The week before I’d solo hiked the Huemul Circuit on Patagonia’s Argentinian side and, despite pouring boiling water onto my foot while trying to cook dinner the first evening, survived 70kms of grueling ascents and descents, glacier crossings, scree slopes, ravines, mountain passes and two river crossings by Tyrolean traverse. After a full day of recovery I had felt great physically and mentally – like I’d really achieved something tough.
Now I was about to embark on something that would prove tougher. More remote, less of a path, more scrambling and climbing and sliding than hiking. But at least, I thought to myself, I won’t be stuck singing Evita to myself, the broken record that had continually intervened in my solo silence throughout the Argentinian hike.
Day One
I called in on the carabineros – the local police – to register my departure and planned return date. I penciled details into their tattered ledger while the officer spoke to me, virtually none of which I understood. I assume he was telling me I shouldn’t go alone and was probably going to die. I nodded and smiled and thanked him. The sun was shining as I headed back to get my bag and my step was brisk. It was early afternoon and I was ready to get going.
In the two minutes between entering and exiting the hostel, the clouds had rolled in. I spent the first half hour of my hike in a torrential downpour. After a morning of indecision, I went with my gut and headed out of town along the Fin del Mundo, running east alongside the Beagle Channel. I was trailed by a rag-taggle assembly of stray dogs and ponies who gave up on me in preference of the last patch of grass before I turned right into forest and headed up a couple of kilometres of dirt road, past the municipal dump where some sort of vulture gave me the evil eye, to the Rio Ukika valley trailhead. The rain cleared (no weather here lasts long), the light was a surreal glowing green, the ground was soft and everything smelled of moss.
The trail started off clear and well-marked with red and white stripes painted onto periodic tree trunks. This lasted only as far as one pot of paint. In less than an hour I found myself standing in a dripping forest facing what looked like an impenetrable wall of tangled undergrowth twisted around piles of fallen trees and branches jumbled over layers of mud. Close and careful searching, back and forth, would reveal tiny snippets of trail – or what could possibly be perceived as a trail – that would extend for perhaps a metre or two. These tiny bursts of trail would disappear without a clue as to which way to turn in hope of a way forward. I wasn’t worried about navigation, but I literally couldn’t get through the forest without some sort of trail. I forced my way through patches, tripping over and climbing across branches and logs, my pack getting caught from above while my feet slipped out from under me in the mud. I felt like some sort of tracker, searching out any sign of which way to turn – pausing, looking – then picking a direction more often than not following gut instinct rather than anything else.
Finally I emerged to follow the little river itself, more directly along its bank. Whew, no more route finding.
But beavers. Fucking beavers.
North American beavers were introduced to Navarino decades ago because someone clever thought it’d be fun, or economically beneficial, to hunt them. Then fur went out of fashion, and they proceeded to multiply, gnaw, and destroy. Beaver dams and beaver ponds and beaver pickup sticks – I was in a wet maze of the logpocalypse.
It took me hours to cross maybe 10km of this. It was around 21:00 by the time I stopped, set up camp, boiled water for sugary tea and rehydrated dinner, and went to sleep. I can’t truthfully say that I was very happy. Remind me again why I was here, alone?
Day Two
I woke again around 10:00, and was slow to get going with coffee and flatbread, and packing up camp. I set off a bit before noon, and was straight into more of the impassable impossible lack of path. It was still raining, I was back in the forest, but this time it was forest maze plus beaver-flooded mud and I spent the first two hours shin-deep in muck while trying to pick my way south. A branch snapped under my weight and I fell into deep black mud, whacking my shins and knees on the way down and soaking much more of me than my drenched boots as I clawed myself out. I must have looked a sorry sight standing next to the hole I’d fallen in, bedraggled and in tears, the branch I was holding dripping cold water straight down my arm inside my raincoat. I felt almost afraid – not for my safety, but because I didn’t want much more of this. I also felt a tinge of odd pride that I was doing it regardless.
I came across some footprints in the mud, and found the knowledge that someone else had taken this bonkers route ridiculously reassuring. There were also now at least very occasional way-markers, and I felt similarly excessively reassured whenever I spotted one, even though of course they’d only tell me that I was on course right at that spot, not which way to turn from there. And I think the beavers, the goddamned beavers, must have absconded with most of the markers, viewing the painted red stripes as “fell this tree” signs. Somewhere in that miserable valley there must be a beaver home decorated with red and white stripes.
