Hiking 80 Miles Alone in Torres Del Paine

Okay, welcome back. I hope that was relaxing in some way. I try to make my videos as realistic as possible of what it's like to be on the trail, but I also hope to bring some kind of stillness and calm to you while watching at home with a dog or a friend or a coffee in hand. I also hope that this video inspires you to get out to hike this trail or anything in general. That's why the rest of this video is going to be a video guide on how you can go hike the Torres del Paine yourself and what advice and tips I wish I knew. I'm going to pass that on to you and help you out as much as possible. But first, today's video is sponsored by amazing subscribers who have pledged their support on my YouTube channel. This is the first time I'm doing this and it's amazing to have such a large group of people on the first batch supporting. So thank you. And if you want to become a supporter of me, my videos, help me make more videos, consider clicking the join button on the main homepage of my channel. And also, if you watch this video and then go on the hike yourself, weeks, months, years later, please let me know in the comments below. I'm always checking back and reading the comments and I would love to know if this video inspired you to get out there and I want to hear how it was. On this hike, I had more people than ever before stop me to say hi, tell me that they subscribe to my channel, watch my videos, and it was so nice. Like a couple backpackers that I was going camp to camp with were subscribers and we got to connect and it was nice to have some people to talk to on the trail and to connect with y'all. So let me know if you see me on trail, I'm more than happy to stop and chat. So why did I hike the Torres del Paine circuit, the O and the W, in Chile? It was a long flight, but I think it was amazing. It's one of the hikes that you find if you research long treks on the internet. Compared to other trails that I've been on, I would say this is a more remote, isolated version of the Tour de Mont Blanc with not as much elevation gain. I would say that this was probably one of the easiest multiple day hikes that I've done, but I saw a lot of beginners, a lot of first time trekkers, and this is probably perfect for people like that. The trail is very well maintained, there's good infrastructure, good help, lots of campsites along the O and the W sections. I suggest that if you come all the way to southern Chile, you should do the O and the W, not just one or the other. There were no technical rock scrambles or climbs. The summit passes were very doable. There were plenty of campsites, restaurants, and supplies along the route. The granite towers that you find at the top of each W point, they're just spectacular. They're definitely once in a lifetime something that you should see. And the massive ice field glacier that you find on the west side of the O and the W is amazing. This is the first time that I've ever seen anything like it, and you just sit there and stare for a while. The downsides of this trail is probably the long flight that it takes to get there. It's pretty remote in southern Chile. I went in March, which is the off season, and I can imagine that the peak season would be a bit more crowded, especially at the major points of the W section. There are lots of rules and regulations. It's a very well-maintained and protected site, so they have limitations for the number of people at each campsite, and then a certain direction. You can only go counterclockwise along the O, and just lots of regulations. No fires, no wild camping, and you can't skip more than one campsite on the O. Lots of rules. Booking and reservations can be kind of confusing and difficult, and they fill up for the peak season, so you might have to buy months in advance. I went in early March of 2020. I just got back from that trip right now. It's like mid-March right now. I'm in Colorado. The weather was a little overcast. It was technically off season, so there were some availabilities for the campsites, a little less people in town. The virus was actually starting to catch speed, so I think travel was down in general. But the temperature was fantastic in March, and when you slept, it was a good, cool, chilled temperature, and during the day, it never got hot, so you were sweating standing in the sun. So reservations. Did I book in advance? No, I did not. I planned this trip a week before I went. If you do any research, you quickly realize that there are three companies to book. It's a very complicated system, but to be honest, I recommend just buying a complete package. Just buy one package, one price, that includes all the campsite reservations along the O. Because you can't really skip. You can't buy individual, and you can't just show up. You have to have reservations to do the O. So what I did is I showed up at the office, told them I want to hike tomorrow. What is available for the next four days along the O? They gave me three campsites and one room in Gray Camp, and that was fine with me because I brought my own tent, I brought my own stuff, and then getting to ball out and be in a nice bed for one night sounded fine to me as well. The only downside is that they make you go to these campsites. You really can't skip, and for some