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jonros74

51 - The Night Hike

Hi Everyone,


An incredibly early start today at 1:30am, but it didn't hit as hard as I expected! We quickly rolled out of bed, packed up and set off. The sky was full of patchy clouds but a beautiful full moon made my headtorch almost unnecesssary. The landscape was very beautiful if hard to make out, and in the distance we could make out the shadowy spectres of the Torres del Paine, our aim for the day. These famous granite towers give the park their name and glow a beautiful red at sunrise, giving one of the main attractions of the park. We aimed to get to the viewpoint before sunrise, but there was a lot of hiking before then.


Navigation was quite difficult in the dark, especially once the clouds strengthened and we could only see by the light of the headtorch. Thankfully, I had map, compass and guidebook, as well as a very well signposted track.


The weather was surprisingly warm and the wind was light so despite it being close to the Southern tip of South America and the middle of the night we were hiking uphill in t-shirts and trousers to keep cool. I had expected the hike to be busier but actually the other groups were only encountered every 200-500m or so, easily identified at large distances by their torches. As we ascended, the terrain became more difficult (passing over the surprisingly windless "windy pass") but it was well marked by posts with a retroreflective marking, easily identified at night.


We were both flagging a bit by the time we reached the viewpoint at the base of the Torres but even at night the view was very impressive (and I especially enjoyed the fantastic contrast and patterns of the granite intruding into the overlying dark sediments).

We arrived at around 5:30 and stayed there for about an hour and a half, gradually watching the sun rise and the light increase. We wrapped up very warm in all the layers that we possessed as it was much cooler and windier here and we were no longer walking. We also had second breakfast (more sandwiches....). Due to the intermittent cloud cover, there was no clear, single moment of redness, but there were some pretty patches and some strong rays of light.


Suitably satisfied, we began the hike back down. It was a completely different walk, we could see the entire valley and what had been a very narrow field of view with a single tree or the next few rocks expanded to cover vast forests and mountains with stunning canyons, rivers and ice patches. The walk back down was also much busier than the one up, with huge trains of people walking up en masse, similar to what might be expected on Snowdon on a good day.


After a very enjoyable walk down, we made it to the campsite where we enjoyed our upgrade to "premium camping " (everything else had been sold out...). We made it there around 11am so then spent the rest of the beautifully sunny and warm day recovering from our hike, napping, and preparing for the next day. I also took the time to read some more of "Superintelligence" and write this blog post!

07/02/23

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