10 Days of Backpacking in Chilean Patagonia: Cerro Castillo and Parque Patagonia
Exploring Cerro Castillo National Reserve, Parque Patagonia, Jeinimeni National Reserve, and Tamango National Reserve
I step barefoot into the glacial river and the chill pulses through me. I move one foot forward and feel my jaw clench with cold. My soles slide over the smooth rocks that line the riverbed and I struggle to keep my balance. Patagonia wind, the wind that’s followed us since we arrived, whips against my bare legs and I gasp, breathless from the cold. Breathe, I tell myself. You’re only halfway. I turn my body towards the current and push towards the shore. Waves splash my jacket and I grip my trekking poles to keep myself upright. Finally, I collapse on the other side. And this is only the first of countless river crossings we’ll need to make today as we travel up a glacial valley that’s an endless maze of icy rivers.
Raja and I are in the Aysén region of northern Patagonia. While most visitors flock to Torres del Paine, we wanted to explore somewhere wilder. Aysén feels vast and empty; like there will never be enough time for humans to touch all its corners. Like its map will always be blotted with unnamed peaks. And it feels like that’s exactly how it should be.
Back in the States, Raja and I spent hours stringing together backpacking routes through Cerro Castillo National Reserve, Parque Patagonia, Jeinimeni National Reserve, and Tamango National Reserve. For our two weeks in these places, we decided to cross through the land on foot, with buses, ferries, and cars thrown in only to bridge the divides between trailheads. This time, I wanted to move slowly. For the past six months, I had scrambled to apply to graduate school, spending evenings and weekends studying for the GRE, attending admissions events, and writing personal statements. Throughout it all, I winced with anxiety about my future. I knew I wanted to leave the career path I had followed since college, but I didn’t know what direction to head in next. With application deadlines finally behind me, I wanted to pause. I wanted to focus on simply placing one foot in front of the other. I wanted to wake up in the morning and have a trail to follow. Even if I got lost along the way, my destination would always be clear. In this period of uncertainty about my future, clutching a map and following a route was all I wanted.
Day 1: Coyhaique
Before I waded through the river’s swirling glacier melt, our trip started in Coyhaique in February 2020. Tucked under steep cliffs and rising hills, the town of 50,000 seems to burst out of the empty expanse of plains. Although we arrived on a Wednesday, energy buzzed as we walked down the bustling streets. It was peak summer for Chileans and after a soggy January, street performers, kids on bicycles, and street food vendors crowded the main plaza. Raja and I ducked into an ice cream shop to join in on the merrymaking. A few minutes later, with cones of overflowing chocolate and cookie dough, we found a patch of grass in the park and laid down to watch it all.
Teenagers swung hula hoops and men played chess on the sidewalk. Sunshine poured through the trees and melting chocolate soon coated my lips and fingers. It was nearly evening but it felt like noon. The sun wouldn’t set until 9:00pm. We stayed until storm clouds greyed the sky. On our first night, Patagonia wanted to remind us not to get too comfortable in the warm sunshine that the afternoon gifted. For the next two weeks, Patagonia’s wind and rain would keep us on our toes.
Day 2: Las Horquetas to Segundo Camping (10.1 miles | ascent: 1,518ft | descent: 997ft)
In the morning, we drove south towards Cerro Castillo National Reserve. The city streets quickly dissolved into wide open plains jutted with slick cliffs and steep hills. The sky stretched around us, threatening to burst into rain at any moment.
“It feels like a Wyoming sky. Big enough to humble you each time you glance up,” I whispered to Raja. The grasslands were dotted with homes and tractors and bales of hay. With Antarctica practically a boat ride away, I wondered if the people felt like they lived at the bottom of the world.
