Day 11 dayhike - Italiano-Mirador Rio Frances

Before we fell asleep the previous night, we´d made a bold decision. Rather than have the second day be fairly light (stopping to camp at Cuernos), we decided to tack on an extra 4 hours of hiking to try to shorten the time in the park, and have an extra day in Punta Arenas. This meant that we´d be doing a day hike up the middle of the W, then back to Italiano and east to Refugio Las Torres.

When we woke up, and rolled out of our sleeping bags, we weren´t sure that was such a good idea. Stiff backs, sore legs, feet still a bit tired. But we downed some water and a granola bar, and started uphill toward a mirador roughly 2/3 of the way to Campamento Britanico. In hindsight, this may have been my favorite hike in the park.

The hike goes fairly steeply up the valley of the Rio Frances. The distance we covered was split fairly evenly between packed forest dirt/roots, loose gravel stream beds, and rocky boulder navigating. After a few minutes we began to be able to see the sights. Down and to the left was the river. Up and to the left was a glacial ice bed perched on top of dark mountains. Over the shoulder to the left was Lago Nordskroldkjflivlk (spelling?) Nordenskjold and a view of the opposite shore (roughly where we´d been driving in the bus the day before). Up and to the right were first the beautiful two-toned Cuernos (I was informed by Julie that the two tones arise from the volcanic composition of the bottom half, and the sedimentary composition of the top) and later the west side of the Torres del Paine (awesome).

With just light dayhike material, we made it up to the lookout point in under an hour, while the sun was still climbing over the hillside. Admiring the view for a few minutes, and taking a few snapshots at the same time, we were there long enough to first hear and then see a large chunk of snow and ice start an avalanche down the icy mountainside. Pretty powerful.

With our hunger growing, though, and knowing that we had a lot of hiking in front of us, we started back down the hill to break camp and get moving. I´ll not be forgetting the views anytime soon.

Pictures up now:
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/555452286ynMuKZ