Torres Del Paine (day three)

Our third day of trekking would see us making our way up through one of the most beautiful parts of the "W", the Valle Francés.

We arose from our sleeping bags at 6.30am, feeling quite tired from our Chilean invasion, cooked up our breakfast (packet soup...yum) and started our climb up into the valley.


It soon became apparent why this is such a highly anticipated walk, as the views were immediately spectacular. We made our way closer to the glaciers that lay on the side of Cerro Principal and had an elevated view of the lakes and mountains to our rear from where we started. After a hard hours climb we reached our first lookout, which was pretty awe inspiring. A lot of people stop at this part of valley, but we opted to carry on deeper into the valley to see what the other viewpoint had to offer.

After another hour, which ended in a very steep 15 minute climb, we reached to final lookout point, and our efforts would not go unrewarded. We found ourselves surrounded by soaring granite spire peaks, all with complete vertical faces, a rock climbers utopia. The landscape was actually very intimidated as it loomed right over you at such a huge height it made you feel pretty small and insignificant.
As it was trying to drizzle a bit we didn't stay up there for too long, and made our way back down to camp. Unfortunately the steep decline too it's toll on Dean, and flared up a pre-existing condition. By the time we got back to camp he was feeling pretty bad. We had a long rest there, before breaking up camp and setting off to the next Refugio.

We took things pretty steadily to try and save Dean's knee, and we even offered to carry the heavy bag for longer periods so that he wouldn't need to put unnecessary pressure on it. Ironically it was Mel who lost her footing in the steep and slippery conditions, and landed straight on her bum, rolling around on the floor with the heavy backpack on like a beetle stuck on it's back, laughing her head off.

We reached the Refugio in good time, and were able to find a couple of really great places to pitch our respective tents. We were also able to grab much needed hot showers, which felt so good after a couple of days sweaty trekking without one!

Dinner at the Refugio was spent in the company of Tiggy and Jess again. The three course meal was far superior in this Refugio, and we all raved about it afterward. We hung around in there talking for a while, but eventually agreed that our sleeping bags were calling, especially as Dean needed to rest his knee. Besides, we also knew that we had the longest day of hiking ahead of us.