I left El Calafate early on a bus headed for Puerto Natales. This meant leaving Argentina and making my way to Chile. I had completed the usual cross-border online forms, screenshot the QR codes, and was good to go. On the bus, I would bump into an Australian family from the Antarctica trip. This was unexpected, but always good to see friendly faces when traveling. The bus ride took considerably longer than advertised, not helped by us arriving at the border to learn that this border had a different online form to complete, and there was no signal and no Wifi. One person somehow had weak signal, and hotspotted all of us, which took a very long time. The Chilean side was faster, but still took a while.

Eventually I found myself in Puerto Natales. I decided to walk to my accommodation for the night, which was probably not my wisest idea with my very heavy blue bag. By this point, I had grown a rather substantial resentment to this blue dufflebag – having hauled it around for all these months. I had even considered getting it shipped to Sao Paulo for collection just before I return home, but ultimately decided this was a bad idea. I had decided that if I was going anywhere near Sao Paulo, I would leave it there, though, which I would ultimately do after leaving Chile – although I’m getting ahead of myself.

That evening, Rivu (from the Antarctica trip) would return from completing the W Trek. We managed to catch up for dinner.

The W-Trek is probably one of the most iconic hikes one can do anywhere on the planet. It must be booked well in advance, to ensure spots at the campsites. Booking these directly is very difficult, and after many attempts, I gave up and took the online advice to book via the site torreshike.com (no affiliation or sponsorship, link provided as it was useful to me). I had booked the campsites in early November, so I was lucky to even get spaces at three weeks notice for late November.

I opted to do the trek over three days. It is traditionally done in five days, but the campsites are very expensive, and as busy season approached, available flights had become rather limited – meaning my flight to leave the area would not give me extra days in any case.

The following morning I was up early, and back at the bus station. The place I was staying at had allowed me to leave my dufflebag there for the duration of the trek, which helped. There are a lot of busses heading to the park in the morning. Upon arrival at the park gate, most people leave the bus to catch the separate park bus to the start of the day-hike to the lake below the towers (also the start of the W-Trek, if going east to west), while others remaining on the bus to the lake with the ferry, which was my start to the hike – since I was going west to east. I figured it was best to start the hike at the ferry – it is often closed due to wind, and while missing the bus on the other side is entirely possible, I could always walk the road back to the gate; a missed/closed ferry at the end is a much more significant issue!

The boat ride is really beautiful. The iconic Chilean Patagonia picture that you’ve probably seen before is taken from this side.

I eventually found myself at the campsite called Paine Grande. It would normally be the second night of the trek, as days one and two are the same in opposite directions. If you are camping here, they charge extra to store your bag for a few hours, so I had to wait in the shockingly slow queue to check in, so I could get the tags to set up my tent. I was only done with checking in by 11:45. Upside of being there this early is that I got a reasonably nice spot out of the wind. Later I would see a number of people who had not arrived in time to even get a designated spot, despite paying in advance.

Despite sunset being around 9:30pm, they had a deadline of 3pm to be past the start of the day two trail. I’m not sure if these cutoffs are enforced, so I wasn’t going to take any chances. By the time my tent was set up, it was already midday. This meant I had only three hours to complete day one.

It was very windy once I was up on the ridge.

The entire trek is at low altitude, so while there are some hills, it is comparatively easy when compared to treks at altitude.

The wind suddenly died down and the clouds started to lift, revealing the peaks above.

Grey Glacier comes into view fairly soon. It is a substantial glacier, although not in the same league as the likes of Perito Moreno.

I walked into Grey Camp at around 2:30, giving me just enough time to head out to the nearby lookout, but not enough to head on the start of the O-Trek to the better viewpoint. Considering all the glaciers I had seen prior to this, I wasn’t too stressed about this. It would have been nice, and if there wasn’t a 3pm cut-off for leaving the camp, I would have definitely gone further, but I decided not to chance it, and set off back to Paine Grande.

I passed the “trail closed at 3” sign at 2:51, so plenty of time to spare…

The peaks above had clearly been blasted with snow – the combo of strong winds and snow gives rock a beautiful look, with the edges highlighted.

The walk back was largely uneventful.

The 24km with 1.1km ascent had taken 5h22 round trip – I was happy I had done it in a day, there was no reason to spend an extra day on this.

Paine Grande is definitely the most beautiful of the camps I stayed at.

