It had rained all night. We had been spoiled with the weather and were lucky to have only encountered rain so late in our trek. It is of course not at all unusual to have rain a couple of times if being in Patagonia for 10 days. But this was the first night of a lot of it.
The tent was wet and the soil around it was soaked up and muddy. Smartly enough I had left the gas cooker and the pot outside, but a little rinse had cleaned off the dirt quickly.
It was still raining, and we were not entirely sure what was going to be our next steps. Are we continuing? Are we staying in this lovely dry hut (which had been used by some people in the camp this night, that were not so lucky to have had a fully water proof tent)?
We decided to go on! Try to dry off and cleaned the tent as good as possible, roll it up and pack everything.
So far I had carried my backpack outside and didn't have a waterproof pack for it.
Luckily our food had been decimated quite a bit so that it was now possible to move stuff around and put the sleeping bag inside the backpack and the sleeping mat inside the backpack and then cover the entire packpack with the rain cover. The Pot and gas stove had to stay outside and were just attached to one of the straps, dangling about (quite annoying when hiking I have to say).
It was a good decision. The packing up took of course a bit longer than usually but soon we were on our way again and just about 15 minutes into our hike the rain started to stop. Still in the forest gave some additional protection from the last drops but therefore the rainwater running down in streams (preferrably along the muddy path) added some challenge to this part of the trek.
This part, even in dry conditions may be the hardest of all the circuit, as it contains a steep incline to the Gardner pass up to 1229m but as soon as we had left the wet and muddy forest the rain stopped entirely and sun lit the valley through the low clouds in a very strange, surreal light.
Once again there were multiple glaciers along the valley which were a great sight to see while we worked our way up the loose rocks towards the pass.
Very much at the same instance we got to the pass, marked with a little stone pile decorated with Tibetan prayer flags the the clouds parted and the sun came out and nature showed off what it can do by displaying a rainbow just over the immense Glacier Grey that had just come into our view on the other side of the pass.
For me (and I beleive also for Kai) it was the most amazing and rewarding sight of the whole trek. The strenuous packing up the wet tent, hike through the muddy forest up the boulders to the pass and then being rewared by a magical sight like this...
WOW.... all our concerns about the trek being in the right direction, started at the right place, at the right time and speed were gone... Everything worked out perfectly... You have to suffer a little bit to be able to enjoy the full scale of what ever it is!
In this case Nature teased us a bit with rain in the morning but rewarded us handsomely with a view we will never forget.
What better place than this to have a snickers and even better, hide a Geocache.
Kai had brought a little tube container up here and we went off to the side a bit and hid the container. This is my first ever time to hide a cache and hopefully it will be found by some passer bys.
Now, I have not even talked much about the Glacier. Glacier Grey which could be seen from the pass is immense. It is more than 5 km wide and stretches for 27km... from where we were there was no end in sight.
The pass is also probably the best view you can get as a normal trekker of the glacier as you are far above it and can only appreciate the full scale of it from here. If we would have only done the W trek it is very likely we would have only advanced to the view point from where you can see the glacier on the calving front but would not be able to see how far it stretches to the back.
It was far more impressive than the Fox Glacier in New Zealand to me, although we were no closer to it now than the Fox Glacier. But being able to view it from the top really makes a big difference. You could only estimate the proportions judging by the crevasses (that looked tiny in relation to the glacier) within in the ice.
While descending towards Refugio Grey we had some more magnificent views over the glacier until we entered back into the forest. From here it was a steep decent of about 1200m neary back to sea level over roots, rocks and muddy soil.
It also started raining again soon, so it was a bit of a hard walk down but it should become worse soon.
As it had been quite hot the last couple of days a lot of ice and glacier ice had melted and now filled the raging streams running down the mountain and underneath the glacier into Lago Grey (the rain didn't help and surely added to the sensation.
The masses of water were so much that normal passage of the rocks was impossible in some places and we had to hike up a couple of hundred meters over rocks and boulders to get to a relatively save passage.
In all I think it was quite dangerous, this part of the trek and a little later a ranger came up the path and asked us about the situation there and if there were any other rangers that would help people to get across. He seemed a little concerned but very competent.
From here it wasn't much further to the Refugio and after passing over two large wooden suspension bridges we soon arrived at the campsite.
It was very obvious that we were back on the W trek now as the camping site was very busy.
The rain kept going but we didn't care much after we had set up our tent as we went into the refugio, washed off all the mud, sweat and possibly even some blood in the nice and clean bath room, hang our socks, jackets and jumpers out to dry in the hall and enjoyed a nice cold beer and a 3 course meal (provided by the Refugio).
It felt great to be back in sort of a civilization again.
I was still trying to find internet access but there was no official way up here to get some. Since you were able to pay with credit card I assumed there must be some sort of shared line and after not getting anywhere talking to the reception personal got through to the manager who explained it wouldn't be possible to use it now since he has a very limited bandwidth only. Fair enough of course - so he agreed for me to use it later that evening around 11.
What should we be doing so long? Exactly: have a couple of beers with some of the people around here.
We chatted to some Australians that we should meet once again later and had a good time.
In the end we had something to celebrate... we were nearly at the end and had done all but the last bit of the Torres de Paine Circuit. Just a couple of kilometres left in the morning and we could catch the midday boat back and take a bus to Puerto Natales.
Writing the email and sending it out also worked like a charm.
Also our calculations of supplies was done well... we had just the Polenta left that we had for emergencies and we finished off the last sip of whiskey that night. All worked out well!
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