Hiking Through Torres del Paine

T O R R E S   D E L   P A I N E,   Patagonia,   -- I am standing less than a mile from the base of the Torres del Paine, four magnificent granite towers that, for the last two hours, have been shrouded in heavy, snow-pregnant clouds. My traveling companion, Erik, is a buddy from high school who has come down to South America on a month-long hiatus between jobs as an attorney and to take some time off from a long string of 80-hour work-weeks.

We consult one another to determine whether it is worth the climb to make the towers. I am eager to snap a few photographs, but the clouds seem in no hurry to leave; further, snow has begun to fall, threatening to strand us in the high country. The crisp air fills my lungs and makes my body feel like a smoothly-running engine. I am ready to continue.

Erik reminds me, however, that our provisions are nearly gone, and we still have a six-mile trek to get back to the park's entrance, where we hope to catch a ride to the park's only store to buy more food. Despite the fact that an imminent return to the park is unlikely, we decide to leave the elusive towers for another day.

A few hours later, we find ourselves negotiating with a dark-bearded Chilean man named Miguel, who runs a stable within the park that rents horses to visitors. We have arrived a month short of the regular season, however, and Miguel informs us that there are no horses to be had. I slip him a twenty and this convinces him that an exception is due in our case. "You gringos sure know how to bargain," he says, pocketing my money. I have the feeling that I'm being taken for a ride, but in a way, that exactly what I'm paying for. Besides, when's the next time I'm going to be in one the world's most beautiful places?

Located on the far southern tip of South America, in a sparsely-populated, wind-swept corner of Patagonia, Torres del Paine National Park, sprawls across some 600,000-acres. It is a beautifully desolate place of broad plains, crazy-shaped mountain peaks, thundering waterfalls, and open skies. The park was registered as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1978, and is rich in unusual wildlife and well-known among the international climbing cognoscenti as the source of some of the best rock climbing - and often the worst weather - on the continent.

So far, the hardest part was just getting here. There are no roads from the North, so for Erik, who came from San Francisco, the trip required a six hour flight to Miami, and an eight hour flight to Santiago, where we met up. Then there was a four-hour plane ride to Punta Arenas, the world's southern-most city, and finally a 250-mile van ride to the park entrance. No one ever said reaching paradise was going to be easy.

Of course, this remoteness is one of the park's hidden blessings: as many people visit Torres del Paine a year as visit Yellowstone in a day.

Meeting Moncho

Our goal now is to reach the Grey Glacier, a frozen finger of the Southern Ice Cap, the continent's largest remaining body of ice left over from the last Ice Age. We are ready to ride, but Miguel tells us he must first scare up a guide, as there are none currently on shift.