Our first big hike of the trip was to the Torres del Paine Lookout, where we hoped to see the towers rising over a turquoise tarn trapped by an immensed terminal moraine. The hike started out at the Las Torres campground, where we had stayed the night before amidst the horses eating the grass around us throughout the night. 

The 10 mile hike began with a climb to the Ascencio valley entrance, where the viewpoint to the left encouraged us to keep moving. We gradually entered into a deep, glacier carved U-shaped valley, complete with driving rain. We continued into the valley, and then turned to climb up a massive scree field that was a terminal moraine for the tower's glaciers (see below). 

The lookout promises to be one of the most amazing sights in Patagonia — huge, unique, monolithic towers yielding glaciers that calve into a large alpine, turquoise tarn. Unfortunately, the cloud that brought the rain on the way up had the better view, as we could not see beyond the mist. We could hear the occasional crashing of rocks and debris into the lake. The postcards show the viewpoint as being spectacular, so this is a definite destination for a return trip. 

The return trip brought snow in big huge flakes. The white of the snow mixed with the deep green texture of the jengas and cyprus were a pleasant taste on the eyes. The texture was immense. 

Just before arriving back in camp, I went off trail into a bog the promised some beautiful shots with skeleton tree remains as accents. I worked on the shots for quite a while, and was sure I had taken my first "winner" for the trip. Unfortunately, none of the pictures were quite so fulfilling, the best of the bunch is to the right. 

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