Patagonia Trekking Adventure: The W Trek, Torres del Paine

Day by day

1. Day 1Fly from the UK to ChileTravel day · UTC-3

   Depart the UK on your international flight bound for South America. British Airways fly non stop from Heathrow to Santiago in around fourteen and a half hours, and there are plentiful one stop routings through Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam or Sao Paulo if the timings suit you better.

   This is a long travel day and there is no dressing it up. What it buys you is one of the great arrivals in travel: you go to sleep over the Atlantic and wake up in the southern hemisphere, with a connection waiting to take you a further three and a half hours south to Patagonia. Door to door, the UK to Puerto Natales is usually somewhere between twenty four and thirty hours.

   One piece of admin worth doing before you leave the house. Chile requires every arriving passenger to complete an agricultural declaration, and it is free and takes two minutes online at ingresoachile.cl. It matters more than it sounds: trail food is exactly what gets confiscated, so buy your nuts, dried fruit and energy bars in Chile rather than carrying them across the border.

2. Day 2Punta Arenas and the road north to Puerto Natales3 hrs driving · Welcome dinner · Wildlife

   You land at Presidente Carlos Ibanez del Campo Airport at Punta Arenas, on the Strait of Magellan, where your driver will be waiting for the private transfer north to Puerto Natales. It is roughly 250 kilometres and three hours on the paved Ruta 9, and it is the drive that tells you where you have come to.

   The Patagonian steppe runs flat and pale to the horizon in every direction, combed by a wind that never seems to stop. Guanacos graze in loose herds along the fenceline and scatter at the sound of the engine. Watch for nandu, the Darwin's rhea, running with their heads down, and for condors turning slowly on the thermals above the low escarpments. On a clear afternoon the first white peaks appear on the northern horizon an hour before you reach town, and that is the Paine massif.

   Puerto Natales sits on Ultima Esperanza Sound, Last Hope Sound, named by a Spanish navigator who ran out of both. It is a small, brightly painted, wind-scoured town of corrugated iron and fishing boats, and it exists now almost entirely because of the park. You check into Weskar Lodge on the slope above the water, and gather for a welcome dinner looking out over the fjord.

3. Day 3Puerto Natales: a day to land, and the trek briefingFree morning · Kit check and briefing · Last cash machine

   A deliberate slow day. You have crossed nine thousand miles and eight time zones, and the Base of the Towers is not a walk to arrive at jetlagged. So this morning is yours: walk the waterfront promenade past the fishing boats and the Milodon sculpture, look through the artisan shops for wool and leather, or take the short climb to the Mirador Cerro Dorotea for a view back over the whole sound.

   In the afternoon your leader runs the trip briefing and a kit check, and neither is a formality. Torres del Paine punishes bad kit in a specific and predictable way: the wind drives rain horizontally through anything that is not genuinely waterproof, and the moraine on Day 4 finds out any boot that has not been broken in. Anything missing can be bought or hired in Puerto Natales this afternoon, which is exactly why the day exists. Bring everything out and lay it on the bed.

   This is also the day to draw cash. There are no cash machines anywhere inside the national park, and card terminals in the refuges are unreliable at the best of times. Banco de Chile and Banco Santander both have machines in town. In the evening we eat at Cormoran de las Rocas or similar, which does Patagonian lamb, king crab and the local seafood properly.

4. Day 4Base of the Towers7 to 8 hrs · 870m · The moraine · 2.5 hrs driving

   A 06:30 private transfer from the lodge, and the two and a half hour drive north across the steppe to the Laguna Amarga entrance. Torres del Paine covers over 227,000 hectares and has been a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1978; your park entrance is included, and the QR codes are already on your leader's phone because there is no signal at the gate. Watch the roadside on this drive, at this hour, in this sector: it is the eastern steppe where the guanacos are, which means it is also where the pumas are.

   At the Las Torres Welcome Centre you check in, leave your main bag at the refuge and set off with a daypack. This is the most famous trail in the park and the hardest day of the trek, so we do it first while legs are fresh. The operator's figure is around 18 kilometres round trip and about seven hours; the park's own signage says 20 kilometres and eight, and most groups land somewhere between. The trail climbs steadily from about 90 metres through the Ascencio valley, past Refugio Chileno, and into lenga forest along a river running grey with rock flour, with the enormous flank of Almirante Nieto above you the whole way.

