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Torres del Paine

Patagonia, Chile · South America · southern hemisphere

Lakes & CoastlineHikingWildlife

Torres del Paine is at its best for lakes & coastline in January to February. Good but not prime in March and December. Crowds peak in December and bottom out in June.

JFMAMJJASOND
Lakes & Coastline
85
95
67
40
15
8
8
9
21
19
44
67
Hiking
61
73
88
92
18
11
11
11
18
42
92
61
Wildlife
67
67
90
90
15
15
15
15
15
42
90
67
Crowds

Swipe the table sideways for the rest of the year.

primegoodpossibleoff-seasoncrowds, on this place’s own scale

The short version

Wind, not temperature, is the variable that ruins trips here — and it rises in November and stays through the summer

What the walking is like

Long day walks, or the multi-day W and O circuits with booked huts. No guide needed in summer, compulsory from late April to August.

When not to come

Arriving without reservations. Refugios for December–February go as soon as the season opens for booking, around April, and there is no walk-up option — no booking means no W trek, not a harder one.

Busiest

December–February; refugios book out from the moment the season opens for booking, around April

With children

A multi-day hut trek with no road access to most of it, and wind that is genuinely hard to stand up in. Day trips from Puerto Natales work; the W does not.

Where to stay

Puerto Natales is the gateway and much cheaper than sleeping in the park. Only two operators run beds inside it — Las Torres (Chileno, Francés, Cuernos) and Vértice (Paine Grande, Grey) — which is exactly why December fills by the previous winter.

What can go wrong

Winter storms

Wind is the variable that ruins trips here, and it is strongest in the December–February summer — but winter closes the refugios entirely.May · Jun · Jul · Aug

Kept out of the score on purpose. Averaging a rare catastrophe into a monthly number would tell you something false; the warning is the honest form.

Dates that matter

  • No real festival calendar — the season itself is the event
  • Refugio beds for the next summer go on sale in the southern autumn — months earlier than most guides say, and Dec–Feb goes first

Walks

  • Mirador Las Torres — the granite towers, and the hardest single day of the W
  • Valle del Francés — the middle arm, steepest ascent, hanging glacier at the top
  • Grey Glacier lookout — rope bridges and the icefield, the gentlest of the three arms

The park is far bigger than the W — the O circuit takes eight days, and every refugio has day walks from the door. These three are what the trip gets built around.

Crowds, month by month

74714718501015214793100

0 is this destination’s own quietest month and 100 its busiest. The scale never compares one destination to another. Source: Wikipedia — Puerto Natales

See everything else at its best in Feb

Organised trips

Multi-day trips to Torres del Paine

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Elsewhere in South America

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