Adventurer Part 3: The Passage to Grey

This is a guest column written by my daughter. She just wanted to write one blog, but we’ve morphed it into a series that we alternately write. Two people, two perspectives, narrated in acts, like a play’s script, describing an epic journey that we took as a family to the Torres.

By: Ishani Ghosh.
February 21, 2020

If you read the first two posts, you know the story so far. If you jumped into Part 3 directly, then here’s the preamble: Our family: Baba (my Dad), Mumma (Mom), Shubhangi (younger sister) and I (Ishani) had embarked on a 6 day trek across 44 miles of summertime (December in the Southern Hemisphere) Patagonia in the windswept Torres Del Paine National park. Our plans went somewhat awry on Day 4 (expectedly the hardest day) resulting in us not being able to complete our plans as planned. Post 1 and 2 recounted the start and the finish. Today’s account is the recounting of the fateful Day-4.

Day 1 to 3 had shown us that our pace would be called “noise” statistically. There was a spectrum for hikers. At one end, the Elite: a trail runner we met seemed to be doing 7 miles an hour attempting to complete the O (all of its 80+ miles) in 3 days. As an aside, he should be ashamed of himself, that smug little… (oops, my Dad’s blog, so best if I kept it PG-13). Anyway, he was carrying the equivalent of a man purse, while we lugged what seemed like our home on our backs, so there’s some consolation there. At the other were the Laid-back: a nice, slightly older Chilean couple who seemed to be carrying what felt like the neighborhood on their back and were doing about 2 miles an hour. Outside that fraternity was us. For us the Chilean couple’s pace could have well been the aspirational goal. Granted, Shubhi was the youngest ‘un on the O side of the circuit. She was all of 12 years old, carrying a 13-14 lbs. backpack, but even adjusting for that, the truth was we had blown way past the published averages for each leg of the trek. This despite having started early each day. We trudged longer, fell more frequently, ached harder and generally struggled more through the roots, the muck, the steps, the stones and the generally difficult (not withstanding the hard to breathe beauty of the place) Torres route. There were no technical requirements here. Not even scrambles. It was just the constant drudgery of having to watch for the next step, because despite our best preparations at the gym, we were the probably the least prepared group to undertake the Torres.

Starting Day-4, we knew we had a hard hike ahead of us. We had slept dry and slept soundly, but it had rained all night at Perros and when we broke camp and gathered in the camp kitchen to make a quick coffee before embarking, it was still raining. There was a grey fog, and not just the ground, or the mossy wet underbrush – soggy and oozing water, but even tree trunks seemed to have turned a dark, deep, shiny dripping brown with the rain. We sloshed into muck, taking our first steps towards John Gardner pass. It was just past 4 a.m. in the morning.

The initial hike turned out to be harder than we had encountered in any of the first 3 days. We had rain pants on, rain jackets and soggy shoes to start with, and while the rain was a light drizzle, the tree cover unloaded with abandon, relinquishing the weight of the rain water collected in their leaves. I swear, some of these trees must have been infested with malignant spirits with a particular dislike for early travelers that trampled through their underbrush. We also hit an immediate incline. The overnight rain had gathered into gooey muck ponds wherever flat ground was present. In between were roots – mossy, wet and slippery, exposed by the nights rains having washed away the ground covering them. Back to those malignant spirits: the roots were a nasty bit of business – alternately catching our feet and tripping us up or landing us on our face as we slipped on their slick moss lathered skin.

These weren’t the worst parts of the trail. We hit small, but half a dozen completed flooded patches on the trail. One such lay like a trough and had been flooded deeply. There was a tree trunk laying flat on one side of the trail, exposed at the ends, but submerged in the middle as well. Some of the other hikers were using the trunk like a makeshift bridge to ford the flooded patch, using their hiking poles to balance as they tried to cross. Not graceful I thought, but quickly caught myself as it occurred to me that we’d be next. As we attempted our crossing, we fell, each of us, stepping knee deep into the mucky water. My boots got caught in the muck causing a painfully funny episode of me standing one footed as my Dad used the poles to fish for the shoes in the dark of what lay beneath. But apart from that it was all good (I really do hope you’re getting the sarcasm here).

Progress was slow. But we finally cleared the tree line. It had been 3 hours and we’d done 1.5 miles.

The tree line split to reveal John Gardner pass. Covered by snow coned peaks on each side, defiantly contrasted against the overcast hues of the sky, it lifted our spirits. A rocky trail, my Dad mentioned would be welcome over the roots and muck and at least the goal was in sight now.

Fateful words that we’d bite on before the end of the day. However, as we trudged through the remainder of the hike up to the pass, the scenery – open, expansive, stunning gave us some of the best detractions from the hard path to it. Even now, as we look at the pictures from Torres they feel like lazy imposters. Catching the broad strokes, but somehow missing the soul of what you were breathing in.