   The last kilometre is the one people remember. The path turns up a moraine of loose boulders and gains around 300 metres in roughly forty five minutes of hands-occasionally-on scrambling, and it feels considerably longer than that. Then the ground levels at 870 metres and the whole thing opens at once: Torre Sur, Torre Central and Torre Norte, sheer granite standing over a milky turquoise lagoon. Torre Central was first climbed in 1963 by Chris Bonington and Don Whillans. You come back down the same trail to Las Torres, and you will have earned your dinner.

5. Day 5Los Cuernos and the shore of Lake Nordenskjold5 to 6 hrs · Exposed · The Cuernos

   An easier day after yesterday, and a beautiful one. The trail runs west from Las Torres along the southern shore of Lake Nordenskjold, a deep turquoise sheet of water 28 square kilometres in size that mirrors the peaks whenever the wind lets it. The operator's stage figure is around 11 kilometres in three and a half to four hours; the park's own table puts Las Torres to Los Cuernos at 11.6 kilometres and four and a half, with Frances a further hour beyond, so plan for a comfortable five to six hour day rather than a short one.

   You walk through stretches of lenga, the southern beech that makes up almost all the forest here, where the path is soft and shaded and full of birdsong, and then out onto open exposed sections where the wind comes across the water without anything to slow it. This is the most exposed leg of the W and the one where people first understand the Patagonian wind properly. Lean into it and keep walking.

   Ahead, all day, the Cuernos del Paine dominate the skyline: pale granite domes capped with a dark band of sedimentary rock, which is what gives the Horns their unmistakable two-tone silhouette and makes them the most photographed feature in the park. By mid afternoon you reach Frances, tucked into forest below the mouth of the French Valley, which is where tomorrow goes.

6. Day 6The French Valley, and on to Paine Grande9 to 10 hrs · 16:00 cut off · Avalanches · Your choice

   The longest day of the trek and, for a lot of people, the best. Expect nine to ten hours on the trail and up to 18.8 kilometres if you go to the top viewpoint, so we leave early and we watch the clock.

   From Frances the trail drops to Campamento Italiano and then turns north into the Valle del Frances, climbing steadily through dense lenga. Almost immediately you become aware of the noise: the French Glacier hangs on the wall opposite and sheds ice more or less continuously through the morning, and the crack and roar of avalanches echoing round the valley is a sound nobody forgets. There are two decision points. The first lookout, Mirador Frances at around 680 metres, gives you the glacier and the cliffs and is a perfectly good day in itself. Beyond it the trail steepens for a further three kilometres to Mirador Britanico at the head of the valley.

   Britanico is a full 360 degree amphitheatre of granite: the north face of Paine Grande, Cerro Catedral, Cota 2000, Aleta de Tiburon (the Shark's Fin) and the back of the Cuernos, standing round you in a ring. It is one of the great mountain viewpoints anywhere. The one hard rule is the clock: the Italiano ranger station closes the Britanico branch at 16:00 and it is enforced, so the valley is a morning push, not an afternoon amble.

   Back down the valley, you rejoin the W and turn west along the shore of Lake Pehoe with the enormous bulk of Cerro Paine Grande above you, reaching Refugio Paine Grande in the evening. It is the biggest and busiest place you will sleep in the park, a proper crossroads for the W and the O circuits, and there is a bar with a view of the lake.

7. Day 7Grey Glacier3.5 to 4 hrs · The burn scar · Optional extension

   A medium day and the most consistently scenic on the route: 11 kilometres and three and a half to four hours from Paine Grande to Refugio Grey, rolling rather than climbing, with roughly 430 metres of ascent spread across the whole leg.

   An hour in, the trail crosses the Quebrada de los Vientos, the Gorge of the Winds, which is exactly what its name suggests and is also where you get your first sight of Grey Glacier away to the north. Much of this section runs through the scar of the 2011 fire, started by a trekker burning toilet paper, which took 17,000 hectares. The standing dead lenga will be there for a century before real forest returns, and it is the most eloquent argument for the park's absolute fire rules that anyone could make.

   From there the path undulates along the eastern shore of Lago Grey with icebergs drifting down the water towards you, some of them the deep bottle blue that only very old, very compressed ice goes. The glacier grows with every headland. Grey is one of the major outlet glaciers of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the second largest continuous ice field outside the poles at around 16,500 square kilometres. The glacier itself was surveyed at 270 square kilometres and 28 kilometres long, with a face around six kilometres wide standing more than 30 metres above the lake.

   You arrive at Grey in the afternoon. If there is energy left, the trail continues north to a pair of hanging suspension bridges, roughly two and three and a half kilometres beyond the campsite, and they give the finest elevated view of the ice field in the park.

