Day Four: Los Cuernos to Campamento Los Torres, and the Torres themselves.

We made great time on this section. We marched straight up a very long hill, then down again, then up again, then down again (why they don’t just follow the lake edge when they make these trails is anybody’s guess.)
There was a fun, wide, boulder strewn river to cross, that the British couple had warned us about. There’s really no way across without getting at least one boot wet. Someone has strung a wire all the way across, which will hold you (and, I mean, a wire. About 4 gauge.)Mainly, there are so many people bunched up that there’s someone fairly nimble footed to help anyone who needs it. Again, walking sticks would have helped a lot. We kept catching up to a Canadian couple on this section, and sat with them a little under a rare shade tree and watched the river.
The terrain in general on this hike is far less forest-y than I expected (I’m used to the pacific northwest.) Mainly, it was open fields of scrub – the first day was pampas, but the rest is scrub. Occasionally there are groups of trees which give shade and a little shelter from the wind, but also harbor flies – the great thing about the wind is that there are no bugs. The trail conditions are: giant rocks, with a little dirt in between. Hopping from rock to rock was pretty common, especially on the inclines, where it’s a lot harder for a dirt trail to take hold. The dirt parts were the best, as they’re so gentle on the feet and joints. After five days, you can really tell you’ve been walking on an incompressible surface – like running on concrete.
There was a shortcut indicated on all the trail signs, but not on the map, that saved us an hour. This shortcut, though, appeared to just go straight up a hill, until we were waaaay above the trail that we were shortcutting. We could see people on the trail, way down below, and we were mad that they didn’t have to climb like us (they eventually did catch up to us in elevation.) We found another shade tree at one point and looked out across quite a landscape, and disturbed a little mouse/kangaroo rat thing who thought it was his patch of shade.
That was one of very few mammals I saw. I mentioned the rabbit earlier. No squirrels or chipmunks. Saw lots of birds, and especially condors, anytime you looked up the mountain, you could see them circling, riding the winds. Never could get a decent picture of them – they’re just the black dot in so many pictures of otherwise plain old scenery.
We finally crested the hill, and could see into the last valley (the last, rightmost leg of the W.) And we descended sharply for awhile, only to have to climb and get back most of the elevation again (CONAF – Corporacion Nacional Forestal or something like that, got some nasty things said about its employee’s parents right about then.) We stopped briefly at Campamento Chileno (many camps are named for the nationality of the person who first camped there – Italiano, we skipped Brittanico, but they’re both in Valle Frances, then Chileno, and we never made it to the climbers camp, called Campamento Japones.) Chileno is also nasty, fully of bugs, and crappy campsites. Onward another 2 hours to Camp. Los Torres.
Again, the trail was awful. Given the number of day hikers from the resort below, we’re bewildered at how they don’t do something to improve it. We’re also bewildered at how some of them make it. There were 60 -70 year old people on that trail, who looked like they would have trouble walking a mile on the flats. They were very carefully planting each walking stick and each footstep. It’s an eight hour round trip from the resort at the base. I just don’t see how they did the hike, let alone the scramble to the towers at the end. Quite impressed.
We were exhausted on getting there, but the camp was nice – it’s a free camp, so no amenities but a toilet. We dropped our stuff, set up camp, then put on day packs to ascend the final hour to the Torres themselves. Many people get up before sunrise to see the towers then, but we heard there were going to be clouds rolling in, and we figured there wasn’t much chance of us getting up that early. So, we went up. Turns out it’s only a kilometer or two, but it’s a scramble straight up over a boulder field. I know I said that the hikes before were scrambles, but I was exaggerating a little. Not this time. This climb was a 5.6, and our knees were tired at the end of the hour (much different from running, btw. I challenge anyone’s knees to hold up when it comes to boulder hopping. A day later after the hike, walking on sidewalks, I felt fine again.)
But, we made it, and saw the little bowl of a lake at the top. It was amazing, and well worth a five day hike. There are three towers, all of this reddish rock. They’re about 10,000 feet tall, and rise I would guess 5000 feet over the vantage point. There’s a glacier than just kind of drops off right across the bowl from the little lake. The wind blows like crazy. It’s like the little glacier we hiked to in Glacier National Park, but times 10 – the mountains in the background are just otherworldly. Wish I could do more justice to them in words, but it just kind of has to be seen to be believed. The pictures look neat, but the camera doesn't begin to capture it.
Getting back down wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Slept very well that night, Christmas Eve.