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One Experience, Two Voices Part I

By Chris Thompson - 2009-01-21

While it might sound exotic, backpacking several thousand miles from home in Patagonia’s Torres del Paine National Park was not all that different than any other backpacking trip I’ve been on. There was the sweating, burning muscles, pain, and usual masochism of any normal backpacking experience.

Sure, there were a lot more Germans and Israelis than I was used to, and then there were the astounding Patagonian vistas, but for much of the time, the focus was on how wet, cold, hot, and in pain I was at the moment: just another frolic through the woods. We piled out of the bus near the trail head, Wallace and Mike incredulously shifting the loads on their back. "How far are we going with these death sacks?" I reassured them, "I’m sure there are services that will drag you out of the wilderness for a small fee. After all, there are a lot of tourists here."

Soon we were climbing up into the hills torward Valle Asacencio, crawling up 700 meters of dusty trail. Rocky buttes and snow capped passes winked at us through the clouds, and then swept up through the valley again, hiding the only salve for aching shoulders and burning legs.

Straggling into Campamento Torres, we were dismayed to see that the Torres del Paine were obscured by a thick layer of clouds. Erecting our tarp shelter, to the amusement of the other campers and rangers, we prepared for the night. Apparently, the ranger told us, twenty years ago, impoverished, underfunded Chilean park rangers slept in tarp shelters a lot like ours until they got funding for actual tents. Oh well, it’s good enough for me!

The next morning, I arose early (at the crack of 8:30) to scramble a rocky 300 meters to the ‘Mirador,’ or lookout point, situated at the top of the talus slope rising up from our sheltered green valley. With the others sleeping soundly below me, I crested the ridge, bathed in grey clouds. I was greeted by the majestic view of a pale green lake, chocked full of mineral sediment, ground into a fine powder by glacier action.

To the South were jagged peaks, faintly discernible through the clouds. To the North, a dark cliff rose up above the green lake. The towers remained a mystery, curtained behind the ever-present clouds crowning ‘los Torres’. I took shelter behind a large rock at the shore of the lake, like a troll: a smelly, scruffy-haired troll hiding from the rain and wind beneath a boulder; a troll with a camera, and a penchant for pictures of savage mountain peaks…you know, a backpacker.

Just as I was growing cold and hungry, I looked up from my wilderness first aid primer (the only reading material I had brought with me), to see the Torres creeping out from behind their curtain of fog. They were stunning, and vicious. Long, terrible knives rising out of the jagged peaks that surrounded them, up from the glaciers ringing their base, the lakes and valleys below their feet.

The early morning light streamed through the clouds to the East. I rested below the towers and marveled in the few minutes of majesty that lay before me. Just then it began to snow, and I realized that I was cold, hungry, and damp. It was time to return to real life. Descending from the clouds, I returned to the land of wet sleeping bags (it turned out tarps don’t quite cut it like tents do) and a breakfast of harina, ham roll, peanut butter, and jelly; the usual backpackers’ morning feast.

The next two days were spent hiking through the rain and the mud, crossing rocky mountain streams, falling down into piles of horse poop, and swinging between bouts of total suffering and complete wonder at the world around me. I watched glaciers break and cascade down the side of mountains, giant tornadoes of water rip across blue lakes. I saw my downcast friends trudging slowly through the mud, shivering in the cold and rain. Just another hike in Patagonia! I wouldn’t have it any other way.