The trailhead, called Las Horquetas, was a simple entrance that consisted of a wooden gate and wire fencing to keep the cows in. For the first thirty minutes of the hike, we lifted our cameras to capture the cattle that sprawled on the trail and waded through the rivers, but the novelty quickly wore off. Over the first two days, we would pass countless cows roaming the forests. Coyhaique is known as Chile’s cow town. In the 19th century, German and Argentinian farmers transformed Aysén’s landscape to create pastures for raising cattle. This included burning the native forests to create pampas. One of the Chilean trekkers we met told us that even though we were in Cerro Castillo National Reserve, local politics meant that the cattle owners could still use the land to let the cows graze. I winced thinking about the cow’s contributions to the spread of invasive species, their pollution of the rivers, and the effects of overgrazing on the plants, soil, and insects.
As the trail wound more deeply into the forest and left behind open pastures, we saw fewer and fewer cows. But it wouldn’t be until we hit a towering line of peaks with a narrow, rocky snow covered pass that we could finally leave them behind.
The trail was gentle and obvious that first day. Only a few hours in, we soon got our first view of a looming peak, glazed in a glistening glacier. We paused for photos pointing towards its peak, feeling like we were finally, truly in Patagonia. That peak stood firmly planted in our view as we wound our way through a valley.
Soon, we arrived at a stretching riverbed coated with jumbled rocks. The first of many we would stumble upon. Hills coated in green and orange shades rose up from either side of the channel. As we walked walked upstream, the river—Río Turbio—grew stronger and wider. Just as the sky became tinted with pink and orange, we arrived at our first campsite, Segundo Camping. There were likely twenty spots, and we were surprised to see many already filled, considering that the trail had been relatively empty of people. It seemed that nearly everyone was Chilean, doing the loop during their February summer vacation. I was grateful to not be surrounded by Americans, as I knew would have been the case if we had gone to Torres del Paine. We found a site with some privacy and settled in for the evening as cold air filled the basin. The river was loud and I fell asleep fast to the sound of churning glacial rapids.
Day 3: Segundo Camping to Camping El Bosque (5.6 miles | ascent: 2,025ft | descent: 2,044ft)
The next morning when we packed up our site, a few cows wandered through the area and parked themselves on the main trail. We carefully skirted around them and dodged a few of their fresh patties.
Soon, we ascended past the trees and waterfalls that fed into Río Turbio and found ourselves at the base of a rocky pass. For the next hour, we slowly moved upwards, careful not to dislodge the precarious stones that towered on top of each other. As the view of the valley we were leaving unfolded the higher we climbed, our eagerness to glimpse the next valley mounted. Soon the top of the pass plateaued into packed snow that refused to melt even under the summer sun. Wind barreled into our bodies and we tightened our jackets’ hoods around our cheeks. A few steps later, we had our next valley view.
The descent into the next valley felt steeper that our ascent up the pass and my knees began to swell. But it was easy to forget about the pain just by looking around. Granite walls, soaked in glacial melt, rose up next to us. Far above our heads hung the glaciers. Above them, jagged rocky peaks draped in snow and more glaciers. Raja and I hugged as we stared up at them. This is what we had come to Patagonia to see. The spires were so unlike anything we had witnessed in the States. Elated by the sight, we found new energy as we continued our descent through the valley.
Eventually, we entered into a thick pine forest. The earth was littered with fallen trees and thick shrubs. The trees were coated in moss and wisps of Old Man's Beard. The world seemed reduced to treek bark and the color green.
Buried deeper in the forest was a campsite called El Bosque. This one presented close quarters, but we managed to snag one of the last available spots. Our neighbors, a group of young Chilean guys, took interest in us, specifically Raja’s ridiculous attempts at speaking Spanish, and invited us to check out a glacial lake nearby. It was starting to rain, but we had several hours until sunset and spending it in our cramped, smelly tent seemed less than appealing. We threw on our rain jackets and joined them on a herd path that led away from the campsite. Soon, it opened up into an expansive boulder field that led upwards towards the peaks. Rain clouds hung low in the sky and fog quickly obscured the views. But even with the peaks hidden, the lake still was magical. Miniature icebergs floated throughout its emerald waters. Our teeth chattered as we stood staring. Besides our new Chilean friends, we had the place to ourselves. I longed for the sun to erase the clouds and warm the rocks, but I tried to be grateful for the sight in front of us.
