W Trek Day 1

Paine Grande to Refugio Grey: 11.88km, 519m ascent

We got up bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning to make our way to Torres del Paine to start our W trek.

We got an early 6:55 bus to the park entrance where we scanned our park passes, got on another bus, and made our way to Lago Pehoe to get a catamaran to the west side of the W. Patagonia greeted us with rolling hills and some stunning mountains already. On the catamaran, the water was incredibly blue and we passed some large rivers flowing into the lake from the mountains. It was pretty beautiful. The catamaran was too full so I couldn't get a picture though 😕. We disembarked the catamaran at Refugio Paine Grande and took some time to get organized before beginning our walk for the day up to Refugio Grey.

The start of the walk to Refugio Grey was a gradual uphill. It had some steeper sections, but was pretty manageable ascent wise. The most annoying thing about the walk was the rocks. They were chunky rocks mixed in with some smaller ones that made the surface tricky and uncomfortable to walk on. About 3km in we stopped at a lake to share a sandwich. The lake was a darker blue than the one earlier and had some lovely green hills. It was really windy, and despite trying to seek some shelter from the wind behind a big rock, we didn't linger after eating our sandwich. We continued on, battling the uneven, rocky path as we went. We were surprised to see so many dead trees (later learning that a tourist lit some used toilet paper on fire after doing a wild 💩 and the fire spread destroying tens of thousands of hectors of the park). On our right were some mountains, and soon on the left Lago Grey appeared. The icy blue water was, again, a different color to the other two bodies of water we'd seen previously in the day.

Around 5.7 km in, we got to Mirador Lago Grey and got our first glimpse of Glacier Grey. The lake runs straight into the glacier. Even from a distance, we could see the darker blue in the cracks of the glacier (reminding me of the ice in Antarctica). We sat again at the lookout and shared our last sandwich while taking in the view. At this point we were about halfway to Refugio Grey, and I was unfortunately feeling tired. The second half of the trail had some steeper down sections over really chunky rocks, but other than that, it wasn't a challenging descent to the Refugio (I was tired by the end and going very slow...Allan was very patient and positive ❤️).

At the refugio we checked in to our campsite. I was feeling pretty shit by this point making me feel confused (I'd done the Inca Trail and a long hike a few days prior and felt fine) and worried about the rest of the trek. We found our allocated tent and got set up with our sleeping bags and went to shower at the shower building. It was nice to be able to have a quick shower unlike on the Inca Trail. Back at the tent, I made the mistake of lying down on my sleeping bag while I waited for Allan...so sleepy.

After Allan had a shower, we got our little flameless heater bag, instant mashed potatoes, and bag of lentil stew and went to the cooking area of the campsite. We followed the instructions adding water...nothing happened. Annoyed, and concerned about having to eat cold food when we wanted it hot, we dumped out the cold water and tried again with boiling which luckily activated it. We ate our meager meal out of our shared plastic tub, Allan kindly washed up because I wasn't feeling great, and we went back to our tent after a bathroom break. I crawled into my sleeping bag immediately because I was freezing, despite my skin being hot to the touch. I was also shivering, but warm at the same time. It was so strange. After failing to sleep for a couple hours, around 10pm Allan was heading up for the bathroom before he went to sleep, so I went too, shaking from the cold the whole way there and back. Back in the tent, I hoped I'd be able to get some rest before the hike back to Paine Grande and up to the glacier in the morning.Leggi altro