of these days, that meant I would wake up at 8, start hiking by 9, and then honestly finish my 6, 7, 8 miles to the next campsite by noon or 1 o'clock. So it was a lot of wasted time. I'm very used to doing 20 to 30 miles a day, especially now that I'm prepping for the Pacific Crest Trail in April. So for an experienced hiker, I'm not calling myself experienced, but I am definitely not a beginner. I definitely wanted to hike more than they allowed, so I'd say that's one of the only downsides of hiking the O. But like I said, you probably should book in advance and you should buy a complete package, and the price goes up and down depending on how you sleep and eat. If you're bringing all of your own food, you have a cooking stove, you have your own tent, things can be cheap. You could get away with probably $40 to $60 for the entire trip, not including the park fee and then the buses to get to the trailhead, and then the occasional beer or gift or something you want along the way. So getting to the trailhead was pretty easy, they have a good bus system. So when you arrive and fly into Punta Arenas, you can take a bus directly for I think $10 US to Punta Natales, which is a smaller town than Punta Arenas. You can kind of skip Punta Arenas, I say. I liked the smaller town closer to the park better. I recommend staying a night in town just to get used to things and to get supplies for the hike. I stayed at a hostel called Nico's Adventure 2, I'll put a link in the description. It was a pleasure, they had free breakfast, they had good wifi, they were generally nice, and they let me keep my extra things like my MacBook Pro and drone because I wasn't able to bring that into the park in the locker storage room of the hostel. So make sure to check them out if you spend the night in Punta Natales. The groceries you buy and how you eat, it's entirely up to you, but I love the combo of sausage, cheese, and crackers. Those things, if you buy the right type, won't spoil too much and they're just delicious on trail. I also always pack nuts because they're very nutrient dense for the weight and they don't spoil. And then I'll also get some dried fruit or bananas and apples, depending on how much space I have in my pack. I would go to the local store and buy this in Punta Natales before you get to the trailhead because there are options to buy supplies and groceries on trail, and especially freeze dried meals at the visitor's center, but it's definitely more expensive. So when you're ready to get to the trailhead, you book another $10 bus from the terminal to the trail. So I knew where I was going because I had my iPhone and the AllTrails app. I downloaded offline a trail map that was the O and the W in one, and I followed that with GPS, even though my phone was on airplane mode the entire time. The route was about 80 miles in total. I think I tracked a little more than that, just with a little extra back and forths here and there. But my itinerary was basically day 1, 11 miles, day 2, 11 miles, day 3, 8 miles, day 4, 10 miles, day 5, 32 miles. I just let loose and just went wild that day. And then my last day was a half day, day 6. That was 14 miles. Make sure to check the link in the description below for my own custom AllTrails map. I drew the route that I took, and then added waypoints with notes for different sections. So what did I pack? I packed very light compared to other people. Like I said, a lot of beginners are on this trail, and most beginners overpack. And the people that I did talk to said that they thought they overpacked as well. And to be honest, for most of the camps, you can rent a tent, a sleeping pad, and then buy your meals for most of them. So that means you could get away with barely anything in your pack. There was plenty of water and streams along the way. I did hear that people were suggesting that you could just drink straight from the glacier water, which you might be able to do, but I never trust it. So I always filter my water with a little thing that screws onto my water bottle. In the description, I'm just going to put a complete list of everything I brought on the trail, with links so that you can learn more about it, and then even buy it yourself if you want. And those are affiliate links, so that if you do make a purchase, I will earn a percentage, a commission, off of that. So thank you. I also brought a couple snacks from the States. Meal to Go, which is like one-third nutrition in a bar, but it's better than a bar. It's got more substance and actually tastes good. I really liked those. I only had two of them. I definitely would like to have more and keep eating them on trail. And I also had Performance Nut Butter, which is a couple different nut butters mixed into a little pouch. They're more, I would say, to boost your energy than be a complete meal, but they are delicious and very convenient. And I think I had like five, and I ate all of those on trail. And if you're a company with a product or food that you would like to have me try and show in these videos, please hit me up. Use my email, craigadams.icloud.com. I would love to test out and eat any delicious snacks and try anything you think I might find interesting. While in town in Punta Natalas, I went to an ATM and took out about $300 US into Chilean pesos, which