French Valley

Our first full day in Torres del Paine park dawned grey and intermittently rainy, so we decided to hike the French Valley. There is a trek in the park called the “W” that has three arms of long hikes, and is usually tackled as a 4-5 day camping/hiking trip. You may know by now that my camping days are probably over, but I had read about doing 2 of the arms as day hikes. Because the weather wasn’t the greatest, we chose the “lesser” of the two hikes we were interested in. Hiking the French Valley is “only” 18 km (11 miles) with “only” 450 ft of elevation gain (if you don’t go up to the glacier lookout)…

… and it took a catamaran ride across a lake to get to the trailhead. The start of our hike was rather dreary -

Because we couldn’t see the great vistas we were supposed to…

(this is usually a gorgeous mountain with a hanging glacier)

… I focused on the little things -

(these are the flowers on the Notro bushes you may see in some of my pictures)

White Dog Orchid

I was able to catch a glimpse of the hanging glacier above us as we walked -

The skies cleared somewhat, so we could see a little of the grandeur around us…

We crossed a glacier fed river on a slightly swinging bridge…

… and tried to get some pictures of the Frances (French) glacier…

… but the rain had really set in, in earnest by then…

… so we turned around and headed back.

As we reached the last few km, the skies were clearing…

… and we could really enjoy the beautiful blue of the lake that we had crossed in the morning.

As we drove back to our hotel, we passed by Lake Pehoe…

… and turned around to see the storm we had hiked in, coming out of the valley -

After 6 1/2 hrs of hiking, 5 of them in the rain, we were certainly glad to be finished. I’ll close with Steve’s great picture of the orchids -