Torres del Paine pt 2

Day 3 started early around 8am. It was a tough night since it was bitter cold. Many times during the night, we heard what we though was thunder. It turns out huge chunks of ice were falling off the mountain and crashing nearby. The sound was deafening but still had us in awe. We started with our usual meal of bread, granola, honey, and coffee that I brought from Colombia. The morning was off to an interesting start as another camper's stove caught on fire and in a panic he kicked the set into a pile of dry leaves. Not the best idea. The park ranger quickly extinguished the flames but gave the camper a harsh scolding. They don't want a repeat of the recent fire that burned over 90 square miles in 2012. The agenda was to hike the middle arm of the 'W' known as the French Valley. We would come back down the valley and continue a short distance to Refugio Cuernos. The nice part was that we didn't have to carry all our gear up the French Valley since we were passing our camp on the way down. The French Valley is an absolutely surreal landscape with waterfalls, lush forests, and towering mountains on all sides.

One of the many streams we passed

Most of the crashing ice came from this mountain

The cordillera

Traversing the forest

Amazing trees

Fearless bird

Bottle refill station

Top of the French Valley in the distance

Another view

Overlooking the valley

Taking a break

Looking down the valley

Getting closer to the bottom

We picked up our packs and headed to Refugio Cuernos

View of the lake

Couldn't believe this exists

Looks like a hot tub before the lake

Again we were wiped after day 3, but the views kept us going. Once we arrived at Los Cuernos, we found a nice restaurant with rooms on the second floor for $100+ per night. Everyone who wanted to hike the trails but did not carry any gear booked these rooms. There is an area for campers to set up their tent next to the refugio so we found a good spot and decided to check out the restaurant. The first person we saw was a man taking up an entire bench in the restaurant to get a foot massage because his room was "too far up the stairs". The price for food was steep so we bought a cheap bottle of wine, played some cards, and went to our tent. On to day 4.