Torres del Paine

The day of my most highly anticipated hike of our entire trip dawned beautiful and sunny. Woohoo! This was the view from our hotel dining room -

A Crested Caracara sat in a tree just above us as we set out -

This was what was obscured by the clouds and storm of the previous day (when we hiked in the rain) -

I just loved the “chocolate topped” mountains -

Even though we knew we had a very long hike in front of us, during the 1+ hour drive to the trailhead, Steve agreed to stop at this lookout for me -

Our goal…(the spires just to the right of center)

We crossed a stream before we started climbing…

… and after a few kilometers, we looked back to see how high we’d gotten -

About 2/3 of the way there, we came to “Windy Pass” -

…which was luckily not very windy, but had this neat rock -

As we crossed this river…

… we finally saw our goal, after hiking 8 km…

… but we still had a lot of elevation to gain. The total length of the trail to Mirador Base Las Torres (Viewpoint of the base of the towers) was marked as 10 km, but getting to and from the trail and our truck made our total hike (out and back) 21 km (13 mi) long.

The last 2 km was really steep and consisted of lots of rocks, and even boulders, and was crowded with hikers going both up and down.

I basically kept my head down and kept on trudging, so I took those pictures above on our way back down, when I had plenty of time and energy.

Success!

There were a lot of people there…

… which detracted from the sight for me, but I just kept taking pictures…

… trying to avoid…

… those pesky humans.

We actually enjoyed the hike back down more than we have on other trails, because we were basically alone…

… and could take in the awesome topography -

As we drove back to our hotel, we saw some of our first Guanacos…

(I loved how that one was lying down with its feet in front of it)

…which became a common sight during our next several weeks of driving.

At the end of the day, after 8 hrs of hiking, and 2,460 ft of elevation gain, we were two tired, but happy “old fogeys”. :)