Torres del Paine Trekking: Grey Lodge to Paso Ranger Station & back to Paine Grande

This post describes day 2 of our 5-day trekking adventure in Las Torres National Park. To get to the main article describing the entire trip, take a look here.

Day 2 of our adventure

This day was split up in two.

Grey Lodge to Paso Ranger Station

First half of the day was from Grey lodge to past the second suspension bridge on the route to Paso ranger station:

· Distance: 5km (one way)

· Time spent: 2h50 going up, 1h45 going down

· Total elevation gain: 450m

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Going up, it took us about 45min to the first suspension bridge. Then 1h30 to the second suspension bridge. Then 5min to the mirador just behind the second suspension bridge and then about 30min further, you get to walk right next to the glacier field.

We heard from others that going further to the Paso ranger station wouldn’t bring much other view points from the glacier and as it gets pretty steep at the end (and we still had to go all the way back down to Paine Grande), we skipped that.

The suspension bridges are awesome and don’t only offer amazing sights from different parts of the glacier, they also look both up and down the waterfalls. These bridges are quite long and certainly the second one has a pretty scary bottom underneath it. As they warn on the map of the park, the bridges are not ideal for people with fear of heights, so you might want to take that into account when planning your trip.

We got back at 11h15 and the sun was shining, so we had all the time to get our backpacks in order again and relax in the lounge chairs on the terrace of the lodge, before getting lunch inside (you can chose to have it inside our take a lunch pack with you).

Back to Paine Grande

After lunch we made our way back down to Paine Grande, so the same hike as the day before, but then from opposite directions:

· Distance: 11,5km

· Time spent: 1h45

· Total elevation gain: 200m

Totally different views this time. The day before it was very cloudy and we even got rain at the beginning of the hike. Now, with the sun abundantly present and some clouds gliding by, it makes totally different pictures.