Another thing beavers must enjoy doing is making paths to nowhere. I kept finding myself on one, thinking it was made by humans and therefore indicative of a path passable by humans, just for it to dead-end in the muck. For a long time I played the 'human or beaver' game. It’s not particularly fun.
After hours covering distance that would have taken maybe thirty minutes on a good path, the valley sides around me finally flattened out and I emerged onto a wide flat plain and could finally actually walk almost a normal-person-normal-place kind of a walk. I kept this up despite realising I was setting out across some kind of a crazy dead pools marsh of soggy bog full of lumps of spongey something dotted around eerie-looking brown holes with fuzzy growths snaking out of them. It was just like that scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo and Sam and Gollum pick their way through the Dead Marshes. I so wanted to be able to just walk I was sorely tempted to pick a straight line and go for it, but I didn’t trust the weird moss goo, and so I paused to try sticking a hiking pole into one of the holes to test its depth. The pole went in all the way, and kept going. I had to stick my hand in to fish it out.
So I hopped and jumped and meandered and backtracked and slowly progressed. Every time I stopped to look back it looked like I had gone no further, and the end of the bog never looked any closer, until suddenly I was there. And then I found Cabana Charles, a refuge shelter perched just back from the shore of Lago Windhond which, legend has it, has been visited by fewer people than the summit of Mount Everest.
I’ve never been so glad to see anything that looked so much like it was straight out of a horror movie. There was dry wood stashed inside so I lit a fire straight away and watched steam rising off my socks and boots as it warmed up. I relaxed in the sun outside and felt so much better. That question I’d been asking myself: why am I here? The answer was: to get through the difficult, through the filter, to the utter peace and beauty and solitude that only exists beyond it.
I spent the evening by the fire reading the entirety of the cabin’s guestbook, which included factual, advisory, comedic and poetic entries from November to March each year since 2002. There was a thunderstorm at night and I was grateful for the bits of the cabin's tin roof that didn’t leak.
Day Three
I was up early, not having slept well due to the confines of my sleeping bag which prevented me from sleep-stretching my aching limbs. Cabana Charles had provided such relief that I was sorely tempted to idle away the day there: perhaps a swim in the lake (knowing I had a fire to warm me), reading, collecting firewood, snoozing. But it would have meant I wouldn’t have time to join the Dientes de Navarino circuit, and I didn’t want to chicken out on that.
So back across the dead bog I marched, back across the marsh, and into the valley of beaver hell, but from there I now crossed the river (giving the beavers one and one only word of thanks for providing me with a handy footbridge), and began a ridiculous climb through forest on a ‘path’ that should not have been possible. It should not have been possible to haul oneself up something that steep. I’m not quite sure what happened other than lots of sweat and lots of swearing and a giggling fit at the ludicrousness of the situation when I checked my GPS after about an hour and a half and it said I’d only gone about 300 metres from where I crossed the river, but somehow I emerged above the treeline onto a ridge which swept out and up across boulder fields and snowfields to a glacial lagoon tucked below towering rock pinnacles in the direction I was headed. And it was sublime. This place rewards effort.
The ridge was exposed, and it was windy. Windy in Patagonia doesn’t mean 'it was a bit brisk'. It means it’ll pick you up and slam you into a rock if it wants to. Or push you up a mountain pass. At one point I noticed my feet were actually running to keep up with the rest of my body. I couldn’t hear or see sideways (hood up) and I kept thinking a dragon was chasing me. Near the top of the pass I threw myself behind a large boulder for shelter while I plotted my next move and it felt like I was taking cover under fire. Actually I sort of was, as hailstones were now flying sideways with the wind.
Then I spotted the path, not headed down the other side of the pass as it would anywhere normal but, unbelievably, following the knife-edge of the mountainside continuing up one of the cliffs to its side. I briefly considered going back, before an image of a beaver dam flashed before me and I ruled that out, and instead forced myself not to think for the next little stretch while I climbed the path, fast, focused, determined. I actually hummed to myself: all is ok, the sun is shining (remember the weather changes quickly in Patagonia), just do this.
