The Paine Circuit Continues... And Ends

On the morning of the fourth day, we hauled out of Refugio Lago Dickson without realizing that the prettiest campsites and most agreeable weather were already behind us. After a final glance back at Glacier Dickson—which looks like it’s coated with a fluffy white merengue—we swung west through drizzling rain, passing one of the fiery orange peat bogs that occur pretty frequently in Tierra del Fuego but seem less common farther north. The layout of the Circuit necessitates a campground in close proximity to Paso John Garner (more on that soon), which is probably the only reason that Campamento Los Perros exists. Easily the worst site on the route, it's a muddy, mosquito-infested patch of dirt that we were unlucky enough to greet in the pouring rain. We spent most of the evening in a cramped wooden shelter, watching a ubiquitous crew of hard-drinking Chilean boys cook a giant cauldron of pasta on a "portable" two-ton stove that folded up like a suitcase. Desperate for creature comforts, we bought overpriced cans of beer from the tiny almacen. I thought Emily was insane for asking if the beer was cold--everything was cold--but lo and behold, the beer was the lone exception. We drank it anyway, before crawling into our sleeping bags (wearing socks, pants, fleeces, and wool hats) for a really damp and unpleasant night.

Day Five is the most notorious of the trek--the one everyone tells horror stories about a few campsites later. In order to make a loop, it's necessary to pass over the ominous Paine massif somewhere, and the best place anyone's found to do it is at Paso John Garner, a 1200-meter high dip between snowy peaks. 1200 meters isn't all that high, and the climb to the pass would be pretty simple in agreeable weather. The problem is that the weather is never agreeable. The leg from C. Perros to C. Paso is rated "Difficult" because of the gale-force westerlies that sweep through the pass. They're literally enough to knock you over (we both left our feet on multiple occasions). What basically happens is that as soon as the wind dies down, you sprint like hell for the biggest rock you can find and cling to it. If you stand there clutching it long enough, the odds are pretty good that you'll see a couple passing you going the other way, with one person screaming "It's over!" and the other yelling "Fine! I never want to see you again!".

Really, the only good things about Paso John Garner are a) If you make it over, there are spectacular views of Glacier Grey and b) conquering it gives you license to be smug to the majority of hikers in the park, who do a much abbreviated route called the W. A book could probably be written about the difference between W'ers and Circuit'ers, but our own favorite observation is that while W'ers carry really expensive and techy equipment, it seemed to us that most Circuit'ers had things like the aforementioned two-ton suitcase stove. Anyway, immediately after making it over Paso John Garner, we both foolishly came to believe that we were "almost done" even though we had four-plus days of hiking ahead of us, and started doing things like eating twice as much food per meal as we'd rationed. I'm serious, the wind does things to your sanity.

Day Six spent much of the time skirting the east flank of Glacier Grey, a 5 km. wide and many-km. deep mass of intricately crevassed ice that represents one of the stubbornly remaining fragments of the rapidly melting Continental Sur. About midway through the day we encountered hikers with day packs coming the other way, which was pretty weird. We ate lunch out in the open, during the only 20 minutes of rain the entire day. We also passed through a pair of imposing chasms, watched Magellanic Woodpeckers shriek and flutter about, and ended up at a densely packed campground on a pebbly beach, with box wine for sale and hot showers for all (much rejoicing).

Day Seven brought us to the windy shores of the impossibly blue Lago Pehoe, which offered us our first impressive views of the imposing Cuernos del Paine. Late a night, a boat pulled up and unloaded dozens and dozens of French tourists who stayed up half the night guzzling wine and taking photos of totally banal sites, such as the campground's cooking shelter. By Day Eight we were really in the home stretch, working our way to Albergue Los Cuernos on a meandering path that brought us past yet another of the park's beautifully blue lakes. On the last morning, we woke up to a torrential downpour. Not patient enough to wait it out, we packed our tent up in the rain and finished the final 11 km. at a pretty brisk trot. If we'd known in advance how badly China Doll Grossman was going to botch things, we probably wouldn't have rushed it. -NSH