El Chalten – Dec 2025

In the previous month we hadn’t spent more than 4 days at one place, it was nice to know we weren’t going to have to pack everything up for the next 11 nights. El Chalten was the longest block of time (by far) that we had anywhere on the trip. Initially I’d just heard so much about El Chalten, and how it was the capital of hiking in Argentina, and various outdoors documentaries had celebrated it so much, I just assumed there would be plenty to keep us busy here. The National Park brochure had 18 or so walks on it. Then closer to the time I started looking at the listed walks a bit more carefully – and realised that most of the 18 walks were just subsets of 3 longer walks. Were we actually going to be able to keep ourselves occupied for the time? If we got a weather window to do the Huemul Circuit then it was likely fine, but if not, we could find ourselves wondering why we were staying in one of the most expensive places in Argentina for so long!

The day we arrived the weather was stunning. In retrospect, given the long daylight hours, we should have got out and done a walk that afternoon. Instead we did laundry, scoped grocery stores and camping gear hire options.

The next day the forecast was rubbish so there was no impetus to get up and moving. After an early-ish lunch we decided to hike to Laguna Torre. The weather was still cloudy and a bit drizzly, but due to clear – which it did as we walked.

We were ‘marching’ on our way there, since we weren’t sure how long it was going to take. It took us 2h20 to cover the 9km to Laguna Torre. There was reasonable visibility of the lake by then but not up the valley. We hung out, photographing a white-throated caracara, for a while. But then the wind came up, and we concluded we weren’t really going to get much out of pushing on to Maestri viewpoint, so headed back.

We woke to rain and wind and no plan to do anything. We headed to the Parks Office to discuss the forecast. The Parks Officer wasn’t particularly encouraging about heading off on the Huemul as the cloud would mean no views. As discussed in my separate blog post in the end we decided to do the Huemul Circuit – and headed off the next day.

Back in El Chalten 4 days later, after our Huemul Circuit effort, we decided we’d earned a rest day, and a meal out since we’d been cooking in our apartment the other nights. We had a really enjoyable meal at The Asadores (we went one meat/one vegetarian choice which worked pretty well between us).

Unfortunately that day we’d received an email from advising us that our Antarctic trip, which was coming up in 8 days time, had been cancelled due to mechanical issues with the boat. This put a bit of a dampener on the rest of the trip as Antarctica was the final big thing. And we’d also been looking forward to getting on the boat and having someone else make all the decisions for 12 days.

Unsurprisingly this overshadowed our remaining time in El Chalten as we had to spend time trying to work out what to do instead. I guess on the positive (?) side the weather wasn’t great for our last 4 days in El Chalten, so spending hours searching for options on the laptop wasn’t as bad as if the weather had been good.

We did the short (7km return), flat walk to Chorrillo del Salto one morning. It almost ended in disaster when Tom’s shoelace managed to get caught on his other shoe and he took a tumble before we even left town. However, despite a sore foot we managed to get through the remainder of the walk.

Given Tom’s foot, I thought I might be doing Laguna de Los Tres by myself. But the following day we both got up at 5am and headed through town to Laguna de Los Tres trailhead. We were somewhat surprised that a ranger was on duty checking park passes (we’d bought an annual pass so it wasn’t like we were up that early to try and skip the checks). The forecast wasn’t great, but it was the best of the remaining 3 days we had.

After the other walking we’d done in the area, and reading so much about how hard Laguna de Los Tres, we were surprised at how easy the early stages of the track was. A gradual incline for the first 3km, then we went past Laguna Capri, after which there was a long flat section to Poincenot Camp.

The final 400m over 1km I guess is the section which destroys many people. We found it fine – there had obviously been a fair bit of track work done & quite a few steps created from the rocks (maybe not evident to less experienced walkers). Sure it was steep, but not the nightmare that the inexperienced masses of the internet would have you believe. The masses who had camped at Poincenot and then gone up for (the non-existent) sunrise were all on their way down as we went up.

We got to the end of the trail (Laguna de Los Tres) in 3 hours – where we boiled the billy and ate bakery goods for breakfast. It was relatively still while we were doing that, but once we walked down to the lake edge the wind picked up and was bitterly cold. We stayed up there for a fair while checking out the views over Laguna Sucia etc, hoping that the cloud would lift from Fitz Roy. But it wasn’t to be.

The wind was brutal (as forecast) by the time we left. Our descent of the steep section took about the same time as the ascent (45 minutes). We retraced our route until the junction and then returned via Mirador Fitz Roy, where we had lunch.

Overall we thought that Laguna de Los Tres was easier that Base Torres, as it was a lot less undulating. I don’t know that the rest of the world agrees with that position though.

The next day was devoted entirely to travel planning, while the weather was miserable all day. The following morning was more of the same, but by mid-afternoon I was going stir-crazy. The wind had died somewhat and it wasn’t raining, so I dragged Tom out to Mirador de Los Cóndores and Mirador de Las Aguilas. The weather came sweeping back in towards the end but at least we had got out for something!

And finally the next day, our long sojourn in El Chalten was up, and it was time to get the bus back to El Calafate and then fly to Ushuaia despite no Antarctic cruise awaiting us.