South America

Day 3 - Rest day

This morning I had to adjust the straps on my pack to accommodate my weight loss.

I was shocked I could even walk this morning. It was a light day, only 10km, and up two small mountains. The big view today was of a huge Glacier melting into a teal pool. It was massive and blue and hauntingly beautiful.

At night Yannick and Christian let me join them and two American guys for a game of poker. We played with pistachios instead of poker chips. Yannick and Christian seem to regard me as an annoying little sister they'll tolerate because they can't quite get rid of me. I lost early, but I had one great hand where I took nearly all Christians pistachios. He was so annoyed.

I hiked extremely slowly today, I couldn't keep up any kind of pace for long. I'm worried because tomorrow is supposed to be the hardest day of the hike. I'm crossing this mountain that's the highest in the park, prone to heavy winds and sudden snow storms, and the biggest elevation change. I have to get up at 5 am to try and make it over. I really hope it works.

Day 4 - Over the Pass

It rained all night and into the morning. 5am was freezing. I considered staying in the camp and hoping for better weather tomorrow. I told myself I'd hike up to the pass, and if the rain didn't stop, I'd just come back down. No way I was doing rain + heavy winds on top of the highest mountain in the park.

My fingers froze as I took the tent down in the rain. I ate a cold breakfast in the cooking shelter and again considered staying in my tent for the day. The rain wasn't slowing at all. But everyone else was up and getting ready to go, so I packed up and got an early start.

As I was leaving camp, the rain turned to snow. It occurred to me that my friends from the Murphy campaign were on a cruise ship in Mexico, likely laying out in the sun and sipping champagne.

The snow on the mountains was gorgeous. It was a quiet soft snow that blanketed everything and got deeper as I climbed higher. It was one of my favorite mornings.

When I reached the pass, the weather looked awful. The clouds were rolling above me, the wind was picking up, I couldn't see the trail very well. I sat down under a big tree to see if I could wait it out.

After about 20 minutes, Yannick and Christian showed up.

"what are you doing? Are you all right?" Christian asks.

I tell him I'm turning around. The weather is terrible and I can't see the trail.

"You're not turning around. Come with us. Yannick and I talked last night. We were planning to pick you up, but you left too early. You cannot go over the pass alone in this weather." Christian tells me.

It was so sweet of him. I was touched.

"are you sure any of us should go over in this weather??" I ask, "I can't see the trail markers!"

"Helen, we live in the Alps. The weather is like this all the time. I will go in front, you will be in the middle, Christian will go behind. You will not get lost." Yannick assures me.

"I will just slow you down." I protest.

Christian smiles. "Yannick is slow too. We will all go together."

I agree.

Slow is a very relative term when you're a 7 foot tall alpine German. I forgot my fear and concentrated on keeping up with Yannick, who somehow never lost the trail in the snow.

At the top of the pass, like a present unwrapping the clouds rolled back and the sun came out and we could finally see the mountains. The view on one side of the valley and the craggy peaks against the sun was incredible, and on the other side was or first view of Glacier Grey. The Glacier stretched as far as the eye could see, massive and sinister against its mountain backdrop. Glaciers don't photograph very well, but in person they are just the coolest thing. They're not flat, they have all these ridges with little slices of blue or gray visible in the gullys. When you look at them it's like hearing a long low chord on an organ.

The boys went ahead of me on the way down, but the dangerous part was over. The trail going down was hours of walking right along the Glacier, and I was obsessed with it. I must have taken hundreds of photos.

As I neared camp that night exhaustion hit again, and my knee was bothering me. I also hit the part of the trail that was possible to reach by day hiking, and people kept stopping me.

"hey! How far is it to the Glacier? Omg, are you coming off the circuit? The WHOLE circuit??"

I hated them all, with their light little packs and their fresh knees. The Glacier? The Glacier is over windy mountain tops and through blizzards after days and days of walking!!

But I didn't say that. I pulled a smile out of my back pocket and told them yes, I had hiked the circuit, and the Glacier was just around the corner.

That night at camp, one of the Americans got out a whiskey bottle to celebrate surviving the pass. I remembered Josh Wolf's story about drinking whiskey with Glacier ice at perito Moreno. I told the story, and the Americans dashed off to the nearby beach to cut us all Glacier ice cubes for our victory whiskey. We toasted Josh Wolf.

Day 5 - Rain

In the morning it was sprinkling and I figured it would stop soon, so I didn't start with any rain gear. I was making such great time on the trail, I now had the option to do the entire Torres del Paine circuit. The hard part was over. I had a day hike up to the Frances Valley and then a flat hike along a lake and then I was done. However, my knee didn't feel so great, and I knew I'd been pushing it a lot, going too many miles way too fast.

In the end the weather decided for me. My rain poncho completely failed, and my pack and clothes were getting soaked. At midday, the rain showed no signs of stopping and I started to shiver. Fog covered the view and my knee was on fire.

When I hit my planned stopping point, I stopped, and left the Frances Valley for another trip. To exit the park from that site, you take a boat and then a bus back to town. I had hopes of getting to town early, doing some laundry, taking a long shower, and eat a giant hot meal.

What I didn't realize was that the buses leave twice a day, after the first boat and the last boat. I took the 2:30 boat, and was stuck in the visitors center cafeteria waiting for the 7pm bus. My clothes were still soaked.

The bus was late, and I didn't get back to Puerto Natales until 10 pm. I didn't have a hostel reservation until the next night, because I was a day early, and when I showed up at my hostel... They were full.

There I was, wet and cold and smelly and without a place to stay at 10 pm. I tried three different hostels, all were full. I felt very sorry for myself. But then I squared my shoulders and told myself I would knock on the door of every Goddamn hostel in the city until I found one. I found one that would give me a last minute room for $60 USD, but that was too expensive.

I finally found a very basic hotel whose owner took pity on me and gave me a room for $30 USD. this was still a lot more expensive than a hostel, but I took it. I had a private room with this amazing radiator that emitted a dry heat. I laid out my wet clothes and sleeping bag and gear all over the room and took a a shower until well past midnight.

I tried on my poncho in the shower to make sure that it was indeed leaking. The water came right through. I don't know how I'm supposed to do this backpacker thing without any working rain gear.Read more