Day 7: Torres del Paine- Grey Glacier

This morning we woke to thick clouds shrouding the Paine Massif and wind. Grabbed a quick breakfast, tossed our lunches in our packs, and headed down to the boat launch with our guide, Anna, for a twenty minute catamaran trip to the far side of Lago Pehoe to start our trek to the foot of Grey Glacier. 

                      

A very nice Dutch couple joined our group and the 8 of us plus Anna headed off. 

Anna

The terrain was generally a lot of ups and downs with moderately good footing.  

We passed several fields of purple and white foxglove that were beautiful.  

The forest here was slowly returning after a massive fire in the 2011.  There was quite a bit of green due to the fact that warm moist air from the Pacific Ocean to the west hits the mountains, rises up, cools then creates precipitation.  In a couple of days, we will be visiting the eastern side of the massif that is supposed to be much drier.  We’ll let you know.

Anna was extremely funny.  She showed us a tree that people originally thought was a fagus (beech wood), but since it really wasn’t, it became known as “not a fagus”.  A saprophyte growing on it looked like mistletoe but wasn’t, thus the name not Mistletoe.  We decided that all trees were faguses or not a fagus and all saprophytes were mistletoe and not mistletoe. I guess you had to be there.

Along the route, we saw a condor and, of course, I didn’t have my telephoto lens on and couldn’t get much of a photo. 

Later on, we found some caracaras posing for us on a nearby tree.

The weather continued to improve and by the time we reached Lago Grey, it was quite beautiful, but windy.  

Molly and Jeri were being tossed around and nearly knocked over by the wind.  My guess is that the gusts topped 50mph. 

Lago Grey was dotted with small bergy bits cleaved off from the nearby Grey Glacier.  The ice was a stunning blue. 

This is caused by compaction of the ice on the glacier, squeezing out all of the air bubbles.  Light penetrates the ice, but only the long, blue wavelengths are reflected, thus causing the blue color. 

When we reached the end of the lake we were treated to a close-up view of  the tongue of the Grey Glacier.  

We had a picnic lunch on the beach while we waited for a boat to take us to the far end of Lago Grey. 

Anna broke out hot soup, and coffee with Bailey’s that she produced from a flask in her backpack.  

                            




And then, brownies for dessert.  Jeri was full and asked her to save one for later.  Apparently, she forgot, and forced it on Dave (who happily downed it) later on the boat trip back.  Jeri gave both of them a hard time (not seriously) about that. 

The catamaran finally came and dropped steps on the beach to allow boarding.  

The boat ride back afforded us some beautiful views of the glacier face, massif, and icebergs.  We even got a chance to witness some calving, though I wasn’t quick enough with the camera.  I think I’m losing my edge.

When we reached the end of Grey Lake, we had to walk across a spit of land to our waiting ride to get back to the hotel.  The wind had picked up (which we hadn’t thought possible) and was blowing broadside to us.  

Molly nearly got blown over.  If she had been wearing the correct head apparel, she could have flown like Sally Field.  I wound up holding her from flying away until we reached solid ground.

Back at the hotel, we sat down with Anna to plan tomorrow’s activities.  

This is where we could have stayed!

We elected to do the middle of the W-circuit, French Valley.  We get to sleep a bit later which is good since we seem to not finish dinner until after 10.

Before dinner we had a lecture on Ecology that was very informative.  Did you know about 90% of the Earth’s biomass is insects, arthropods, and bacteria?

Tomorrow we are off on a 10 mi round-trip hike to French Valley.