Hiking the W - Last day!

Yoiks, we may have had a night of luxury last night but when an alarm goes off at 6am it is never a good thing! Still up and out the hotel by 7am to start the hike up towards the Chileno Campsite and hopefully a great view of the famous towers.

As we set out it was still dark which made determing the weather a little tricky but as the sun slowly rose we realised that there was cloud all around us, but it seemed to be lifting as quickly as the sun was rising. Fairly hopefully! After only a couple of hours the clouds had entirely lifted and we can see the towers, yippee, but still not in full view as all we can see at the moment is the tops behind other bits of mountain. Not far after passing the Chileno campsite we started running into snow on the path which slowed things down until we got the crampons on and were able to skip happily over the ice to reach the Torres campsite - still with 40 minutes to spare before we have to start down the hill. Sadly, at this very moment the clouds and snow came in and all chances of a perfect Torres view went up the proverbial. Still at least we have had a sight of them, along with some amazing views down the valley.

The trip down was uneventful other than a fox giving Clare the heeby jeebies as it wandered up behind us. Good to spot some wildlife, but somewhat closer than was expected. After a lunch of what we had pinched from breakfast we headed out past the posh hostel and on the final 7km along a road to where the bus should pick us up. A nice enough walk out but kind of like a walk out at the end of a Munro, something you are keen to get over and done with as soon as possible.
On arrival at the Rangers station we started waiting for the bus, technically with only 20-40 minutes to wait, however after 2 hours of waiting we decided to hitch back as it seemed that the bus had forgotten us! At least the ranger´s station was quite interesting to wait in, several deer like creatures wandering by, another fox, a skunk and about 8 or so condors wheeling overhead.

Conclusions from Torres del Paine - An amazing mountain that certainly provides some of the best walking that we have done in South America but the weather is as changeable as the North West of Scotland so we were lucky to have it as good as we did. On other days it could be a very harsh place.