December 22, 1999
Day 61 Chalten: Walk to Laguna Torre
We get up at 7am, et our cereal breakfast and put on our hiking shoes. We want to do a recommended hike to Laguna Torre for good views on Cerro Torre and its glacier.
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The trailhead is a bit hard to find, but once there it's a nice clear trail up the valley. We climb steep initially into a beautiful beech forest. Good views of the pillars in the Fitzroy Range. The walk is about 3 hours up, the last part over old terminal moraines to an enormous pile of rubble that forms the eastern edge of Laguna Torre.
We get greeted by the wind so strong one can hardly stay on your feet. Foam caps on the lake and icebergs washed up on the shore. Across the lake the Torre Glacier spills into the lake but the spine of Cerro Torre is shrouded in clouds that have formed during our hike up.
We find shelter behind a stone wall and eat our lunch, then slowly head back to town. We can take a different route for the last bit and en our hike just past our campground.
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In the evening we eat out with the Australian couple we met earlier in Chonchi and ran into again today on our hike; it's a small world.
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