French Valley

Through the night from Sunday to Monday there was a change in the weather. The wind really picked up, we got a bit of drizzle. Neither Mike or I slept that well on the hard ground and with the noisy wind.

We head a great breakfast of eggs and fruit salad, made our bag lunches and took the bus for 45 minutes to get to the boat. We stoped on the way for a view of the Horns which are on the east side of the French Valley.

The area is mainly granite with sedimentary rock layered on top of it. Thus the very interesting dark grey on top of light grey formation of the towers. After stopping at the lookout, we continued on to the dock. We took a little ferry across to the Paine Grande campsite where we could drop our bags and begin our hike. Today we were doing the portion of the W that goes from the bottom left point to the top centre point. The actual top centre point is up the French Valley to the top, and we were going to head up it as far as we wanted to get a good view of the glaciers and then head back.

The hike started at 10:30 and was relatively flat for the first 7.6km to the Italian Campground. It passes by a couple little lakes, and through the area of the forest fire that was here two years ago… all due to a cigarette butt.

There were some views of the Horns but were fairly hidden by the cloud. We crossed the creek to the Italian Campground, then headed up the valley for 10 minutes to look out to the glaciers and stop for lunch.

After staying there for about half an hour, we kept working our way up the valley. It was a rough 2km slog where we increased 580m of elevation, but we made it to the Mirador Francais viewpoint.

The scenery was great, and the clouds cleared off the Horns providing a spectacular view.

The view down the French Valley towards the bottom looked great as well.

The glaciers along the mountain are still moving like the larger ones we had been to. The difference here is that when they calve off, they avalanche down. It almost looks like a waterfall until you see that there are large chunks of ice that are bouncing off the rock, and that there is no waterfall there before it starts or after it finishes. Like the past calving of glaciers it is so loud, even from across the valley. Because the glaciers are tiered up the mountain, if the top one avalanches, it can cause the one below it to do the same in a chain-reaction. We didn’t get to see one of those, but did see a few smaller ones.

There was the option of going further up the valley to another viewpoint, but we had enough and were ready to head down. Only one of our group (the best hiker) and Neil carried on for the additional 2kms, the rest of us started for home. The way down was tough as most of our legs were getting quite tired from two days of heavy hiking in a row. The steepness didn’t help either. There was a great view of the river cascading over a waterfall, and it was great looking down the valley.

We made it back down to the Italian Camground and had a long relatively flat walk to our campsite at Paine Grande Campground.After two whole days of hiking, it was quite exhausting, but just kept trudging on. At least to turn around, the Horns still looked spectacular.

We got back to our campsite and had a celebratory beer or two. It was 19.2km with 820m of elevation. We headed into the main cafeteria for supper and were all able to sit at the same table.. The quality wasn’t that great and the price was high (thankfully for us it was included as part of the tour). If anyone is planning on hiking the W, I’d recommend bringing, packing, and cooking your own food, rather than relying on what they provide.

After dinner there was a bit of drama as a couple of kids were sitting on a hill behind our tents and were throwing rocks at them. They even managed to hit a couple and put holes in them. Neil (who is trying to get into Law School) did his best to go around and find the kids’ parents. Unfortunately all he got was a business card for the Dad’s lawyer. We couldn’t dwell on it too long though, as it was getting dark and we had to be ready for more hiking in the morning.