Torres del Paine W Trek

Logistics

At first glance planning this trip seems really complicated, but if you can figure out a couple things up front all of the details fall into place:

• Route: TDP has a single trail that can be hiked in three ways: the W, the O, or the Q. Depending on which direction you hike the W, the basic trip is approximately 50 miles with some out-and-back legs where you can carry a smaller pack. The O adds another 40 miles by routing you around the backside of the park (total: 90 miles). The Q adds a 10 mile leg from Park Administration to Pehoe Lake (total: 100 miles). After hearing stories from hikers doing the entire O or Q I am happy with our decision to do the W with a couple small day hikes tacked on. The W provides epic views of Grey Glacier, Paine Grande, Los Cuernos, and Las Torres. And we did a quick day hike to Pehoe Lookout from Paine Grande which seems to be the most scenic portion of the Q leg.
• Direction: speaking for the W only, there were only a couple reasons I could see to hike in one direction or the other. We chose to hike west to east which a few people referred to as “backwards”!
• East to West: longer epic views of Paine Grande but start with the hardest uphill section and (in my opinion) the best view of the trail, las Torres.
• West to East: easier hiking to start, arguably increasingly beautiful views.
• Season: the most popular TDP hiking season spans from December to March which is summer time in the southern hemisphere. Off season hiking can start as early as September and last until June. However, weather can be extremely variable and this will likely be the biggest factor in how enjoyable your trip is. For example, one friend hiking TDP in November never even saw the mountains in the park. Other groups of friends hiking in December encountered almost constant rain, snow, and wind gusts up to 60 MPH. We were very fortunate to have almost perfect sunny weather with great visibility and only a couple quick spots of rain.
• Amenities: there are 3 basic options which will determine how much planning you need to do ahead of time.
• Carrying your own tent: this will give you the most flexibility with lots of campground options (must be reserved in advance). Make sure you are prepared for torrential rain and wind gusts up to 60MPH. Rain-fly and guy ropes required!
• Renting a tent: each refugio has a number of robust 4-season tents available for rent. Just make sure to reserve them in advance and know that you will have to stick to a pre-defined itinerary.
• Renting a bed, room, or cabin: each refugio also has a variety of options for beds (hostel style in shared rooms), rooms, and cabins.

Permit

This part is easy – no permit required! However campsites and refugios require reservations. Check out the descrptions and links on this page for more details.

Food

We heard horror stories about travelers getting detained at Chilean customs for bringing nuts and trail mix so I only packed a single cliff bar as a snack and declared it on my forms. We ended up having no problems going through customs, so if I was doing this trip again I would’ve packed more food from home. If you are planning to pick up food in Chile there’s a large grocery store in Puerto Natales as well as small stores in the refugios that have limited options. Be aware that you won’t have the same options as an American grocery store so if you are picky or have a weak stomach you may want to bring more from home.

The refugios in the park have a set of 3 hot meals each day and you can choose to buy a whole package or individual meals. These are only available at specific times and in some cases you must reserve them several hours in advance. You can also pre-purchase meals online with your campsite or room reservation. Breakfast is typically a spread of oatmeal, cereal, toast, and sliced meats and cheese with coffee and tea. We only had one lunch at a refugio and it was a large portion of pasta with meat sauce. They also offer bagged lunches to go that typically include sandwiches and snacks. Depending on the refugio, dinner is served either cafeteria style or a multi-course meal. They usually include juice, soup, salad, a main course, and dessert. Some refugios have vegetarian options for the main course but not all of them.

If you choose to cook your own food each refugio has a specific room or shelter to use with tables, running water, and sinks for rinsing dishes. This is the only area where you are allowed to use a stove. You can supplement your meals with additional purchases from the refugio store.

Most of the refugios also have a bar, and ones that don’t have drinks for sale in the store. The main beverages of choice are wine, local beer (Austral), and pisco sours. Great way to end a day of hiking!

getting there

This was the hardest part of planning the trip for me! We traveled from LA to Lima, Santiago, and finally landed in Punta Arenas. We took a bus to Puerto Natales and spent our first night there. We took a bus into TDP the following day. There are other options for getting to TDP but this seemed to be the most direct route since we were going straight to the park.

To Punta Arenas

After we chose dates for our trip we had a lot of flight options leaving from Los Angeles. All of our options would take a minimum of 20 hours traveling and at least 3 flights. For a trip like this I recommend trying the website Hipmunk to graphically display flight options including, duration, layover time, cost, and relative pain. Here are a few suggestions for international flights based on my experience:

• Choose legs that are all on the same airline in case of delays or missed connections
• Look for multiple legs with the same flight number so you don’t have to exit the plane and worry about delays or collecting luggage. Our first 2 legs from LA to Lima and to Santiago were on the same flight.
• Give yourself plenty of time for connections, especially since you’ll have to go through customs and pick up your luggage.
• Be very careful about which countries your connecting flights are in and make sure to research ahead of time any visa or reciprocity requirements. Note that these requirements are different depending on your home country. For example:
• If you enter both Argentina and Chile you must pay a reciprocity fee.
• If you stop in Brazil you must have a travel visa when you exit customs.
• We had good luck with the airline LAN. No problems with luggage, layovers, or major flight delays. Customer service was great and they really took care of us on the long flights.
• Do NOT lose the papers you are given when you land in Chile! You will need these to leave the country.

To Puerto Natales

The Punta Arenas airport is 20 minutes away from the actual city. If you are staying in the city there are taxi cabs available to take you. We decided to continue our traveling saga all the way to Puerto Natales immediately after our flight instead. Since the airport is outside of the city you must reserve a bus spot in advance in order for them to pick you up. There are several bus options available, see links for more information. We went with Bus Sur because they responded to my last minute email reservations!

The bus ride to Puerto Natales is about 3 hours and arrives at the central bus depot in the city. Hotels and hostels are all within a 15 minute or so walk from the bus station. You can also purchase tickets for the bus to the park. There are many options for buses to the park and we had no trouble buying tickets the day before our trip.

To Torres del Paine

As mentioned above there are many bus companies operating out of the Puerto Natales hub to take you to the park. You will get a return ticket at the same time for your fare back at the end of the trip.

Each inbound bus will stop at park administration first for a permit and informational video. At this point you can reserve the walk-in campgrounds: Italiano, Britanico, and Torres. When we arrived those campsites were already completely full.

If you are starting your hike on the west side of the W the buses will continue on to the ferry landing at Pudeto. You cannot buy ferry tickets in advance, just get in line and pay on the boat with Chilean pesos or US dollars. The ferry ride is about 30 minutes to the Paine Grande refugio.