Now I was glad I was alone. If I’d been with someone less confident I would have really worried. If I’d been with someone more confident I would have really complained.
And then at the top of the world at the end of the world, I stopped, alone, completely, wonderfully alone, in every direction as far as I could see, from the south over Lago Windhond and beyond to the mists of Cape Horn, to the Dientes around me, to the snow caps of Argentine Tierra del Fuego across the Beagle Channel to the north, to the mountains to the west and the hills to the east. I was almost certainly the only human in all that spectacular landscape. Overcome by the phenomenal beauty of the place, I cried tears of amazement, the only time in my life I’ve been moved like that.
Hiking on, I’d often be stopped in my tracks by a dazzling new vista that would make me cry aloud in genuine wonder.
I would have loved to have spent a little more time soaking some of this in, but the weather was now good (it’s amazing how much impact some sunshine can have on your mood and confidence in a scenario like this) and I was constantly nervous of it changing. I wanted to get down while the going was good, so I hardly allowed myself to pause.
But for once the weather didn’t change for hours, so I just kept going, making tracks while the sun shone. In the end I pretty much didn’t stop other than to fill my water bottle for about ten hours straight. Down and up again, I finally joined the Dientes circuit, and felt some relief at being more ‘on the beaten track’. Or at least on a circuit that some people sometimes do.
I went on past Laguna de los Dientes, realised I was in danger of slipping on the ridiculous rocky terrain as I was so tired, and ended up camping not far from two folk who’d nabbed the best/only good spot downstream from Laguna Escondida. I was so tired I could hardly fetch water for my dinner. I was grateful for the small plastic bottle of cheap whisky I was carrying. My two neighbours came visiting after dinner. He had an incredible beard. They’d just sailed to Antarctica.
I’d found the best spot there was to be found for my tent: sort-of dry and sort-of flat. It wasn’t very well sheltered though. I'd placed heavy rocks on top of the tent pegs, but at one point in the night I had to hold the walls/roof up with my hands and feet as my poles did their bend-rather-than-snap thing. My feet were too hot in my sleeping bag, despite flurries of snow outside (pressure sore heat from too much walking?), and I spent the entire night sliding down the incline and shimmying back up my mat. Luckily my camera, GPS and powerpack, which spent the nights in my sleeping bag with me to preserve charge, survived numerous smotherings.
Day Four
Today I took it relatively easy. It was incredible weather again, my bag was notably lighter, I’d moved onto my other (clean) pair of hiking socks, and I was more confident of being able to find a path, so I didn’t push myself. I sat by a tarn watching the wind ripple across the water. I lay on my back soaking up the sun that’d warmed a perfect little patch of grass. It was so comfortably warm that I even took off my torn waterproof over-trousers for a while.
The going wasn’t easy underfoot: boulders for an hour then mud-and-slippery-wood for an hour then spiny bushes then scrawny lenga scrub then scree – but my mind wandered and I kept totally forgetting where I was. It was like I had no connection at all to geography, but was just in some other world, without people.
Up and over Passo Ventarón I was treated to more staggering views and the spirits of Navarino were treated to more exclamations from me each time a new wild enchanting vista opened up before me. I thought how these must be the biggest little mountains in the world, looking as if someone sliced off the very tops of the Andes and stuck them emerging straight from sea level out of the Drake Passage.
On the far side of the pass, scree and slate fields slipped down to the west, and I slipped down these. I picked up one small piece that caught my eye, thinking of my parents' new slate bathroom. I then imagined myself dropping it, and wondered if I’d stop and claw apart the mountainside to retrieve that particular piece. Would I recognise it? Would I cause a landslide? What if it fell between immovable boulders? I spent ages wondering as I wandered.
The map told me there was one final mega-ascent ahead, and I wanted to camp before that. But after the slate came mud. Really deep mud in places, which was so slow to clamber around I soon wanted to walk right through it. Only memories of earlier endlessly deep mud-holes and soaked boots kept me from doing so. While I was loving the freedom of going anywhere I wanted, stopping whenever I wanted, camping anywhere I wanted, I started to get a little concerned that I was going to spend my last night in a bog.
