“Say, Pooh, if I were you I’d think about skedaddlin’s out of here. It’s Windsday, see?”
I have been occasionally known to complain that the weather in California is too….boring. I mean, who wouldn’t get tired of day after day of blue sky and sunshine? I need a little variety in my atmosphere. Well, in Patagonia, that’s not a problem! In Torres del Paine the daily weather forecast usually called for sun, rain, clouds, blue sky, fog, and variable winds with gusts and a chance of snow, hail, and/or sleet. (The one thing they don’t have is thunderstorms!)
The 6th day of our Patagonia trip was not at all pleasant weather-wise, but it was certainly very memorable, which is what it’s all about for me these days. The wind started howling around midnight, like a pack of Patagonian demons screaming down from the rocky heights, vibrating the thick fabric covering our geodesic domes, and rattling and banging anything not firmly attached to the planet. The screeches and shrieks were unearthly, as if the flying saucer cloud formations yesterday afternoon had delivered a load of Alien Demons out onto the land. The howls were purely Patagonian: raw and primordial, earthly and unadulterated.
We started the day well before dawn with a buffet breakfast in the dining dome, none of which I could stomach, having fallen prey to a traveler’s bug which was incubating like a Thing of Evil in my GI tract (and a nod to Stephen King). Nevertheless I was excited to be going for a hike in Patagonia. Our itinerary called for a bus ride to Lake Pehoe’, where we would pick up a passenger ferry across the lake to the Francis Valley trail head. We would hike along the lake shore and then up into the Francis Valley as far as we wanted to go while looking up at the back side of the Cleopatra’s Needles. The guides all agreed that it was one of their favorite trails for scenery and natural beauty. Moreover, it did not involve any steep strenuous scrambling up thousand foot talus fields! It sounded good to me!
The wind continued to rattle and roar as we packed our gear for the day, (I took every article of warm, windproof and rainproof gear I owned), and boarded our big luxury liner of a bus. The driver hung on to the wheel like a champ and the bus bounced and swayed down the road to Lake Pehoe.
Most of my colleagues took the opportunity to catch a few extra winks but I couldn’t resist pulling out my camera as the sun sneaked up above the horizon and lit up the rocky peaks around us. I had to take photos- I might never pass this way again, and certainly if I did, there would never be the same conditions of light and storm and clouds again. You take whatever the day gives you and live it to the fullest.
As we neared the lake we saw a strange sight- a swirling mist was dancing and writhing over the top of the lake like a swarm of mad ghostly wraiths. But it couldn’t have been mist- conditions were all wrong and besides any mist would have been quickly dissippated by the wind. I suggested to no-one in particular that perhaps they really were Alien Banshees, loosed by this crazy wind (didn’t anyone remember the flying saucer clouds we saw yesterday?) Well, the swirling mists were caused by the wind, only it was water being picked up from the surface of the lake by the violent gusts- water-storms, like dust storms only made of water. Like upside-down rainstorms, the water was rising from the earth into the air. It was crazy! The guides looked at each other- we were planning to ride a ferry boat through this?! Yowza!
We joined a crowd of passengers on the pier waiting for the Ferry, wondering whether the captain would dare take the boat out across the lake with a load of crazy international hiking fanatics, but finally the gate was opened and we all traipsed aboard, trusting that the crew knew their business. I kept my camera ready and was rewarded by a few worthwhile images despite the unlikely conditions. The ferry plowed through the furious winds and whitecapped waves like a tank.
Little was visible from the cabin windows except the spray of water as the waves slammed into the boat. It was….exciting. And very, very noisy. After a long hour or so we finally reached the far shore of the lake, checked in at the lodge, and headed for the trail.
It was a day of mountains and wind and clouds. As we traversed along the shore of the lake, wind and water to the right and immense forbidding summits to our left, we entered a land scarred by fire. There are no natural fires in Patagonia because there are no thunderstorms, and hence no lightning strikes to start a fire. But in this modern era in the Parque Nacional on three occasions campers’ fires have gotten out of control and caused massive and devastating wildfires. Because the vegetation did not evolve with fire it doesn’t know how to recover from fire. The hills were covered with grey and white skeletons of trees, forests of standing dead trunks, bearing cinder-black scars, like the ranks of soldiers of an army that has been incinerated in place but is too petrified to even fall down. 
This landscape surrounded the lake with its dancing banshees and roaring torrents of air. We marched resolutely through it, marvelling at the gale force wind-driven vapors over the lake to our right, and the fantastic towering spires of rock shrouded in clouds to our left. After a few miles the trail abruptly passed out of the burn zone and turned left into green virgin forest, passing along up the creek canyon that was the drainage of the Francis valley.
Presently we crossed the creek on a sturdy suspension bridge only slightly buffeted by the howling wind, and we were in Campamento Italiano.
Italian Camp is a stopping place for day hikers and backpackers doing the Grand Circuit tour of the Torres. On March 18th the camp was jammed with trekkers, many of which appeared to be in kind of a wind-shocked daze. Others were collapsed among great piles of gear, heaped like a fortress of sandbags around the camp headquarters. There we found the other members of our group- the fast-trackers who had set their sights on making it far up into the Francis Valley. They had only been able to go a quarter of a mile up the canyon, they explained, and then the trail had been closed do to the hazard posed by trees being toppled by the extreme winds.
It was worth going up as far as the overlook to see the glacier, they said, and then they were on their way home, fast-tracking back to the ferry dock lodge for a few beers.
We went and saw the glacier- luckily I have the photos to prove it. Luckily because my friend Dr. Bill, the person to whom I handed my camera for a self portrait, a person who seemed quite stable and trustworthy, was almost tossed over the side of the overlook by a particularly sneaky Alien Banshee! (It was a tough call trying to decide whether to grab Bill or the camera, but fortunately he miraculously regained his footing before disaster struck!) After that I put the camera away as the clouds had finally gotten serious about closing in on us and random drops of water had begun flying hither and thither through the air. We had a ferry to catch.
Our blustery day was only 100km/hour, which didn’t set any world records. (That was set on Barrow Island Australia at 408 km per hour. And FYI Hurricane Irma hit the Virgin Islands at 297 km/hour.) But if you ever see flying saucers in the sky just stay inside and bake cookies or something- anything except go for a hike!
Happy Windsday everyone!
Shirley
“You want me to step on that?”
Your writing makes me feel like I am there!
perfect description of the day