Pain on the Circuit of Paine

Back in town after 7 days and 112kms on the circuit of pain and resting all of our aching muscles and joints. We've definitely learned that biking muscles and hiking muscles are not the same and getting back on our bikes in a week or so will feel like quite a treat!

On our first day in the park, we took advantage of the blue skies and made the steep climb up to see the Torres del Paine, the incredible granite towers that are the centrepieces of the park.

Not being one to do things the easy way, I decided to sprain my ankle on our first evening. I'd love to impress you all with some exciting story about how it happened, but the plain and boring truth is that I was walking down the stairs out of the bathroom at the campground and bailed.

I took the next day off and spent as much of it as possible with my foot stuck in a glacial stream hoping that the swelling would go down enough for me to hike the next day. Jodie kept me company, but I was jealous of Anthony who went for an awesome ridge walk overlooking the towers and came back with a handful of crystals he had found on the rarely-travelled ridge.

The next day, we packed up camp, Jodie and Anthony taped my foot up solidly with a combo of athletic and duct tape and we were off on the circuit.

For the first 2 days, the trail followed lush valleys full of daisies and other flowers. The green vegetaton, brilliant blue glacial lakes and flowers combined to create a beautiful and colorful landscape that made for very pleasant hiking.

Then it was up over the pass, offering great views of the surrounding peaks and the enormous Grey Glacier that flows down off of the Patagonian Ice Cap. The hike up to the saddle was long but gradual and the real work began with the descent. The trail plunged more or less straight down from the saddle for 3 knee-jarring hours. Because I was favoring my sprained ankle, I ended up with a swollen and sore knee on the other leg from letting it take all of the abuse. Jodie and Anthony had some good laughs watching me hobble around camp and getting up and down that night!

The rest of hike was along rocky hillsides (which reminded me of northern Ontario) overlooking lakes of all shades of blue and green.

We woke yesterday morning to rain and very low clounds and decided that there wouldn't be much to see with such weather and hiked back to the trailhead, calling it quits a day earlier than we planned. Even with some rain on the last day, we were incredibly lucky with the weather. A man we met who was leaving as we were arriving told us that the had had either snow or rain every day for the week that they were there!

Overall, a great week of hiking, aches and pains and all!

Christine