After our 5 days hike in Chile’s Torre del Paine National Park, we took a bus to move on to El Chalten for our next hiking adventure. El Chalten is a little town in Argentina nestled inbetween a valley of gorgeous mountains and lakes of which the spiky 3400 m high mount Fitz Roy stands out as the highlight of the scenery. After a whole day of bus travel through the beautiful Anden landscape, we arrived there in the early evening hours. We got told that the next day should start with nice sunshine, but that the weather was finally turning for the worse in the afternoon. We had been so lucky so far in Patagonia with no real rainy days. So we aimed to do the impossible and hike to mount Fitz Roy and mount Torre in one day. It would be a 40km hike, normally done in 2 days. We started early and made good time going up to our first destination: Laguna de los tres. The final hour up there was quite exhausting though, as it was a non-stop steep climb for 1 hour that seemed to last forever. The reward was however stunning! We had our lunch up there, struggling a little to keep our food and ourselves from flying away due to the strong wind. After a long break we descended again, moving on to our next destination, the base of mount Torre. We could already see the clouds covering big parts of the sky however. By the time we got to the road crossing close to the Torre base 3 hours later, it had started raining a bit and mount Torre was hardly visible at all due to the cloud cover. We met other hikers who had the same idea as us, but had given up on the idea to go all the way to mount Tore that day as well. So we took the other turn back to town which was still another 3 hours away and were surprised to be walking towards a blue sky, while behind us the bad weather was starting. But that is Patagonia, sun and warmth one minute, rain and wind the other. In the end it was ‚only‘ a 30km day hike, but we were very tired. I wander if we would have made the 40km at all… . We treated ourselves to a local hearty stew, locra, and refilled our fluid levels with locally brewed beer. A perfect ending to the day. The next morning it was already time to move on again.
