Torres del Paine. Rudolf Abraham

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      The Cuernos from near the CONAF office on Lago Toro (Walks 1 and 4)

      There is a feeling of immensity in the landscapes of this, Chile’s premier national park – vast sheets of fractured blue ice, turquoise and emerald lakes, primeval-looking forest, vertical granite spires and seemingly limitless cloud-streaked skies. It is one of those rare destinations with which you think you are familiar even before arriving – after all, one or more of its iconic views decorate almost any publication or webpage associated with Patagonia – yet it has somehow managed to lose none of its magic. It is, quite simply, a staggeringly beautiful place.

      Trekking in Torres del Paine – a national park since 1959 and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1978 – is a hugely rewarding experience. The Torres del Paine Circuit (a circuit of the park, and the main route described in this guide) is without any doubt one of the world’s truly great treks, an opportunity to travel through awe-inspiring mountain scenery in an area with a fascinating history and rich in wildlife. Trails are for the most part clear and well marked within the national park, there is a comprehensive network of huts and campsites, and transport both to and within the park is all refreshingly simple.

      It takes about 10 to 11 days to complete the 140km Torres del Paine Circuit as described here – but bad weather can delay your crossing of the highest point on the route, the 1180m Paso John Gardner. The shorter version of the route, the ‘W’, requires five days. None of the walking is particularly difficult, and elevation gain is minimal for most of the stages on the route – the exceptions being the hike over the pass, and up the Valle Ascencio and Valle Francés (but, be warned, rain and wind can turn either of these treks into a considerably more demanding undertaking). The northern part of the Circuit is also fairly remote, with no convenient exit point should you want or need to cut your walk short. This guide also includes some of the shorter walks in the national park, as well as excursions from the nearby town of Puerto Natales, and a trek in the equally beautiful Fitzroy area of Los Glaciares national park over the border in Argentina.

      Torres del Paine takes its name from the magnificent granite spires which launch themselves skyward near the head of the Valle Ascencio (torres meaning ‘towers’) – one of the most iconic sights in Patagonia, or anywhere in South America for that matter – and the name of a local estancia (ranch), upon which part of the national park still lies.

      The national park does attract an increasingly large number of visitors each year, most of whom arrive in the peak (summer) season of January/February, when the ‘W’ route can get quite crowded, yet despite this it is still possible to find solitude, particularly in the more northerly areas of the park. On my first visit to Torres del Paine I sat among boulders by a stream in the Valle Francés, mesmerized, as shafts of early morning sunlight struck the enormous east face of Paine Grande, all dark rock slung with glaciers, and glistening crags festooned with clouds. It mattered nothing that there was a campsite with a few dozen tents hidden in the forest behind me; in those few moments I was completely and utterly alone. On another visit I clung to an exposed section of trail in screaming winds, only to turn and see a Condor rising effortlessly out of the valley, utterly still except for the feathers on its wing tips, and so close I almost felt I could reach out and touch it.

      WHAT’S IN A NAME?

      Torres del Paine

      Place names almost always provide a fascinating window into a region’s past. The Paine massif probably takes its name from the Tehuelche world for ‘blue’, paine. The Tehuelche, the indigenous inhabitants of this part of Patagonia, have also left their legacy in other place names (pehoé means ‘hidden’, as in Lago Pehoé; baguales means ‘wild horses’, as in Sierra Baguales; as well as in the names of various plants and animals. And the correct pronunciation should really be ‘pine-ay’, not ‘pain’.

      Patagonia

      Patagonia is a region covering the southernmost part of South America, made up of the southern parts of Argentina and Chile. The name ‘Patagonia’ derives from the description of the native Mapuche population by Antonia Pigafetta, in his record of the voyage of Magellan. Pigafetta described the Mapuche as ‘Patagones’, which has long been considered to have meant ‘big feet’ or ‘big footed’ in Spanish – although while pata does indeed mean foot, there is no real explanation for the -gon suffix. His description gave rise to enduring legends of a race of giants inhabiting the wilds of southern South America. His description tells us as much about the teller as the subject – the average height for an adult male Mapuche was 5′ 11″, while that of the average Spaniard at that time was 5′ 1″.

      Another more recent explanation for the origins of the word Patagonia is that it comes from a 16th-century Spanish romance, Primaleón of Greece, in which the hero encounters a race of ‘savages’, who ate raw flesh and clothed themselves in animal skins (as did the native population encountered by Pigafetta), including a creature called Patagon, described as strange and misshapen, with ‘the face of a dog’ and ‘teeth sharpe and big’ – in other words, all those things the ‘civilized’ explorer might have expected to encounter in a race of ‘savages’ at the uttermost ends of the Earth.

Geography and geology

      Chile’s 4300km-long, stringbean shape encompasses an enormous variety of scenery (not to mention climates), from the parched salt pans and blistering heat of the Atacama desert in the north to the splintered fjords, fractured glaciers and frigid wilds of its far south. Its highly indented coastline runs to over 6400km in length, yet the country is on average only some 175km wide. Far off its coast in the waters of the Pacific, its territory includes the Juan Fernández Archipelago and the ever mysterious Rapa Nui or Easter Island – the latter separated from the Chilean mainland by over 3800km of uninterrupted ocean.

      The country is divided into 15 administrative regions, their names preceded by Roman numerals and (with the exception of two regions newly created in 2007) arranged numerically from north to south. Torres del Paine national park lies in the 12th (southernmost) of these regions, XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena, the regional capital of which is Punta Arenas.

      Running along (and effectively defining) Chile’s eastern border is the Andes mountain range, which stretches some 7000km down the western side of the South American continent and constitutes both the world’s longest mountain range and the highest mountain range outside Asia. The highest peak in the Andes (and in the southern hemisphere), Aconcagua (6962m), is located about 100km northeast of the Chilean capital, Santiago, over the border in Argentina; the second highest peak in the Andes, and the highest in Chile, is Nevado Ojos del Salado (6891m), which lies some 600km north of Aconcagua.