A Day on Glacier Grey (W Trail: Day 2)

Word of the Day: Paine

noun. A world meaning blue that is attributed to the Tehuelche, a tribe of nomadic hunter-gatherers that passed through Patagonia.

Perhaps because I have an unhealthy fascination with glaciers, or because we are gluttons for punishment, we decided to start the day with a grueling ice hike on Glacier Grey. And let me tell you, it was AWESOME.

It began inauspiciously as I slipped and fell into the boat that would convey us to the foot of the glacier — and almost placed a gaping hole in my skull and possibly the hull of the aforementioned boat. Don’t worry, this is a common occurrence for me. Moving right along.

The morning was just cool enough so a thin layer of ice coated the top of the lake. And the ice was just thick enough to make a stupefyingly epic cracking sound as the boat spiderwebbed its way through the freshly-shattered ice, flinging shards in all directions. After too short of a trip, we nosed into a tiny cove at the foot of the cliffs and clambered out.

We then walked-ran up the switchbacks to the actual ice flow and put on the rest of our gear–harnesses, pickaxes, and crampons, oh my! Crampons are essentially golf shoes with bigger teeth that you tie onto your feet, allowing you to climb super steep, snowy embankments with relative ease. Despite having used crampons previously, I somehow managed to lash mine together, severely undermining my street cred. Luckily the guides good-naturedly straightened me out.

Crampons attached to my feet and with the added leverage of a pickaxe, you could theoretically swing around the glacier like Tarzan. I settled on using the pickaxe for extra balance, but it ups the cool factor of your pictures by at least 20%. As if marching across the swells of an enormous glacier wasn’t enough excitement, there was also an ice cave and a giant waterfall to explore, the latter of which disappeared hundreds of feet into the ground through the glacier. As mentioned in the About section, I’m pretty fond of leaning over edges.

Then if you got bored, you could always use your ice axe to hack into the ice on top of the glacier runoff rivulets, and lap up the water like a dog. Looking back, I think most people placed their canteens into the river, but expediency (and the fact that I didn’t want to get my hands cold) won out. It turns out that there is nothing tastier than glacier waters. Except for maybe the surprise hot chocolate that the guides brought for us. But really, I drank from creeks of all shapes and sizes on this trip, and nothing beat the clear, wintry waters of Glacier Grey’s tiny frozen rivulets.

After finishing our jaunt along the swells of Glacier Grey, it was then time to grab our packs and schlep it towards the Refugio Paine Grande. Now, at the time, I was not entirely sure what a paine was–it sounds like another instance of Chileans just making up words–but this place is surely a pain-e in the ass. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First off, I hadn’t paid too much attention to a certain steep cliff that we had effortlessly descended the day before. Navigating up it with my pack (and my admittedly less-responsive-than-usual legs) proved challenging. Of course, Boyfriend is like a cabra, which means he thrives on this mountain goat-friendly terrain, so he essentially crushed me on this leg of the journey.

Secondly, I’m usually not a huge fan of retracing my steps, and without a giant glacier to look forward to, the journey seemed considerably less epic than it had the day before. Thirdly, once we arrived at Paine Grande, my shower turned glacial just as I put shampoo in my hair. Shudder. But such is refugio life :).

Still, the sunset as we descended from the hills and Lago los Patos was absolutely breathtaking, distilling our surroundings into the most perfect green-yellow color palette I had ever seen. Not to mention that there were so many stars in the night sky–and none of the constellations seemed familiar. In short, it felt like you were in a different world.

Despite being warned to the contrary by a surprising majority of our trail friends, the food was quite good and it came in ogre-like portions. Menu del dia: Vegetable Soup, Giant Carrot Cube Thing, and Psychedelic Orange Dessert. Are you sensing a theme here? In any case, I later found out that the carrot cube was actually rather traditional fare that also contained egg and spices (and was quite tasty).

All of this lulled me into a false sense of security that people had been exaggerating about the awfulness of this place, as I went to sleep well-fed and content. And woke up 2 hours later the coldest I had ever been IN MY LIFE. Apparently around midnight they shut off all of the generators in the building (why?), and the cold had quickly crept into my warm sleeping bag cocoon.

Also, did I mention that there was wind on my face!?! In the morning, I would drag my popsicle patoot out of bed to realize that they had punched holes in the wooden frame of every window, thereby letting in the elements. Apparently they did it to avoid shattered windows from the insane wind and pressure changes. But at that moment, I became a pitiful human ball in my mummy bag, tossing and turning the rest of the night, hoping that I would survive with all of my metatarsals at full mobility.

April 6, 2015