We hit the pass at 11 a.m. It had been 7 hours since we’d started and apart from small water breaks, we had moved constantly. At camps, we had become friends with two young Americans – Denny and Benny, who had been backpacking through South America for while. They had started at 6 a.m and had crossed us about 30 minutes ago, but it didn’t matter. We knew we still had a long trail ahead till Refugio Grey, but 11 a.m seemed like a good time to have hit the milestone of John Gardner. Along the way, we had crossed rooty undergrowth’s, flooded sections, snow clad slopes, rocky jagged inclines that had required the use of all 4 of our limbs, but here we were.

At John Gardner, my Dad made us pose for a photo with our hiking poles held high above our heads. He hummed the Rocky tune… taa na taan, taa na taan and we felt like we might have just hit Everest (okay at least the basecamp). Choreographed and melodramatic, we crested the pass together to see Glacier Grey, 8 miles of shimmering white… a mile? across. I’d try to describe it, but I’d fail. I think Shakespeare might too, so I’m in glorious company.

Giddy and totally experiencing an adrenaline rush, Baba and I took turns photographing it from different angles. My Mom, ever the voice of reason, urged us to keep our move on. But even she added, wistfully and perhaps for her own consolation, that we’d have Grey in sight for a long time, even if we kept moving.

And so began our descent.

Every blog we’d read had advised that the descent from the pass was the harder part of the journey. We’d fooled ourselves into believing that cresting John Gardner would mean we were assured a passage to Refugio Grey that day. As we started our climb down, the horrors of the trail came back, but seemingly in reverse. The rough rocky patches came first. They forced us to step down from higher-than-knee level stones to get to the next level. We frequently sat down and eased our selves off of a rock to find our next step. Not technical, perhaps without a backpack and tired limbs something we might risk a skip down, but under the conditions, each presented itself as puzzle. Rats in a maze gardens. Was there a cut in the rock to get a ginger foot hold? Would the other rock seemingly just a step lower, but just far enough away be reachable, if we stretched our foot out? Mostly, the conclusion was let’s sit this one down and lower ourselves to the next level. We imagined Denny and Benny cheerfully skipping down this. It didn’t help.

Progress had already slowed down to a crawl but after a couple of hours, the tree line came back in sight. If ever, by some fate, there is a Chilean official responsible for the O circuit trail reading this post, I urge you, if there is one section of the trail you should improve, improve this. The steps down these muddy root covered slopes are the height of a grown man’s waist. There is a flimsy rope along the side that we held and lowered ourselves from step to step, often facing backwards and gingerly letting one foot down to explore and find the bottom, while we held on to (I exaggerate, but it’ll feel that way) life and limb on that rope that serves for a staircase.

As if on cue, it started to rain again. We had been on the trail for the better part of 10 hours already. The high of John Gardner had fallen. We had fallen a dozen times between us, never truly landing hard enough to cause concern, but every fall seemingly mocking at our spirit. It was a bully path and the bully was winning.

My Dad was irritable, taking it out on Shubhi. Shubhi barely held it together, but kept walking stoically. Her lips ready to quiver, but some hard spirit holding it back. After another hour and a half we cleared the steep portions of the tree covered incline. We hit a marker and it said Paso (the CONAF run bare bones camp) was 1.5 km away. It was 3:30 p.m and we had 5 miles from Paso to Grey.

At this point we were on a slopey, winding path. The roots were still sniping at our feet, but the slopes weren’t that steep and we’d frankly stopped bothering. Paso itself came after what seemed like an interminably long time. We trudged. One feet… next feet. Turn a corner and expect Paso, but see the path stretch out and snake into the woods a little bit more.

Finally Paso. It came up as a clearing with a small hill? (rise?) on one of the four sides. A small stream ran down that hill turning into a small waterfall and a stream next to camp. Thick tree foliage covered all sides. We’d come from the one side through the woods, had to head down the other through the woods and beyond the fourth side, hidden behind trees lay Glacier Grey. In retrospect, it feels like the inspiration for Shrek’s cottage setting. Idyllic and with smoke fluming out of the small chimney from the small ranger hut, steeped in the kindly ogre aura down to the last detail. The ranger hut was the only proper building. There was another small shed a bit off the stream that had a hole in the ground toilet with no lights (we learnt later that night). Helpfully it did have a rope that one held onto in order to not fall into the waste hole. The only other structure in camp (miraculously) was a large tent with one of those green eco domes. It was used as a work shed, but was on a wooden platform and while leaky, it had a roof. Without spare tents (we didn’t carry one and CONAF didn’t have any to spare) the CONAF rangers agreed to accommodate us in that green dome. A shout out for those rangers. We had no reservations, but they required no pleading at all. Shubhi did have tears and was visibly shaken, but I think they saw the defeat on all our faces and took pity on us. Thank God for them. We had to sleep rough, but they politely agreed that we could pull down some of the matty insulation underneath the tent tarp as our bed mats and blankets. We did so gratefully and turned in.

It was 4:30 p.m. We had been walking for 12 hours and 30 minutes. Had eaten nuts and granolas and apart from a blasted Red Bull and some coffee in the morning had very little other nutrition in our bodies. Our spirits were asleep, I am fairly sure the minds were too, but some auto-pilot had fueled the last hours journey to Paso. We knew Torres had beaten us. We wouldn’t be getting to Grey that day.

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