Day 4, the French valley and Grand Paine

This was my favorite day of hiking.  It was long and tough but the views were amazing!!!  

The day started with a view of the sunrise on the glaciers from our cabaña.  It was more spectacular than the pictures show, I spent too long enjoying the view before getting the camera. 


The hike was 3 miles to a camping area where everyone drops their main packs and switches to day packs.


Jeff at the pack pile.

It is then a steep 3 mile hike up the French Valley (no idea where the name came from) with glaciers to the right, a roaring stream of glacial melt up to the best view in the park.  Due to the total legnth of the day, 14 miles, Jeff and I did a little trail running once we dropped our main packs and only had the small day pack.  This was a nice change as we used some different muscles running than hiking and it was fun.



We could hear pieces of ice break off the glaciers and see the small avalanches coming down the mountains.  The sound was unlike anything I've heard before.  You could tell how big it was by how loud the crack was.  



We had one of our hiking buddies, Ned, take this of us.  Ned earned the nickname of Hungry Buddy since he was eating all the time.  We shared some of our food with him.  He was a nice kid from Maryland that just finished up collage and was taking some time to travel before starting work.  You will hear morre about Ned on day 5.



Its hard to capture but it was 360 degrees of awesome mind blowing beautifulness.  We had a snack at the viewpoint before heading back.


This is the beech forrest that we hiked/ran through for part of the way.

We had a second snack on a huge boulder next to the stream.


My view for snack.


Super Sky on a lunch rock!  :-)

We then got back to the camp and got our packs from the pile and slowed down a bit and made our way to the Grand Paine refugio. 


There was a forrest fire in the park in 2011 that had burned 40,000 acres of the park.  In this picture you can see the burned trees.


Looking back where we started our day.

We got to the refugio at a reasonable hour and were pleasantly supprised to find we had a room to ourselves.  It was two bunk beds with only enough space between the wall and the beds for the packs but it worked and it was nice to have the space to our selves.  After getting cleaned up, the showers oscillated between hot and cold, we shared a bottle of wine before dinner and started hatching a plan for tomorrows hike.  It was a fabulous day!

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