Back at camp, as we boiled water for our freeze dried dinners, we watched the rain create puddles in the dirt. One of our Chilean friends, named Ignacio, walked over to our camp and told us he had heard from a park ranger that everyone needed to depart camp by 7am the next morning. Seven AM was sunrise time, which meant we’d be packing up camp in the dark. “Why?!” we asked, confused. Ignacio told us that the weather was going to worsen throughout the night and into the next day. That meant that the highest pass on the route, the one we would cross tomorrow, would be too dangerous if attempted in the stronger afternoon winds.
“What happens if we don’t get out in time?” I asked.
“You have to spend another night here,” Ignacio replied.
We grimaced and thanked him for being a messenger. We got to bed quickly and tried to fall asleep without thinking too much about what tomorrow would hold. Rain slapped at the tent walls and within minutes seeped in through the corners.
Day 4: Camping El Bosque to Camping Neozelandes (7.75 miles | ascent: 3,545ft | descent: 2,810ft)
When the alarm went off, it was pitch black, cold, and still raining outside. We forced down some energy bars and struggled into our layers before venturing out to break down the tent. Just after 7am, we were on the trail, our headlamps illuminating the raindrops as they sliced through the air. Walking through the thick forest in the rain before dawn felt like a meditation, even if our heart rates spiked when we nearly slipped in the mud more than a few times.
Everything shifted when we reached a steep riverbed. The rain stopped, the trees opened, and sunrise light poured through. I stepped onto the dry riverbed and looked up. Standing in front of the soft pink sky was a jagged peak. In the early morning air, clouds were nowhere to be seen. I had expected the rain to continue all day and my hopes of seeing the range we had crossed hemispheres to reach had almost disappeared. But here it was.
The shift in weather, the peaks above us, and the early morning light made me walk faster. As we ascended, Cerro Castillo came into full view. Its turquoise lake, Laguna Cerro Castillo, clung to its base. The wind was strong, but the water was as flat as could be. We parked ourselves on the steep talus across from the mountain and basked in the view. We had stared at photos of it for so long and it was finally in front of us.
“Here it is,” I said.
“Here we were,” Raja replied.
We could've sat there for hours, but the wind was picking up and we had a long way to go. We looked up at the hill we needed to climb, Morro Negro. From the lake, it didn’t look so bad. A gently sloping hill. The bottom, rising up from the lake, was coated in scree. That would be slow moving, I thought, a realization that turned out to be very true. There wasn’t a clear path so we hopscotched over the blocks, ducking behind big boulders for reprieves from the wind. Finally, we reached a grassy ridge. As we peered over the other side of the ridge, for the first time since we left Coyhaique, we could see in the distance roofs twinkling in the sunlight. The hamlet of Villa Cerro Castillo sat faraway. To our left, a six mile bail trail led away from the Cerro Castillo circuit and down to the town.
After a few mesmerizing moments staring at the stretching countryside that was sliced by Río Ibáñez and a few roads, the wind snapped us back to our senses. Morro Negro still towered above us and the wind was picking up. The higher we climbed up the neverending ridge, the fiercer the wind got. Even with Croakies pinning my glasses to my head, I worried that the wind would rip them from my face. I felt like someone had stuck my hair in a blender and turned the dial to “purée.” I leaned my weight towards the incline and pushed forward, waiting for a gust to sweep me off the mountain. Raja didn’t seem as concerned. In fact, he looked like was enjoying it, grinning wide and snapping photos. I checked my camera and noticed the cold air had zapped the battery. I was starting to shiver, but there was no way I was going to remove a layer from my pack--I pictured my jacket flying out of my hands like a kite.
When we reached the top of Morro Negro, a rainbow hung eye-level across the valley. Clouds swirled around Cerro Castillo. I stood for a moment, gazing at the beauty of it all, and then, before the wind could snatch me off my feet, I started to descend. The descent was much steeper than the way up, and we moved slowly down the scree. Several times miniature rock slides spilled under our feet.
