Torres del Paine National Park - Hiking the W

For 5 days we switched our mean of transportation: We changed from our bikes to our feet and therefore got even slower... ;-) We wanted to explore the Torres del Paine National Park located about 150 km north of Puerto Natales. Once we got to the park by bus we first took a catamaran to cross the Lake Pehoé and from there hiked about 3.5 hours mostly in the rain to the Refugio Grey, located on the shore of Lake Grey with an amazing view onto the huge Grey Glacier!

View onto the Lake Grey and the Grey Glacier

An iceberg!!! :-)

The next day we hiked the same way back and luckily the weather wasa lot better, so we got a pretty nice view of what we couldn't see the day before! Back at the Lake Pehoé we continued our way to the Campamento Italiano, it was still pretty nice weather, however the wind got really strong so we were glad to get to the campground and put up our tent that will protect us from the wind in the night.

Burned woods...
Fire spreads really fast with the Patagonian wind!

The next morning we hiked up to the Mirador Británico, again in the rain, but we were lucky again and in cleared up just before we got to the top, so we had a pretty good view onto the mountains, the glaciers and the lakes in the valley. We also witnessed a huge avalanche coming down the glacier, that was really impressive! And as it always started raining again with the sun still present, we had the luck that over a very nice valley with a river and the glacier in the background a beautiful rainbow formed! :-) 

The rainbow looked waaaay better in reality!

Beautiful view onto the lakes from the Mirador Francés

Back down at the campground we had to pack our tent and backpacks again and in pouring rain continued to the Refugio Cuernos, where we set up our tent again (and yes, it was still raining...). The next morning we could hardly believe how nice the view actually was at this place, it was awesome weather and the landscape seamed to have changed completely overnight! So we started hiking again in beautiful weather.

It's nice weather for once :-)

Unfortunately my right Achilles tendon seemed to be inflamed quite a bit, as soon I could hardly walk anymore... But we continued and soon reached the Refugio Chileno, from where after a short break we continued to the Campamento Torres, as we decided that we absolutely had to take advantage of the nice weather, as we already learned that it can change immediately. Once we set up our tent we continued hiking uphill towards the Mirador Base de las Torres, the viewpoint where after 4 days of hiking we finally got an amazing view of the famous Torres del Paine!

The Torres in the evening

As the weather forecast was pretty good for the next day (not that you could actually count on it!) we decided to get up really early and try to see the Torres in the sunrise. We were incredibly lucky, as we saw an amazing sunrise and the Torres turned completely orange in the sun, while all the surrounding mountains remained in the shadow.

The Sunrise from the Mirador Base de las Torres

The Torres at sunrise! :-) 

It was definitely worth getting up early!

And just about 30 minutes after this amazing sunrise, the sun vanished behind the clouds and we didn't see anything of the sky anymore for the whole day... So we hiked back to the campround, packed our stuff and hiked out of the park and took the bus back to Puerto Natales, where in the evening we went for a beer with a German guy and a French couple we met in the Park. And After all this hiking we decided to take a day off today to just relax a little bit before we'll continue our way towards El Calafate by bike...