It is around 80km and takes 4-5 days. Can do it from East to West or West to East. We did ours from West to East. Doing it this way means that you get to finish at the Towers which are the big main attraction in the Torres del Paine park. Doing from east to west usually means having a long and very steep Day 1 and can be a busier route with day trips too. Would definitely recommend doing it from West to East if you can !
Bits n bobs to consider:
book your park tickets ~1 week in advance
Some of the accommodations don’t include bed linen/sleeping bags. You have to pay more if you want this... which is still crazy to me !! We rented sleeping bags for the trek and just carried them which worked out cheaper for us.
We also rented a gas stove and carried our food for the trek which saved us a lot of money too.
Renting hiking poles is definitely worth it. We were so reluctant to use them initially but they were actually so handy especially when trekking with backpacks for several hours on consecutive days with varied terrain.
If you’re going in a busy season definitely try to reserve any rental equipment beforehand if you can. We didn’t as it was low season but even when we went to rent things so much was still already booked out.
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Day 1: Paine Grande < -> Lago Grey (there are 2 main options for this day)
Option 1:
Get the ferry across to Paine Grande from the starting point. Then hike from Paine Grande to Lago Grey and camp at Grey for night 1. This means ~11km hiking day one (might be a little bit more. I can’t fully remember). This is a good option for reducing the amount of hiking for Day 2, which is a pro and I’d say it’d also probably a cool spot to stay as it means you could go and see the glacier several times during the day if you wanted as it’s close to it.
But the negative is that the ferry that you need to get from the starting point to Paine Grande can be very busy. It’s a bit of a stressful morning if you want to get hiking early and not rush yourself to get to Grey. We were there at off season and we still couldn’t get on the first boat even though we left so so early in the morning. Everyone tends to get the same early buses out and it puts big pressure on trying to make the boat. There’s really long waits between the boats do if you do have to wait around it means you can’t start hiking until later - just to bear in mind !
Option 2:
This is the option that we went for. We actually stayed in Paine Grande for 2 nights. So we essentially stayed in the park the night before we started our hike. We did this just because we’d read lots about the stress with the boat into the park and reckoned staying the night before would alleviate hassle with that as if we could only get a later boat it didn’t effect us as much which was a pro. The other advantage was that it meant we could start hiking early the first day and get out ahead of any crowds coming off the boat.
Doing it this way meant that we did have a long day of hiking our first day though. We hiked up Lago Grey and back to Paine Grande all in Day 1 (~22km). The only thing that made this much easier was that we hiked with just a day bag for this day and left our big backpacks in Paine Grande. Still a lot of hiking in one day but it meant that we didn’t carry our heavy backpacks all the way to Lago Grey in Day 1 and hike all the same way back to Paine Grande with them on Day 2. Pros and cons to both I guess !
We stayed in a dorm in Paine Grande (without bed linen and used our sleeping bags) and then stayed in pre-made tents in Frances and Chileno. Paine Grande didn’t have a pre- made tent option so we opted for the dorms. We didn’t want to rent tents if we could avoid it as just felt it’s extra work and an extra thing to carry. We found the pre-made tents were a good happy medium !
The pre-made tents came with a little foam mattress thingy for lying on so you shouldn’t need to rent these.
You stay in Puerto Natales before/after the trek. We stayed in a nice hostel called Hostel Last Hope (or maybe it was Last Hope Hostel ?). Anyway it was run by a really lovely guy called Diego. Super friendly and he was really helpful for preparing for the trek too.
Paine Grande: https://vertice.travel/en/
Day 2: Paine Grande -> Frances (this is what we did).
Hiked Paine Grande -> Italiano (no campsite here anymore) -> Frances Glacier/Valley -> Britanico -> Camping Frances. You don’t have to hike all the way to Britanico if you want to shorten Day 2. A lot of people don’t go the whole way up to Britanico.
We stayed in the pre-made tents in Frances. Cuernos campsite is a few kms further down from Frances which is another option. I think Cuernos looks like a cooler campsite and is where Roz stayed but it was closed for the season by the time we go there.
Day 3: Frances or Cuernos-> Chileno
We stayed in the pre-made raised tents again here. Quite basic facilities here but can see the Towers in the distance if the weather is good which is pretty cool.
Day 4: Chileno -> Torres del Paine -> Chileno -> End of Trail and onwards to bus back to Puerto Natales.
We got up early to hike up for sunrise at the Towers. This is supposed to be amazing if you get good weather. A long trek again to the finish but it’s mainly downhill which is a massive help.
Book a return bus ticket when you’re buying your outward ticket to the park as the buses book up.