Finally, after what felt like forever, we made it to treeline. We found a spot to tuck ourselves between pines out of the wind and devoured energy bars, relieved to be off Morro Negro. The rest of the trail led slowly downhill through a thickening forest. The sun was out and now that we were safely out of the wind, I finally relaxed and enjoyed the hike. Except my knees throbbed with inflammation.
Eventually we reached Portedores, a crowded campsite with a river running along its edge. After napping on the sunny rock slabs in the river and lazily munching on more snacks, we decided to continue to the Neozelandes camp two hours away in hopes for more solitude and cleaner outhouses. (Portedores’s outhouses were falling apart and overused, a worrying environmental concern considering their close proximity to the river.) The hike was a gentle uphill slope through a beautiful forest. The Neozelandes campground was at the edge of a lush meadow surrounded by peaks, including the backside of Cerro Castillo. It looked like we had found a climber’s playground. Plus it was nearly empty.
We wanted to continue to Laguna Duff, a lake higher up tucked under peaks, but my knees and achilles tendons were aching, so we stayed in the meadow. Exhausted and in awe of the beauty of the pristine grasses, wildflowers, birds, and flowing water surrounded by peaks, I felt like I could’ve sat there forever.
It happened to be Valetine’s Day and Raja surprised me with a freeze dried dessert. After nearly three years together, it was our first Valentine’s together—we always were apart on the holiday, which Raja didn’t care much for anyways. We stared at the mountains and traced lines up the peaks, imagining our climbing routes. As the night approached and the temperature plummeted, we huddled together and spooned the sugary mix into our mouths, watching the fading light move across the peaks. When we finally went to bed, I slept in all my layers as the rain pattered against our tent.
Day 4: Camping Neozelandes to Villa Cerro Castillo (8.91 miles | | ascent: 436ft | descent: 3,088ft)
We woke up with the kind of energy that a last day on the trail brings: excitement to get real food and a hot shower but the dread of leaving the wilderness and ending the adventure. The plan was to hike 9 miles into town, mostly downhill. The trail was lovely. Once past Porteadores, we walked along a steep gorge until it veered away and we walked over soft dirt trails in a pine forest that eventually spilled into a meadow. Soon, I spotted a horse grazing on the tall grass. Then another. Then a whole herd. My heart soared as we hiked along the horses, especially when one ran alongside us.
Eventually, the trail met a dirt road that passed by ranches. Above, Cerro Castillo hung suspended in the sky. What a place for a ranch, I thought. As we walked under the bright sun, my knees aching, we hoped a rancher might drive by and offer us a ride in his pick-up. But it didn’t happen. So instead, we dug our fingers into our trekking poles and kept walking the never-ending road. After what felt like hours, we reached the end and collapsed in front of Puesto Huemel, a restaurant on the edge of the main highway that leads into the center of Villa Cerro Castillo. The restaurant wasn’t open yet, but the owner said we could hang outside until it did. We sprawled out on the grass, sorting through our gear and feeling thankful we had made it.
After a lunch that ended too soon, a driver picked us off and drove us through a fairytale land of rolling, grassy hills until we arrived at Puerto Ibáñez. That evening, we would catch the daily ferry to travel across Lago General Carrera to begin the second leg of our trip. We arrived at the port town with about six hours to spare. We thought we’d relax in one of the town’s parks, but the wind was so fierce that practically no one was outside. The town felt deserted. Almost everything was closed. We found the only cafe that was open, a hole in the wall place, and stayed there for a few hours, drinking Nescafe coffee and cheap wine. There wasn’t much else on the menu.
Finally, we got aboard the ferry just as the sun was starting to descend. The lake was an icy blue coated with white caps. Doug Tompkins, co-founder of the North Face and a conservationist in Patagonia, died in a kayaking accident in this lake in 2015. Strong winds had caused him to capsize and the 40 degree water brought on hypothermia. I drifted in and out of sleep as the sun set over the lake, thinking of him.
It was pitch black, the sky bright with stars, when we docked in Chile Chico. Luckily, our Airbnb/hotel was a few steps from the shore. After showering, sorting gear, and charging our devices, we settled into sleep. Part two of the trip, a trek through Parque Patagonia, would begin early the next morning.