But by 18:00 I’d spotted a perfect spot, set up, had coffee, wandered a little, feeling the feeling of where I was, and was back at the tent getting dinner ready. I boiled at least two massive flying insects creatures into my dinner water, drank tea while the freeze-dried couscous-with-lentils hotpot re-hydrated (its pouch serving as a welcome hot water bottle in the meantime), added the essential chili flakes to the surprisingly tasty vomity-looking mush, and enjoyed dinner. I then stripped naked, standing fully visible for miles around, enjoying feeling the cold air on my skin before I pulled on my sleeping clothes, which felt luxuriously clean compared to my day clothes, despite having had my filthy body forced into them for days.
I thought of Christmas Eve in the UK and tried to recite the Night Before Christmas, but could only remember her kerchief and his cap. The skies clouded over early so despite the midsummer light I crawled into the tent around 20:00. I finished the whisky, ate my last bump of chocolate, and read until I slept, the deep sleep of physical all-over bodily exhaustion.
Day Five
The final mega-ascent involved hauling myself hand-over-hand up what was more of a cliff than a hill. I met two German guys at the top, looking for a way down. I'm out of breath. ‘Nope – just down’. They tell me: ‘You have quite an experience ahead of you.’ And ‘You're doing this alone? Impressive!’
I marched across the wide high exposed plateau of rock and ice and snow at the top of Paso Virginia, keeping a nervous eye on the weather, and then I slid, literally slid, on my backside and scree-skiing, down what was neither a path nor in any sane world a place that a path would go. Scree dust choked me and coated me and I found myself smiling – grinning wildly.
Down at Laguna Los Guanacos below (not to be confused with Laguna Las Guanacas nearby) I wanted to stop for coffee and my last trek bar, but it started to rain. Getting up, I startled a family of geese, who weren’t calmed by me telling them that they were pretty and had no need to fear me.
The Germans had advised me to stay on the right of the stream from here, but there was, for once, an arrow clearly telling me to go to the left. I decided to trust the Germans.
Within 50 metres I was in steep forest, my knees bashing endlessly against branches and trunks, my bruises shouting, me cursing the Germans. I had to use my whole body and the force of gravity as a battering ram to make it down this first stretch.
And then the sun came out and shone through the trees, the stream began to glitter and shine as it cascaded swiftly down alongside me, birds started to sing, and I found a path that could actually be followed. It was still a proper jungle obstacle course and I felt like Tarzan as I followed it, swinging myself down the gorge, throwing my legs over tree trunks, sliding around mud patches, lowering myself down boulders, not thinking at all, everything working in sync, so focused on navigating the course that I fell into a kind of trance, and enjoyed three hours of downhill meditation.
I emerged at last into a hilly pasture full of daisies. I went straight down, considerations like whether I could get up or down this bit or that no longer seeming relevant. An eagle dived toward and then floated above me, checking me out. I reached the dirt road by the shore. An albatross bobbed in a bay. I had just stopped to chat to some cows chewing their cud when I heard voices, cheers.
Around the corner there was a flat patch of ground. A few dozen townsfolk were barbecuing, listening to music, playing football in the late afternoon sun. Christmas Day on the Beagle Sound.
And return to civilisation for me. I felt like some kind of wild warrior queen returning to earth as I walked along the middle of the dirt road towards town. I was windburned, covered in scratches and bruises, and I couldn't get my fingers through my hair. I remember thinking that I must remember not to empty my sinuses or pull down my pants and pee wherever and whenever I wish.
I took my boots off outside and wandered along the corridors of the beautiful lodge I’d booked to stay at that night. I had about four hot showers, and a delicious dinner with good wine. I chatted to an odd handful of interesting people, and went outside to look at the sky darkening across the sound, where I fell barefoot into a thorn bush. I am still removing splinters from Isla Navarino.
It’s thanks to camping in the woods as a child, and Swallows and Amazons, and all my life experiences since then, and the choices I have made, thanks to the person I’ve become, that I do things like this. My places, my pace, my decisions, my experience, and mine alone.
I don’t want the world to continue to get smaller until places like this are tamed for mass consumption. Some souls need places to go for experiences like this.