Monday, Mar 24 – Day 98
Today, I did the hike to Lago de Las Tres on my own. The lago is at the base of Fitz Roy, and it’s a 24.8 km (15.5 miles) roundtrip hike. The map suggests that it should take 4.25 hours each way. I did it in 3 hours as long stretches of the trail are pretty flat and easy. The last 500 meters, however, are as difficult a hike as I’ve ever done. The mountain sort of teases you because after a hard struggle, you finally get to the top only to find a false summit. You have to take on another huge incline to get to the viewpoint.
But it’s worth the effort as this is probably the most stunning site in all of Patagonia, even with the high clouds.
The summit is 3,405 meters, or 10,500 feet. The lake is at 1,100 meters (3,400 feet), so the net height we’re looking at here is just over 7,000 feet. Straight up. The thing is so big and so striking that I think, at first, your brain can’t quite understand what it’s looking at. You can’t breathe, or talk, or walk for about a minute. I sat on a rock for a while to recover and have some lunch, and I started to watch and listen to the different groups as they came over the top. Every one of them just stopped and stood there in complete silence. Then after a minute or so, you could hear a quiet whisper in French, or German, or Spanish. Outside of that, it was absolutely quiet the whole time I was up there.
Outside the incredible beauty of Torres del Paine and Fitz Roy, here are a few other observations I’ve made; first, you have to really want to see these things to be here. It was a 3-hour flight from BA to Calafate, followed by a 5 ½ hour bus ride to Puerto Natales, a 3 ½ hour bus to Torres, another hour to the catamaran launch, then a ½ hour boat ride across Lago Pehoe. And that’s just to begin the first day of hiking.
Second; none of these sights are viewable from a distance. You have to hike for hours and hours over hard, poorly marked, and unimproved trails to get to these viewpoints. It’s not like Yosemite, where you can sip on a cup of coffee while they drive you in bus to the base of Half Dome so you can get out and stand for 20 minutes before you get back on the bus and leave. This takes a lot of work.
Third; for the +/- 2 weeks that I was hiking, I didn’t see a single person that was younger than college- age. This is not a place for kids. Several people die out here each year, and it can take days to mount a rescue effort even when they know of an injury – a French man with a broken leg was left for 3 days, living off the food, water, and care of passing hikers before a rescue was organized. Only after the French government threatened to send in their own military to extract the guy, did the Chileans make an effort to bring him out.
My point for mentioning these things is that, at the end of the day, I think it’s pretty cool that you have to dedicate a lot of time and effort to see these beautiful things. I now will have a lot of respect for anybody that says they’ve hiked up Valle de Asencio or to Lago de Los Tres. And I’m pretty sure that 99.9% of Americans will never see this stuff.
Today, I did the hike to Lago de Las Tres on my own. The lago is at the base of Fitz Roy, and it’s a 24.8 km (15.5 miles) roundtrip hike. The map suggests that it should take 4.25 hours each way. I did it in 3 hours as long stretches of the trail are pretty flat and easy. The last 500 meters, however, are as difficult a hike as I’ve ever done. The mountain sort of teases you because after a hard struggle, you finally get to the top only to find a false summit. You have to take on another huge incline to get to the viewpoint.
But it’s worth the effort as this is probably the most stunning site in all of Patagonia, even with the high clouds.
The summit is 3,405 meters, or 10,500 feet. The lake is at 1,100 meters (3,400 feet), so the net height we’re looking at here is just over 7,000 feet. Straight up. The thing is so big and so striking that I think, at first, your brain can’t quite understand what it’s looking at. You can’t breathe, or talk, or walk for about a minute. I sat on a rock for a while to recover and have some lunch, and I started to watch and listen to the different groups as they came over the top. Every one of them just stopped and stood there in complete silence. Then after a minute or so, you could hear a quiet whisper in French, or German, or Spanish. Outside of that, it was absolutely quiet the whole time I was up there.
Outside the incredible beauty of Torres del Paine and Fitz Roy, here are a few other observations I’ve made; first, you have to really want to see these things to be here. It was a 3-hour flight from BA to Calafate, followed by a 5 ½ hour bus ride to Puerto Natales, a 3 ½ hour bus to Torres, another hour to the catamaran launch, then a ½ hour boat ride across Lago Pehoe. And that’s just to begin the first day of hiking.
Second; none of these sights are viewable from a distance. You have to hike for hours and hours over hard, poorly marked, and unimproved trails to get to these viewpoints. It’s not like Yosemite, where you can sip on a cup of coffee while they drive you in bus to the base of Half Dome so you can get out and stand for 20 minutes before you get back on the bus and leave. This takes a lot of work.
Third; for the +/- 2 weeks that I was hiking, I didn’t see a single person that was younger than college- age. This is not a place for kids. Several people die out here each year, and it can take days to mount a rescue effort even when they know of an injury – a French man with a broken leg was left for 3 days, living off the food, water, and care of passing hikers before a rescue was organized. Only after the French government threatened to send in their own military to extract the guy, did the Chileans make an effort to bring him out.
My point for mentioning these things is that, at the end of the day, I think it’s pretty cool that you have to dedicate a lot of time and effort to see these beautiful things. I now will have a lot of respect for anybody that says they’ve hiked up Valle de Asencio or to Lago de Los Tres. And I’m pretty sure that 99.9% of Americans will never see this stuff.
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