Super Bonito!! Torres del Paine National Park 8th-12th of September

All,Well i`m back from hiking the `W` in the Torres del Paine (Towers of Paine) national park, and to be honest the title says it all, super Bonito! The Torres stand apart from the rest of the andes in a giant mountainous outcrop of their own. The huge granite spires reach straight up for over a thousand meters from the glaciers below and are topped with another several hundred metres of black volcanic rock. All of which is being gradually eroded with time by the weather, creating impossibly sharp crags and an absolutely stunning landscape. I set of early on Monday morning, getting a ride into the park a couple of hours away with the friendly Humberto. I was hiking from West to East and was the only person to set of that day, meaning I only saw a couple of people hiking the other direction all day. Starting this way you get an incredible view of the Paine Massif as you approach from the south, apart from that it was a relatively easy 20km or so along flattish trail. My only other companion in the campsite that night was a an extremely un talkative Korean. The main thing I noticed was that he could hardly walk after being in the park for 3 days, this I thought was rather ominous.....On Tuesday I hiked up the first arm of the W to the Glacier Grey. Now i`ve seen glaciers before in New Zealand and the alps, but this was something completely different. It is literally a `mountain eater` several miles across and stretching way beyond where I could see up into the clouds. Below it the Lago Grey is full of ice bergs which are constantly crashing from the mouth of the glacier. For a couple of hours walking along the edge of the valley towards it you have this amazing view, and I was lucky enough to be the only one there to enjoy it! I pitched my tent on the lake shore and headed up to climb the valley above the glacier. After an hour or so I was stopped in my tracked however. Unfortunately a combination of winter avalanches and landslides had completely obliterated the path, leaving an impassable gorge. However I was still able to enjoy stunning views across the glacier, again alone in this incredible wilderness.Wednesday was a pretty long hard day, hiking to the middle of the W to pitch my tent at campamento Italiano before heading up the Valley Francais in the afternoon. Within about half an hour, the trees open out into this amazing view across to Paine Grande and and the Glacier Francais, which is literally dripping of the side of the mountain. In fact every 10 or 15 minutes the valley is full of the sounds of crashing ice and snow as huge chunks break off and tumble several hundred metres down into the valley. Another few hours hiking up to the glacial bowl, again brings amazing views well worth the long slog up. There is literally a 360 panorama of los cuernos, fortaleza (the fortress), paine grande and also the aleta del Tiburon (the sharks fin). The last is an amazing razor shape edge of rock arching a thousand metres into the sky. That night I met a group of 3 Catalans (from the Pyrenees in fact) who were also hiking the W, but`had started a day earlier. The campsite was deserted (it is in fact late winter here, and therefore not hiking season, although I had perfect weather for 5 days) and Xavi had discovered that the window to the refugio (where the rangers stay in season) conveniently opened if you pushed it hard enough....This meant instead of a freezing cold evening in the tent, I got to enjoy the company of some other people in the nice warm refugio. Day 4 (Thursday), I set of alone to hike to the last arm of the W to the base of the `Torres`themselves. Not far from the campsite I met up with the Spaniards again and walked the last bit with them. This campsite was at about 700m,so unfortunately was completely covered in snow. There were no conveniently broken windows that Xavi could find, but there was a small open sided shelter fortunately that we could bivi in. The evening was spent trying to keep warm in front of the fire and drinking neat pisco (a Peruvian spirit) to celebrate Dmitris birthday.The last day, unfortunately brought some cloud. But there was still a good hike up to the Torres with their tops mysteriously shrouded in cloud. The long walk out was a bit of a drag and seemed to go on for hours. Also the guy who drove us back to Puerto Natales must have a hard a hard time putting up with the smell of 4 people who hadn`t showered for 5/6 days!` A pleasant, but rather tired evening was spent in the others hostel, eating loads of good food and wine. 5 days of noodles tres minutos was starting to take its toll on my taste buds..Well Now i`m on my to el Chalten. I`m currently having a pit stop in el Calafate, but will carry on later this afternoon. I`ll let you know how I get on in a few days
O