recognize our camera. Will post images of sodden socks (and yes, the puppy) when I can! *