Day 2 (usually day 3) would be my easy day. The plan was simple – hike to Italian Camp (which is closed), leave my bag there, take a daypack up to British Lookout, hike back, pick up my things, then on to French Camp for the night.

The hike to Italian Camp was trivial, and there’s plenty of space to leave bags here, although tons of people also leaving bags here.

I generally got annoyed at the poor maintenance of trails throughout Patagonia. You pay rather substantial park fees, yet they can’t place erosion barriers and drainage channels to move the stream off the path.

The valley up to British Lookout was my favourite part of the entire trek – even more than the towers. You have these towering cliffs above you, a beautiful glacial river, really beautiful.

I enjoyed a lunch of crackers and cheese at the lookout before heading back down.

Day 2 was 22km with 1.1km ascent. I had taken 8h42, but I had taken it easy, plenty of stops to enjoy the view etc – due to the early start, I didn’t have any concerns about cut-offs this day.

Arriving at French Camp and seeing a queue of only a few people in front of me, I thought check-in would be quick. I didn’t time it, but it must have been at least 15 minutes. Later I’d see a much longer queue. For context – French Camp is currently the most expensive accommodation I have paid for in my entire life, more expensive than any hotel I’ve stayed at. And for that – I had to provide my own tent and sleeping equipment, and it was a 300m walk to the ablutions that barely worked. The “hot shower” was barely a trickle and barely warm. I can’t say I was impressed.

There was a fox poking around, looking for food that had been left out. As has become my tradition, this meant I needed to put my headphones on and listen to The Fox by Ylvis. By this point, I had it available for offline listening.

The following morning I was up very early. It gets light so early that I could have started earlier, but didn’t think that was necessary. This was the big day – the hardest day of the trek, plus the day I would visit my major bucket-list site: the towers.

It was a very windy morning, but I had the trail to myself. I didn’t see another person till I reached Cuernos Camp, and then I barely saw anyone for the next few hours after this too – until I started bumping into people coming the other way. Having a trail like this to yourself is something truly special.

My bus out of the park was late in the evening, so no need to rush. But it was also a beautiful clear day, and I knew that the towers would be in clear weather if I got there nice and early.

Coming around the one corner and seeing the offices where the trail ends was interesting. Encouraging, but I was also very aware that I had just finished the relatively flat easy bit.

After a comparatively uninteresting walk, the hike up to Chilean Camp was a lot more interesting.

The slog up to the towers was super crowded – although it was a clear Sunday afternoon, and this is the most popular part of the trek, a lot of people only do this section – so it makes sense.

Coming around the corner and seeing the towers for the first time is something special. I remember watching Paul Fatti’s talk about the South African Route up Central Tower that they opened 50 years ago (at the time of the talk). Seeing all the spots from the talk was very special. I personally consider this ascent to be the greatest South African feat in the mountains.

I spent some time enjoying the view, but finding a spot out of the way with so many people wasn’t easy, so I soon started back down.

The walk down the valley was uneventful, although my feet were clearly not happy with the volume of hiking they had done since getting off the ship in Ushuaia.

Day 3, which is usually days 4 and 5, was 32km with 2km ascent – definitely the hardest of the three days. While I had come to see the towers, I’m happy I did the full W-Trek, as the section up to British Lookout was definitely the best.

I arrived just in time for the 4pm bus from the end of the trail to the park entrance. I knew my bus was hours away, but I suspected there would be an earlier bus I could get onto.

After waiting a bit, a bus arrived from the same company I had a ticket for. I asked the driver if I could go on his bus instead, and he told me it had broken down, so they could only drive 10 minutes, and then let the engine cool down for 10 minutes. I told him my bus would only arrive in 3 hours, so this would still get me back quicker. He responded that I was the only person who was excited to get on his bus. Others were shouting at him, complaining that they would miss their flights – while I understand their frustration, I don’t know what they expected him to do about it. About halfway back to Puerto Natales, the replacement bus met us, and we all jumped off and got onto the new bus.

I was back in Puerto Natales just after 7pm – my scheduled bus wouldn’t have even arrived at the park entrance yet, so taking the broken-down bus had saved me hours.

Overall – I enjoyed the W-Trek. The views are great, and this time I had been very lucky with weather, but once again – my usual Patagonia complains: too crowded, very expensive, trails not properly maintained etc.