At once, my feet, my knees, my hips, even my mind felt the difference. Instead of painful rocks, I was walking on pillows. At least, the soil underfoot felt like feathers. After navigating the hard-packed path to Mirador Las Torres – one of the world’s top trails in Patagonia’s Torres del Paine National Park, and one my joints had spent the past five hours protesting – it took just a few steps on the newly designed but still unfinished trail to feel like I could keep going. Relief washed over me. Awe soon followed.
Feeling better, I could do more than just move through the scenery one April day earlier this year. I absorbed the immensity of the black rock within Ascensio Canyon, I listened to the roaring river below and could properly admire the contrasting fall colours that surrounded me.
The writer on the epic hike in Patagonia's Torres del Paine National Park.Catherine Dawson March/The Globe and Mail
That sense of wonder is exactly what British Columbia trail designer Jacob (Sutra) Brett hoped would happen when he began planning this new section in 2016 as a Shuswap Trail Alliance volunteer.
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A trail “is not … a thing on the ground that people follow, it’s actually an experience in a story created for them,” he said.
Brett believes trails should tell hikers a story about the landscape and heads back to Patagonia for his 10th visit in September to do more sustainable- and social-trail planning. He now runs his own consulting business, Earthbound Projects, but was first invited to this wild part of the world by Hotel Las Torres, which also owns Reserva Las Torres, the 11-acre reserve adjacent to the national park. Several of Torres del Paine’s most popular trails run through their private land.
“He’s all about sexy trails, the curves, the surprises and the viewpoints,” Mauricio Kusanovic said. His family runs Hotel Las Torres and he is executive director of the next-door reserve.
Hotel Las Torres is the closest hotel to many of Torres del Paine National Park's most popular treks. Guests can ride with baqueanos, or Chilean cowboys, to explore the reserve.Las Torres Patagonia
Also supporting the new trail work are Chilean non-profits, including Torres del Paine Legacy Fund, AMA Torres del Paine and CONAF, the Chilean forestry authority. Brett’s trail-design plans, cut into the hillsides by teams of Chilean and international volunteers, have slowly transformed several bucket-list hikes in the area.
The Mirador Las Torres out-and-back trail had to be first because it is in such desperate need of renewal. The 20-kilometre route endures 1,000 people a day in peak season. The eight-hour (or in my case a leisurely 12-hour) round trip is one of Chilean Patagonia’s unmissable and must-see sights and it can be done as a day trip or worked into the multiday W and O circuits in the park.
The group of hikers traverse the Valley of the Winds on the Mirador Las Torres trail.Catherine Dawson March/The Globe and Mail
My hiking group slipped on headlamps and left Hotel Las Torres in the predawn. It’s located right near the main trailheads and we soon began ascending single file on a path created by horses and traders eons ago. The trail is so scoured by water and winds of up to 100 kilometres an hour and ground down by millions of feet and hooves, that it is more of a chute than a path – one full of stones and, often, steaming piles of horse poop.
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We followed the well-worn trail up to the tip of the Valley of the Winds, down into the lenga beech forest and clambered back up the Paine mountains over a boulder moraine (so windy that holes in my hiking poles whistled) to reach three granite towers looming some 8,000 feet over a glacial tarn. It’s a breathtaking sight that gives the park its name (“The Towers of Paine”). The lakeshore is often packed with hikers lining up to get their celebratory photos (we even watched a proposal, complete with Champagne).
The Mirador Las Torres viewpoint is inside the national park, but the trail begins and ends on the private Reserva Las Torres. The softer ground I enjoyed on my return trip is part of a fresh route that takes hikers in a new direction to preserve the land and improve their experience.
“The first step was looking to fix the old route,” Brett explains. “Can we technically fix it? Mostly, yes. But can we socially fix it – how users are going to use the trail – and that answer was no.”
He considered the psychology of international hikers coming to Patagonia (i.e., nothing but a broken leg will stop them from completing that bucket-list trek), and realized he needed to improvise. “They are there for a very focused reason,” he said, and new trails need to discourage determined hikers from taking shortcuts to the old route, thus destroying its reforestation.
“I do a land-based inventory, where I go around the area and look for other anchors or features in the environment that people would naturally gravitate to,” Brett said. He listens, too, because he knows hikers follow the sound of water and create ad-hoc paths to investigate if the main trail does not.
Volunteers work on a stretch of trail overlooking Ascensio Canyon in Patagonia.Barria Arjel
Volunteers pause to enjoy the views before ascending the hard-packed, rock covered trail to the base of the towers in Torres del Paine National Park.Catherine Dawson March/The Globe and Mail
The new trail, Kusanovic said, “is thought out for a wonderful experience, something that avoids water damage with the proper grade and the proper width and goes to the most attractive spots.”
There are still two bridges to build and more routing to be done, but he is hopeful the new section of the Mirador trek will be completed by April, 2025.
One of Torres del Paine's three granite towers reaches as high as 2,500 metres, towering over the boulder-strewn trail below.Catherine Dawson March/The Globe and Mail
Creating environmentally sensitive trails in an increasingly busy tourism destination is no small feat but it’s essential for the Kusanovic family: They need well-managed trails because that’s what their guests are travelling to see.
“One of our greatest challenges is being the buffer zone for the national park and managing the visitation. So, one of our goals is to share this place with the world in a sustainable manner.”
Somehow, I walked 34,997 steps that day – and was only able to finish because of the encouragement and patience of a great group of women. But also, because our guide Marcelo Osses knew how to find the new trail that gave me a second wind. He leads groups to the base of the towers at least three times a week (usually much faster) but he didn’t seem to mind the slow pace.
“The change of colour in April is amazing, it’s really wonderful,” he mused, pulling out his phone again to capture the gorgeous sunlit ambers and yellows of fall while waiting for me to catch my breath.
IF YOU GO
Chile’s peak summer hiking season runs from December to February (it’s also the windiest time of year). But consider planning a trip in late March and early April when there are far fewer tourists and glorious fall colours to enjoy along the trails throughout Patagonia.
A Patagonian-style barbecue of lamb and vegetables is served for dinner at Hotel Las Torres.Las Torres Patagonia
Torres del Paine National Park was created around Hotel Las Torres, a family-run estancia turned all-inclusive hotel with a bar, spa, fine-dining restaurant and stables. Three-day, two-night stays from US$2,160 for double occupancy or US$2,950 for single. Of the many hotels near the park, Hotel Las Torres has the best location (a short walk from the main trailheads) and rooms that look out onto Mount Almirante Nieto. Beginner and advanced riders should not miss a chance to explore the area on horseback with local baqueanos, or cowboys. Visitors who’d rather not hike or ride can still see the region’s outstanding landscapes on driving tours. lastorres.com
The writer was a guest of Hotel Las Torres. It did not review or approve the story before publication.
