Four Seasons in One Day: Crossing the French Valley

Bus from Puerto Natales, the climb to Las Torres, back down, a 3am repeat for sunrise, then the long walk past Los Cuernos to Camping Frances. That was the last two days. This one had a different kind of intensity waiting for it.

The last of the bougie campsites

Frances turned out to be the nicest campsite of the whole trek, wooden decks connecting everything, a proper clean shower block, and the same breakfast routine as always, drip coffee, oats, and packing peanut butter sandwiches for the trail ahead. We also met a guy who'd wild camped illegally, got spooked by a puma outside his tent in the night, and ended up begging his way into an actual pitch. Strapped bags on and set off later than we should have, which at least meant an empty trail ahead of us.

Drip coffee and packing sandwiches, the same routine as every morning.

Camp Italiano, and up into the valley

First stop was Camp Italiano, barely 15 minutes from Frances, once a free no-frills campsite so popular the fragile forest around it couldn't cope, now surviving only as a ranger station and a bag drop point. We left our packs in a storage container with a hundred others and started up the valley with just day bags, aiming for the two viewpoints ahead, the French lookout and the English lookout.

Lighter bags, heading up into the valley proper.

The trail cuts through thick lenga forest with a glacial stream running alongside, streams you end up walking straight up at points, waterproof boots doing a lot of work. Eventually the trees open up and the hanging French glacier reveals itself, spilling down from the peaks above Paine Grande, cracking with these giant thunder-strike noises as pieces break off into the valley below. Genuinely one of the best days of walking on the whole trip, granite cliffs on one side, forest below, and this giant blue glacial lake on the other.

The French lookout, then the golden forest

Not much of a lookout in the traditional sense, just flat rocks with an incredible view of the glacier, but the timing worked in our favour. Autumn meant fewer hikers and a lenga forest lit up gold against the icy blue of the glacier behind it. A few hours later the valley properly opens out, autumn forest at the base, 180 degrees of mountains above in yellows and reds, and genuinely difficult to know where to look because every direction had something worth stopping for.

Autumn turned this stretch of forest completely gold.

The English lookout

One final steep, rocky climb and we reached the English lookout, spectacular in a completely different way to everything before it, huge granite cliffs backing a valley full of autumn colour. We sat on the rocks, unwrapped the sandwiches we'd packed that morning, and just took in a view that felt genuinely different from anything else on the trek so far. One of the underrated perks of hiking this close to glaciers is the water, straight from the streams, ice cold and better than anything out of a bottle.

The English lookout, granite spires above autumn colour.

Four seasons in one afternoon

Back down to Italiano to collect our bags, unsurprisingly one of the last ones left given how late we always seem to set off, then the two and a half to three hour walk on to Paine Grande. This is the stretch where you properly understand the Patagonia cliche about experiencing all four seasons in a single day. Within minutes of leaving Italiano, calm sunshine turned into a wind that kept building, the trail cutting through a haunting stretch of burnt forest before opening onto exposed, notoriously windy ground near Lago Skottsberg. Close to the water the wind was strong enough to whip it into small tornadoes, genuinely difficult to say whether it was a jacket-on or jacket-off kind of day.

Calm one minute, nearly knocked sideways the next.

We trudged through it, turned for one final look back at Los Cuernos, and eventually saw Paine Grande in the distance as the light started to turn golden.

Golden hour, and Paine Grande finally coming into view.

A refugio bed, against all odds

We'd been sleeping in pre-erected tents for most of the trip since huts and tent spaces were booked out months in advance. A week before setting off though, I'd emailed the campsite on a whim and found two spare refugio beds going at Paine Grande. Genuine luxury after three days of tents, and Paine Grande itself turned out to be closer to a hotel than a refugio. Noodles as usual, a proper shower, and a sunset view over dinner before an early night, because tomorrow was the final push, Camp Grey, and an ice hike onto the glacier itself.

A real bed, against all odds, on the last night before Camp Grey.

If you want to see how the trek started, or skip ahead to the ice hike on the Grey Glacier, I've written both of those up separately.