#campamentofrances

[juliaisabellphoto]

April 14, 2019 - Parque Nacional Torres del Paine W Trek, Day Two - Campamento Frances to Campamento Chileno

We set an alarm for 5am this morning so we could get an early start on the second leg of the W, but this… didn’t happen. We snoozed the alarm until seven and then jumped out of our sleeping bags and sluggishly packed up, exhausted from the previous evening’s stress. We knew we had a long day ahead of us – the longest of the trek, about 16 miles of incline and decline. As we snuck out of the tent we squatted in and walked to the cooking area to make something warm, it began to really hit us that we were where we were. We made oatmeal with peanut butter and nutella (arguably the best I’ve ever had) and tea to go with it. As we cooked, we were joined by two European men and a woman from Oregon. We all discussed our trekking schedules as well as our struggles thus far, and there was a lovely conviviality in all going through the same difficult, incredible thing. I gave the men some of my sliced turkey meat for their lunch, and they poured me a few sips of the coffee they brewed with a portable dripper. We were all from different places, but this one place gave us a common ground. I fell in love with that.

One thing we did notice was that when we described our 3-day W trek, most people looked at us like we were insane. After finishing it, we realize we probably were – our sheer stupidity and perseverance got us through something that very few people do. Most people split it up into five days, but in an effort to not miss our classes back in Santiago we jammed through the trek. In retrospect, I would never do the W this way again. However, I am so glad we did – only when you push yourself to the absolute limit do you realize how strong you can rise to be, and I am deeply thankful to have had the opportunity to rise.

As we hiked from Campamento Frances to Campamento Chileno, we saw some of the most stunning views of the trip. By the end of the day I was made fun of by Lisi and Mathilde for the number of times I blurted out “DUDE. THIS IS INSANE.” In the process of this hike, Mathilde’s backpack strap broke (and we fixed it – thank god for duct tape and quick thinking… we could be engineers), Lisi fell into a pond, I fell into a river, we were winded by a million different uphills and downhills, and it once again began to get dark. As we walked along the cliffside to arrive at Chileno around 8pm, we felt much more satisfied with the day.

When we arrived at the Chileno Campground we dealt with yet another stressor – setting up our tent on the wood platform we actually had this night. While putting up a tent is usually an absurdly simple task, these platforms turned it into an hour-long ordeal. In the middle of howling wind, we had to find, remove, and re-hammer rusted, bent nails into the right places on the platform to stake our tent and its rainfly onto the platform. By the end of this I could no longer feel my fingers, and Lisi pulled through as the champion of the evening when we ran out of old nails and she thought quickly to tie the rainfly around rocks as I shivered in the half-set-up tent. At each moment in the trek, one of us took charge when we needed to. This night, it was Lisi – I was almost at the point of a breakdown, and she killed it. We climbed into the small tent and ate our dinner of cold cheesy pasta out of a plastic bag while lying on our stomachs. After finishing this delicacy, we fell asleep tightly cuddled, awaiting our 5am alarm to hike to the Torres for sunrise. We woke up several times in the night to the wind, feeling it move our tent and staring upwards praying that the rain cover wouldn’t fly off. But the tent persevered as we did thanks to Lisi, and we stayed dry and warm through the night.

[juliaisabellphoto]

April 13, 2019 - Parque Nacional Torres del Paine W Trek, Day One - Refugio Paine Grande to Campamento Frances

Once we finished the out and back, we grabbed our big packs at Paine Grande and set off on the four hour trek to our camp for the night, Campamento Frances. As is visible in the photos below, it got dark as we did this. The sunset was stunning, but also signaled that we had not correctly timed ourselves and would have to spend time hiking in the dark. We ended up trekking in the dark for about two hours, including losing the trail a few times and walking across a suspension bridge with the label “capacity: one person” (yikes) with very little visibility. Regardless, thanks to headlamps and perseverance, we made it to the French camp. We talked as we walked, and we were all struck by the realization that despite being in the middle of nowhere, Patagonia, in the dark, we felt safe. We felt capable. Hiking through mud and brush in the middle of the night was less terrifying to all of us than walking on the street in any city late at night, and that was a really interesting realization. We knew we would get where we were going. We knew we had to keep going, so there was no other option but to do so. There was something grounding and empowering in this: just keep walking, and you will get through.

We were relieved when we finally saw the sign for Campamento Frances, but only for a moment: we quickly realized that the time for checking into the campsites had passed, and we couldn’t find an open platform to set up our tent on. Thank goodness after a while a French woman crawled out of her tent and told us that the one right next to her (set up by a private company for people to rent) was empty. Exhausted and cold, we decided the best option was just to pile into that tent and sleep rather than setting up our own. We ate a cold dinner of garbanzo beans, Chilean circle bread, Nutella, and peanut butter, and then we snuggled into our sleeping bags and shut our eyes. Day one was a struggle, but we realized while sitting in the tent giggling that it was the most fun struggle we had ever had.