Camping, just a few thoughts… I have always said that I would never camp except on an organised trip like in the Himalaya, where everything is carried for you ‘lazy man’s camping’ you could say, but for some unknown reason over recent years I’ve regularly put a piece of lightweight ripstop nylon in my backpack to act as a shelter overnight and on the odd occasion just slept in the open ‘cowboy’ style, seems to be the in way to describe bivvying. The good points about this lightweight piece of material are that you can, in theory, stop and set it up wherever you like, it’s cheap, once you’ve bought the equipment, however, I’m beginning to struggle to think of any more pros! The cons, there are many, it’s heavy, sounds like thousands of people are blowing dried peas through a blow tube, at the tent when it rains. When it’s windy it’s like being in a wind tunnel when they test a jet engine. There’s no privacy. You have to decide what you’ll eat every night days in advance. Normally expensive dried food, although I have to admit these have improved considerably in recent years, but still not as good as freshly cooked veg and meat and it means carrying anywhere between 12 and 16kg depending on how many days food you’re having to carry. It also goes without saying that I’ll be carrying some photographic equipment which adds around 3.5kgs to that weight… a sucker for punishment!

Camping doesn’t have many pros, but it is convenient, which is why we are camping our way around the ‘O’ Trek in the Torres del Paine. Our second night camping was at Torres Central, the start of the trek for us. The first two days were 14km and 19km respectively. They were rather sedate and not too strenuous. The campsites at the end of each day, were good with flat pitches The Refuge’s, though, had ever depleting supplies and choices of food as the end of the season approached. I’d only brought three days of dried food so I had to be selective in which days to eat in or eat out! If the meals hadn’t been pre booked then the choice was always pizza or burger. I don’t mind either but at all but one of the campsites burgers were off… so the choice was restricted to pizza, three cheese pizza, salami pizza or ham pizza. As I’m writing this retrospectively, I can honestly say I don’t want to see another pizza for a very long time!

On the third day the walking became a little more serious as we headed closer to the John Gardner Pass. As we approached the first real highlight of the walk (don’t get me wrong the walk so far had been very scenic) the hanging Los Perros Glacier as it clung precariously to the cliff face, inching its way into the beautiful turquoise lake below. The infamous Patagonian wind was rushing down from the glaciers high above, gaining momentum and slamming into the unprepared as they walk up to the terminal moraine holding back the glacial lake, sucking the breath right out of you. That night’s campsite was far more basic than the others we’d been in so far, as all the supplies had to come on horse back from Torres Central 45km down the valley… so a very welcome dried meal was consumed… pulled pork and blueberry rice pudding.

The next day loomed, a day Holly was apprehensive about since our meeting with an all knowing, scare monger at Torres Central before we set off for the first day. The John Garner Pass, he said, was covered in one metre of fresh snow and that full winter gear would be prudent! We checked with the Refuge reception, who confirmed snow but that there was no real issue crossing the pass. In Holly’s mind, the seed of doubt had been set!