converted the $300 into like a quarter of a million pesos, which seems a bit crazy, but I think Chile is a bit more expensive than Peru, less expensive than Switzerland. So I think I went through most of all of that cash on my trip. Spent about $20 on buses, $30 for the park entrance permit, $50 for the campsites and the bed, about $25 on groceries, spent about $60, $70 on meals, food, breakfast, dinners, about $40 on drinks and snacks, a lot of that beer, and the occasional can of Coke. And then I also spent $10 on Wi-Fi because there are some spots in the major campsites where you can get on Wi-Fi, but you have to pay for it. And please on this trip get at least one hamburger because they do them very big in Chile. And I even had one hamburger that had a pink bun for some reason. I don't know. So I'm actually a full-time filmmaker with this YouTube channel, and right now I'm really into hiking videos. So that's what I've been doing for the last eight months straight, making at least one to two of these hiking videos per month when I can. But I also have a background in freelance filmmaking, so I'm very interested in cameras. And on this hike I tried a new camera, the Sony RX100 Mark VII, which is fairly new and very small. People might describe it as a consumer-based camera rather than a pro model just because of the size and lack of features. But I was very curious what I could do with such a small camera on the trail because with ultralight hiking you're always trying to create efficiency, cut weight, cut size, and get as small of a pack as possible. And all of my filmmaking tools are always in addition to what I need on the trail. So compared to what I've been shooting with the past couple of years, the Sony A7 Mark III, this is a much smaller camera, which I'm actually shooting on right now with the flip screen, the image quality isn't as good. I think if you watch all of my videos and then watch this, you probably noticed a dip in quality or at least a drop in dynamic range from the highlights to the shadows. Some of my clips are not exposed correctly because I probably overexposed a little bit, which I might be able to fix if I shoot another film with this camera and then adjust accordingly, but I still see the drop in quality. I did shoot in 4K, but I just don't think the sensor size is as big and it's definitely noticeable. I was a huge fan of shooting on the 16-35mm, which is very ultra-wide POV style with the larger camera, so I think the equivalent for this at its widest is about 24mm. And 24mm is considered wide, but 16mm is something special. I think it's unique and it just allows me to really show that POV style. This camera does have a telephoto though, so for the first time I was able to zoom in to get b-rolls of mountaintops and animals. The major pro of this camera is the size and weight and being able to just put it right into the pouch on my hip, which is waterproof and protected, it's really awesome. The battery life is not as good as my other camera and I actually couldn't open the battery door without taking the base plate off or the tripod, so I just kept that single battery in the entire time and then recharged the camera via micro USB with a portable brick whenever it got low. Sometimes while I was hiking I would just take out a cable, plug in the camera, and just put that battery brick in the side pocket. This camera is very light and at full height on my tripod, in strong wind it actually was knocked over completely at one point and I have a video clip of that happening. Nothing broke by the way, which was nice. The flip screen, which I'm using right now, is very convenient. I wasn't used to using that, but it definitely came in handy once or twice while shooting. There is a microphone port on this camera, but putting any kind of external shotgun microphone on top would completely destroy the purpose of it being so small and light. And on this video I got away with just the onboard microphone, but it just isn't as good as any microphone that's external and plugged in and I have realized that, especially with these hiking videos, audio and recording sound in nature is just so much a part of it. It's so important to have good sound recording and then also design during the edit. So I definitely miss having a microphone. I'm glad I did this test because the RX line was a contender for me to use while doing the PCT, my four month trek, just because of how light and easy it would be, but I think I want to tough it out and have a more pro camera that's heavier and bigger, but with better quality. And that'll do it for today. Of course, if you have any questions that I didn't get to about the hike or anything in general, just leave a comment or send me an email and I'll try to get back to you as quickly as possible. I also have a podcast, so check that in the description below. I do interviews with people and then give updates and go into depth with the topics in these videos. And I'm thinking about doing a video for this trek, so check that out. As well as follow me on Instagram. I posted a bunch of photos from this trip and that's probably the best place to get a hold of me. So send me a message, say hello. I'd love to check out your work as well. But thank you so much for watching and I'll see you on the next hike. Peace.