Torres del Paine W Trek Day 2

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WELL second day on the W Trek and we’re heading between two base camps now. Hopefully if the weather holds out, it has been raining a bit. If the weather holds out, we go through the middle path of the W underneath the spectacular mountains. In the meantime, I’ll just keep going and hopefully the weather starts clearing up a bit.

Well I’ve made it just across this very rickety swing bridge here and have just arrived in Camp Italiano. This is the junction that goes on the middle bar of the W of the track. Going back up that way there’s quite a rough track back up to a couple of lookouts. Quite a few of our group have already started going up there. I do wonder what sort of view they will get because the clouds have really been closing in but good for them. I’m part of the slow group and we’re actually just going to head down to the next camping ground which is about three hours away.

We’ve already hiked about two hours travelling from our last base camp at Lago Pahoe. We’re nearly half way at Camp Italiano and this is the French Valley and the track now heads towards the French Campsite towards the bottom of this valley. It is still about three hours away so it is quite a way to go. Hopefully the guys who went up the valley, it’s a good hour and a half up and very steep and rough rising about 500 metres so good luck to them. Hopefully they will see views below the clouds but I’m just not sure if they will. But it would be good to see what they come up with. Anyway, I’m going to head back towards the camping ground for the next night and get some more spectacular views of the mountains when the clouds do start clearing a little bit. It’s a bit closed in at the moment.

This is the main camping ground with some tents set up and there are a lot of day walkers on the rough track looking at all the backpacks left here. This is where everyone stays for lunch and leave their bags for those brave enough to ascend the valley for the afternoon. It does make for a very long day. The hike with backpacks between the two main camping grounds is five hours and then adding the trip up the valley which takes about three hours adds to eight hours. There are even more viewpoints further as well. Hopefully it will be worth it being a very long day.

I see a sign here saying we’re at 51 degrees 1 minute. It’s still quite a long way south here. We’re about four degrees south of the bottom of Stewart Island in New Zealand and perhaps 8 or 9 degrees south of the bottom of Tasmania in Australia so we’re still a very long way south. We’re about 3 degrees north of where Ushuaia is and a good 15 degrees north of the Antarctic Circle so I am making good progress northwards but obviously a long way to go up through the Americas yet. Anyway, I’m going to finish having lunch and I have my guide sitting on the porch behind me there and a group of us are going to head down soon – the others are exploring the area at the moment. It’s time to head back and finish lunch and head back down the valley towards another lake and settle in for the night at the camping ground.