A hiking Mekka - El Chaltén

We headed off to El Chaltén with a full tank of fuel - not to repeat the same mistake again (see updated previous post). Seeing the outline of Mount Fitz Roy in the distance, we arrived there in the late afternoon and pondered whether we should just call it a day, relax for a bit and hike the days after. Luckily, we decided to briefly head into town to check the tourist information, who informed us that there would be only one day of good weather left. Since our goal was to see the summit of Mount Fitz Roy in the early morning hours, we hastily packed our bags, laced our hiking boots and headed the mountain towards the view point of Laguna de los Tres. For free! Take that, Torres del Paine.

When we arrived at the base camp for the early morning summit just before nightfall, we were amazed by the rows and rows of tents sitting between the trees. Apparently we were not the only ones with this plan. We pitched our tent, snuggled up in our sleeping bags and went to sleep for a couple of hours, until our alarm clock awoke us shortly before 5 am 😴. Apparently, we were the late sleepers of the camp, since we could already see some head lamps slowly crawling up the mountain in the darkness. Determined not to miss the sunrise, we hurried our way up the 700m climb, overtaking a number of other hikers (turbo mode: ON) and just made it to the top with 10 minutes to spare. Completing a 1.5h hike in just about 55 minutes.🥵

When the sun climbed above the surrounding mountain tops, it bathed the scenery in spectacular golden, red and pink light, giving us (and everyone else there) the chance to snap lots of pretty pictures.

We headed back into camp, took down our tent, and headed back down the mountain. On the way we took another detour hike along the Madre y Hija lagoons and enjoyed having the track completely to ourselves…at least until we were back on one of the main trails which was as busy as it gets with dozens of people hiking up as we were going down.
When we arrived at the end of the hike we spotted a sign that we must have had conveniently overlooked previously, stating that you could basically die at any moment on this hike, due to part of the mountain glaciers falling off and flash flooding the whole trek. Well, lucky us, today they didn‘t! 🤷‍♀️

Once back in town in the late afternoon, we treated ourselves to coffee, cheese cake and Wifi in a nice Café.
The rest of this and the next day were spent with chores, relaxation and recovery, since unfortunately, Laura had caught a bad cold somewhere along the trip.

🥾 KMs hiked: 23
✅ Money spent on hiking: 0€
☠️ Chances to die: 1
#️⃣ Days hiked: 2
🔥 Cooking gas bottles forgotten: 1
🍰 Cheesecakes devoured: 1 BIG piece
🤧 Sneeze index: 100/10Read more