Perseverance in Patagonia pt. 1

The "O" Circuit:
I went down to South America with a mission to climb mountains and trek through unchartered land. Puerto Natales, Chile was one of the many destinations that became my little home for a few weeks. It's the gateway to Torres del Paine National Park. Some friends of mine from home met me down in Santiago, Chile and we made our way to the South to do the "O" Circuit. It is the full loop around the Cordillera del Paine—the "W" plus the more remote backside which gets fewer trekkers. All told, the total distance of the "O" is approximately 110 kilometers.

The crew

The Rules:
As of October, 2016, you MUST have reservations for all of the camps that you intend to stay at. Whether it’s the free camping sites, paid campgrounds or the refugios, you must have proof of reservation to show to the rangers at the camps. This is a strict rule and I watched people hike in only to get turned down and sent out. There are private and public campgrounds and the organization of it all is very poor and actually quite complicated. When we got to Puerto Natales we only had two reservations and scrambled to get the rest (DO NOT DO THIS, MAKE RESERVATIONS MONTHS IN ADVANCE!!!). We ended up getting a few more (incredibly lucky) but spent a full day running around between CONAF, Vertice, and Fantasticosur which are the three companies that own the different campsites in the park.

Grey Glacier

Going For It:
Although we didn't have our permits all set out perfectly we decided we had to give it a shot and see what happened (against what the locals advised, don't do this). We bought bus tickets for the following morning in town and spent the night organizing our gear. Entering the park and the first day went smoothly. On day two we knew our reservations were questionable but the park was so beautiful and we were on a mission. We woke up at Dickson, one of my favorite campgrounds, and we packed up our gear at 6 am and pushed on. We had already done about 25 miles and today would be our most difficult as we needed to cross the pass and it was raining hard. After finally reaching a CONAF ranger station we had been trekking for about 10 hours through rain, wind, and mud he told us we couldn't walk anymore and he would let us stay there.

A picture of my after crossing the pass, soaking wet, the rest of the day was spent sliding down mud in my only pair of pants

Baking Bread with the Rangers:
The ranger station at Grey Glacier will forever hold a special spot in my heart. Cristian, one of the rangers, and I became fast friends. The rangers let us stay there, shower, started a fire, baked us bread, fed us soup, and poured us mate. We stayed there for one night where we partied with the CONAF rangers. We got incredibly lucky that we didn't get turned away. Make sure you have your permits and remember you can never skip more than two campgrounds during the trek. We were past the half way point, we had done four nights and only had two more.

A picture of Cristian baking bread

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