8. Day 8Out by catamaran across Lake Pehoe3.5 to 4 hrs · 30 min crossing · 2 hrs driving

   Your final walking day, and it retraces yesterday's route: 11 kilometres and three and a half to four hours back along Lago Grey to Paine Grande. It is a very different walk in this direction. The icebergs are behind you now and it is the massif you are walking towards, with the Cuernos and Paine Grande growing all afternoon, and the wind is more often at your back than in your face.

   Back at Paine Grande there is time to sit outside with a drink and watch the light move on the lake before the catamaran. The crossing of Lake Pehoe takes around thirty minutes over roughly eleven kilometres of the most extraordinary turquoise water, with the whole massif standing behind you as it recedes. Your ticket is included. It is a genuinely lovely way to leave a mountain range, and considerably better than walking out.

   At the Pudeto dock a private transfer is waiting for the drive back to Puerto Natales. After four days of tents and refuge dormitories, Weskar Lodge and a hot shower land very well indeed, and dinner tonight is the one where the trip becomes a story rather than an effort.

9. Day 9Puerto Natales: rest, and the town on its own termsRest day · Museo Municipal · Eat well

   After four days of walking, a day with nothing in it. Puerto Natales is a good place to do nothing: brightly painted corrugated iron houses, a working fishing waterfront, and a laid back frontier feel that has survived the park's success better than you might expect.

   Walk the promenade and watch the boats come in. The Municipal History Museum is small and genuinely interesting on the region's Tehuelche past, the sheep estancia boom and the German and Croatian settlers who built the town. The artisan shops sell serious wool. Or find a cafe with a window on the sound, order something hot, and watch the weather come across the water, which is a legitimate way to spend an afternoon here.

   Practically, this is the day for laundry, for sorting gear and photographs, and for eating properly. Patagonian lamb cooked slowly over an open fire, king crab from the fjords, and calafate berries in more or less everything. The local legend says that anyone who eats calafate will return to Patagonia, which as sales pitches go is one of the more effective ones.

10. Day 10A second free day in Puerto NatalesFree day · Cueva del Milodon · Glacier boat trip

    A second free day, and it is in the itinerary on purpose. Most Patagonia trips run you straight from the last refuge to the airport, and the people who have done it that way generally wish they had not. Two days here means you go home rested rather than wrecked, and it means the town gets a fair look rather than a glance.

    If you would rather be doing something, there is plenty within reach, all at your own cost and easily arranged through the lodge. The Cueva del Milodon is twenty five minutes out of town, an enormous cave where the remains of a giant ground sloth were found in 1895 and where Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia begins. Boat trips run up Ultima Esperanza Sound to the Balmaceda and Serrano glaciers, a full day on the water with sea lions and cormorant colonies along the way. There is horse riding on the estancias, sea kayaking on the sound, and half a dozen short walks around the town.

    Or do none of it. The wind comes off the water, the light changes every twenty minutes, and there is a fire in the lounge.

11. Day 11Weather reserve dayHeld in reserve · Otherwise free · Light until late

    This day exists because of the wind. Torres del Paine takes weather seriously enough that any honest twelve day itinerary keeps a day in hand, and this is it. If a trekking day was cut short, a viewpoint was closed by conditions, or the catamaran did not run when it should have, this is the day we use to put it right, and having it in reserve is what lets your leader make a safe call on the mountain instead of a stubborn one.

    In most years it is not needed, and then it becomes the best kind of day: a last unhurried one in Patagonia with no alarm set. Take a short walk to Mirador Cerro Dorotea for the long view over the sound. Buy the things you have been looking at all week. Photograph the boats. Sit somewhere warm and start assembling the story you are going to tell when you get home.

    It is also, quietly, the last full day. The wind off the water in the evening, the low light at ten at night because you are at fifty two degrees south, the mountains you walked in still visible on the northern horizon on a clear day. Worth being outside for.

12. Day 12Journey home3 hrs driving · Long way home · Extensions

    Breakfast, check out, and the transfer south. Depending on flight timings this is either the three hour drive back down Ruta 9 to Punta Arenas airport, or the seasonal direct service from Puerto Natales where the schedule allows it. Then north to Santiago and, after a connection, the long haul across the Atlantic home.

    It is a long way back, and there is time on it to let the trip settle. Four days on foot through one of the most spectacular mountain landscapes on earth, three granite towers above a lagoon at 870 metres, an amphitheatre of hanging glaciers, an ice wall at the end of a 28 kilometre glacier, and a wind that most people end up rather fond of once they are safely out of it.

    Eat a calafate berry before you go. The legend is quite specific about what happens next.