Nordenskjold

With a name like Nordenskjold, you would think that we fell asleep in Chile and woke up somewhere in Scandinavia. I guess whoever named this lake must have thought that it looked like the fjords in Norway, which is not too far off.

I wore Dad out the previous two days and now he was in need of a semi rest day. It was a good thing that there was a massive forest fire still burning and blocking our path to really do more than a short day, especially if we wanted to head out on another piece of the W circuit we had originally been planning to do. This section would probably have been the easiest day on the W, skirting the shores of Lake Nordenskjold all day long. This was our first day of intense winds and they were blowing right in our faces as we headed west.

The well defined trail took us over small hills to smaller lakes until we ended up just walking the shores of Nordenskjold. The trail was fairly quiet as we would run into a few hikers here and there, but the largest contingent on the day were the Chileans leading their team of horses and mules that were just running the trail. We had to move quickly to get out of their way.
After a good amount of time walking, we ran into a predicament. There was a large river flowing very swiftly down the rocks. The trail seemed to go straight across this river with no bridge in sight. Do we cross? The adventurer in me said sure, but the guy with dry feet said no. We took a look at our map and knew that Cuernos and the fire were not too far away. This was a swift river and there was the potential for full body immersion or getting beaten up by the current. With Dad's foot issue also, it was nearly unanimous that the risks outweighed the benefits of crossing this usually small creek. We looked in the guide book and it said that this stream could be potentially hazardous during high water times. It was definitely that time of year. We were to find out later from a couple we talked to that they turned around at the river also, but they were able to see a local Chilean just cross the stream like it was no big deal while they were waiting there.

Neither of us was disappointed though as we were not incredibly ambitious on this day anyway and probably only lost out on an hour or so of hiking. We still had the beautiful peaks to enjoy as we were just on the edge of the mountains. We ate our lunch and turned around. The wind was now with us, but didn't give us too much extra help. We wondered about the fire moving toward us, but were not too concerned.
There was not too much wildlife in this area. We were looking out for condors because we knew they were out here, but we had not seen them yet. We did have a fox of some kind wandering through camp and of course there were the guanacos on our drive out to Torres. There was this interesting looking bird that to me looked like the Dodo bird that is now extinct. This bird looked about as nimble and we wondered what it could be. We found out later that it was called the Buff-necked Ibis, which is a pretty good name since it did have quite the meaty neck. We made it back to camp where it would be an afternoon of hanging out in the wind. We were able to go over to the dorms and get some cribbage in. We played with a woman from the states who was a teacher there. She was very nice, but not a good cribbage player. We had played quite a few games by this point and I was gaining a substantial lead. I was also reading quite a bit and it was nice to take the time out to just not have much on my plate for the day. The following day was our last in Torres del Paine, so we would have to soak in the scenery and the experience while it lasted.