The first day we took a taxi from the city to the trail head. Walked down what looked like a cow path for awhile, before the trail turned into a single track trail. Within the first hour my feet were wet, even with my good water proof la sportiva boots. The trail is very wet with streams running through it and marshes. A few times my foot would slip off a rock or log and my boot would sink about 6 inches in the mud. My foot was never soaked, but definitely nice and damp. 3/4 of the trail was like this, up until you started climbing. We climbed up to the turn off for laguna del caminente. A gorgeous lake hidden between the mountains. It's about a 20-30 hike beyond the turn off from the main trail. After the turn off you climb up a bit more and then descend down to the lake. The trail going down is deceiving, it ends up becoming a stream bed so it can be a little tricky going down it and not slipping on the rocks. The camping area is under the trees by the lake on a little island. We pitched our tent under the trees. It took us about 5 hrs to reach the laguna, not the 7 we had read.
It had started sleeting on us by the time we turned towards the laguna so we set our tent up quickly, staking it down real good and then got in the tent to get warm. We cooked polenta under the tent fly so we didn't have to get wet again. The sleet and snow continued overnight with strong gusts of wind sweeping across the lake. My 3 1/2 season mountain hardware tent that I got 10 years as a high school graduation present stood up well to the Patagonian winds, rain, snow and sleet. We stayed nice and warm in our tent and double sleeping bag.
In the morning the snow had turned to rain, a nice steady drizzle. We were in no rush so mid morning we finally convinced ourselves to brave the cold and rain. I was very thankful Reed had convinced me that we needed waterproof pants. Between pants, hard shell and good boots we enjoyed exploring the mountains upstream from our campsite. There's no set trail so we blazed our own. It ended up being a very enjoyable day. We started in boggy marshlands and then stayed to the right side of the stream, going up and down hills and mountains. We ended up working our way higher, towards the snow and eventually worked our way over a pass where we were rewarded with new set of mountains to see.
The third day we packed up camp and made our way to go over the pass and back to Ushuaia. I experienced the true Patagonian weather. We started with clear skies and just 20 minutes later we were in sleet and heavy winds. The weather changed pretty quickly as we made our way over the pass. It was harder to see the trail as we climbed up, but there were enough signs to direct you. We were hiking on loose shale for this part. We made it over the pass and I thought the worst was over. I was wrong. We descended a short ways and then the trail became quite narrow, about 2 ft wide as it traversed the side of the mountain. We were still in the loose shale, on our left was the steep mountain and the right was a 500 ft or so drop off. What made this section dangerous was the high winds we had. The wind gusts were coming from off the pass, behind us and from off the mountain, pushing us to the right. There were at least 3 times when the gusts were so strong they nearly blew me off the mountain. We both made slow progress down this long section, bending low over our poles, trying to anchor ourselves with each step so as not to be blown over. I was relieved when we eventually made it down to the treeline, safely.
The rest of the trail descended through the wet forest. Once we got off the trail and on the main road we hitch hiked back into Ushuaia. We're headed to Puerto Williams now, which means a ferry across the beagle canal. The winds are strong this morning so we ll see how it goes.
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