Everyone but Mauro and Herman arrived back at the hut at some point, and most of us decided the next day to head back the way we came and skip the pass. Alison and I decided to do a really long day all the way back to our first campsite at Serron. We knew the distance to be about 35km, but thought we could do it at a push. On the way we cold look back and see the pass, which still looked pretty nasty. We made it back to Serron about an hour before dark and after a quick dinner got straight into bed.
The good thing was now that we had this bit over, we did not need to back track any more, as there was an alternative route back to the “W” section of the park. So the next day (day 6) we headed over to the main place where people stay at the entry to the Torres walk. On the way we went through a fence and saw an arrow pointing to the camp we were heading for, but it didn´t seem to tally with the map (which wasn´t that great). We decided to follow the arrow, but after about and hour and many evil Calafate bushes, we decided that we had gone totally the wrong way. Our arms and legs had been slashed to bits, but I thought we could get back on track by contouring around the hill.
We managed this and after about an hour emerged onto a really wide path, which was a whole load more obvious that the cattle trail we had been following. We were now about two hours behind on what shout have been an easy 4 hour walk. Anyway, we eventually did make it to the campsite where we had our second (lovely) shower of the trek. As I was sitting in the tent waiting for Alison, I heard someone shout my name, which was really bizarre in the bottom end of South America. It turned out to be Jim from Seattle, who had also trekked back here in 2 days with Dona. They had promptly checked into the nearby 4* hotel and he wanted to buy me a beer and catch up on the return journey.
Needless to say I promptly agreed, and we walked over to the hotel later on and got stuck into some lovely Chilean wine and delicious bar food. It was a bit pricey, but we were in a remote national park. Anyway, as anyone who treks will know food does taste soooo good after six days walking and eating pasta and rice. We wobbled back to our tent (much) later that night having agreed to meet in New Zealand to do the Routeburn Track, another one of the “26 World´s Greatest Walks”.
Next morning we were a little bit fuzzy, but still managed to head up towards the base of the Torres, where there is a fantastic view point. As we started ascending further into the park, the wind became much more noticeable again, but is wasn´t until we entered the valley leading up to the Torres that we felt its full force. Problem was we were on a 75cm wide path with scree above and below, along with a 500m drop to one side down to the raging river. Parts of the path had also fallen away at points, so the adrenaline was fairly flowing.
We reached the first refugio and had a break, before continuing along the river this time, with a few scrambly bits where the river had washed the path away. We made it to the top campsite where we met Mauro. We found out that he had made it over the pass (after being knocked off his feet a number of times) and had charged around to this final campsite. The consolation was he couldn´t see anything when he was descending from the pass over Glacier Grey, so we felt a little bit better about not getting over the pass. Had a chat to a few other nice people and got some rest before we headed up to the viewpoint the next morning at dawn to get fantastic views of the Torres Del Paine. We then packed up and headed back down the valley in even stronger winds. It was quite dangerous a points and Mauro (who doesn´t slow down for anything) said he had been centimeters away from being blown down the scree into the river below.
We had decided that as it was my birthday very soon and we were running out of food to leave the park without completing the entire “W”, but we were happy about the 8 days we had done and felt like we had got the most out of the park. We headed back down to where the bus took us out of the park and back to the nice hostel for good food and showers.
