W Trek Day 3

Paine Grande to Mirador Britanico to Refugio Francis: 22.71km, 1,223m elevation gain

Despite being in a bed, our sleep was worse than in the tent the previous night. We couldn't fall asleep early due to the noise of people talking right outside our door, and we were woken up by an insanely loud, long breakfast line that instead of stretching out of the building into the covered reception area, backed up into the dorm area. I was not happy, but Allan was even grumpier than me. When we did get out of bed to go and make our porridge, he complained to the manager who was unavailable when we complained earlier in the morning. He was gone for a while as I sat in the cafeteria waiting for him. When he came back he had two breakfast and two coffee vouchers. The breakfast wasn't the best, but we made the most of the free food. We took some oats for our porridge tomorrow, and made a sandwich with the bread and deli meat that was on the buffet for lunch. We also got a latte and cappuccino which was a nice treat.

Fueled up, we packed our bags and began our walk towards Campomento Italiano. The walk there was very pleasant. There was very little up and down, a flat path, and at one point we were walking on a long boardwalk over a grassy area to help promote the ecosystem devastated by the fire. We flew through the first part of the walk. We did accidentally take a longer route on a new path adding 2km making it 9km for the walk to Italiano instead of 7. But the upside was we could see the mountains in the other side of the lake easily. One of the mountains reminded me of a double stuffed Oreo because it had black on both ends with white in the middle.

At Italiano, we dumped our bags, made up a small backpack with our lunch, and began the middle part of the W, a hike up to Mirador Francis and Britanico. This was a tough hike. It was very steep and rocky, and the ascent was more than we had done in one stretch previous days. Once we got to Mirador Francis, we sat and had our lunch in front of Glacier Francis. The glacier was smaller than Grey and climbed up the mountain rather than being near a lake. We could see and hear the glacier calving off the mountain and running down the face of the mountain. It was a pretty good lunch view despite the light on and off rain and wind.

I stayed at Francis, while Allan went another 350 m up again to Britanico. He got a great 360° view of the valley, mountains, and lake we saw earlier in the day. He ran back down the mountain and met me back at Italiano much earlier than I expected. I had been partly waiting for him at the sheltered site, but also waiting for the rain to stop before walking to Refugio Francis. Luckily as Allan came back, I was just making my final preparations to leave so I didn't miss him. We walked through the forest a short km to Refugio Francis.

This campsite is run by a different company than the previous two. It also looked a lot newer so the buildings, and the bathrooms, were really nice. Our tent was sturdy and very spacious with a foam mat inside which was comfortable. It was on a raised bed, like stilts, so we weren't on the cold ground either which was great because it started to downpour and got very windy. We got hot water from the cafeteria and made our dinner in the tent. After a nice day, we were in good spirits, even if our food didn't get very hot because the little heater bag didn't work great.

While nervous about the weather tomorrow, we were feeling good which, for me, was a nice change to a couple of days ago. After a crappy sleep last night we were looking forward to a quieter sleep in the forest in our tent.Leggi altro