Two Years Ago Today – Patagonia Running Adventure

Yesterday was the craziest shit I’ve ever done.. There were fucking swamps to climb through, a mountain to climb, a monkey trail, crazy ass hail/wind, climbing up and down ladders, crossing streams. Nature really kicked my ass. 20 miles long. Who the fuck does that?

-Me, Dec 25, 2010

I come hobbling down the wooden stairs with my blistered feet all sewn up to meet my running adventurer friends for a nice Christmas breakfast. A Christmas celebration of finishing the “W” Circuit with no causalities (or none serious enough for paper work).

The “W” Circuit is a trail that, just like its name, W’s its way through the El Parque Nacional de los Torres del Paine (If other languages make you uncomfortable- Towers of Paine – if you’re corny and faint-hearted go ahead and call them “Tower’s of Pain”)
Anyway, it was 75ish KM (of Pain), give or take a few.

A picture similar to that above is what got me sold on the trip

It all began with me googling “Running Camps”..and somehow a Running Camp in South America winked at me from the options so I clicked and the story was told.

So Dec. 18 2010, I took off from home and flew to Los Angeles, where I would pick up my flight to Santiago, Chile the following day.

From Los Angeles on, for the next 17 days, Andes Adventures (the Andventure Running Company)  took care of all my flights to and within South America as well as all of my lodging, food, and permissions within all of the parks, and getting through customs between the Chile and Argentina border.

On top of Running the “W” Circuit, we spent about a couple days prior staying in Punta Arenas (Dec. 20), Chile traveling South through Otway Sound, stopping to snap a few quick ones of the the Magellanic Penguins and continuing on by way of Puerto Natales to get to the Park (Dec 21-25).

After the big run we took a bus across the border to El Calafate, Argentina (Dec 26), to get our meat on and recover. At this point, I ended up experiencing what you call Leg Trauma which pretty much consisted of my ankles becoming the size of my thighs, and my feet too big for shoes. I don’t really know if this was from the 5 days of running on unfamiliar terrain, nothing like that of the flat hills of Michigan or the fact that I had two major open sore blisters on my feet..

Anyway, From Calafate, we bused Southbound visiting the Perito Moreno Glacier  ”The worlds only advancing glacier outside of the polar region” and ending up in El Chalten (Dec 27-30).

El Chalten is the home of Mt. Fitzroy. A very popular rock climbing destination for those who are into that. I got my own taste of some rock climbing while I was there since i was too “f’ed” up to run. While I was doing that my Running friends ran about 30ish miles through the Parque los Glaciares.

So this is where I stop giving you a impractical tour/itinerary of Running South America Until the First of the year where I will pick up my story in Ushuaia for the coming of 2011.

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If you have any questions thus far about Patagonia, Andes Adventures, Chile, Argentina feel free to get ahold of me!