Dientes de Navarino Circuit

Dientes de Navarino circuit is the southernmost hike in the world, and one of the boggiest for sure. It is picturesque, hard, long, remote route, and has very few people on the trail. The route goes around the toothlike peaks sticking out of the middle of Navarino island in the very south of Chile. There are stunning views over countless lakes and rugged cliffs on the way — a mountain landscape, but without altitude sickness. In other words, a perfect hike.

At a glance

Level: hard
Time: 4-5 days
Weather: rainy, strong winds prevail
Sleeping: your camping equipment
Eating: carry food for all days
Water: the running water is more or less safe
Map: offline map of South Chile in maps.me has the path marked
Start/finish: Puerto Williams
Guidebooks:
Official brochure with all new landmarks
Older official brochure with more details
Lonely Planet trekking guide 2009

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In details

Level

What makes this route hard is not only the physical challenge, though there are some exposed parts, scrambling ascents through small rivers, steep scree, muddy swamps, and surprisingly hard, almost vertical, descent through slippery wet woods.

What makes this route really hard is unfriendly weather, route finding, and total absence of civilisation in a close proximity. Once you walk out of Puerto Williams, where the hike starts, you are on your own. Some days we didn’t see more than three persons on the route. There is no official rescue service, but guides might help hikers if they see them in distress. Of course, it will be safer to hire a guide yourself, but you may go on your own if you have enough experience and good equipment.

The route is marked with cairns, red or white paint, or even simple plastic strings tied to a tree, but sometimes the marks are confusing or disappear completely, especially during the last day. Don’t go very fast and always look for the next mark, and you won’t have to return too far if you get lost. Painted arrows are often confusing, pointing not to the direction, but to the trail itself, so check twice.

My camera is looking down here — this slope is almost vertical.

Dientes de Navarino circuit is famous for its boggy terrain, which is the result of beaver invasion. In 1946 Argentina brought ten beavers to Tierra del Fuego in hopes to start fur industry. Despite the fears that they will die, animals survived and reproduced, and in the 60s some of them crossed the Strait of Magellan currents and reached Isla Navarino. Without predators to keep it in check, beaver population increased wildly, and they started to do their thing: chewing trees and making dams that shortly flooded the island. The result is devastating. South American trees did not evolve to being chopped and living in wet ground, so the landscape changed dramatically: instead of lush forest, Isla Navarino now is covered in white twisted tree trunks. It is a sad sight for a hiker, like walking through wriggled carcasses on a battleground. Not to mention the constant mud, that sometimes gives way to a river, and higher up — to shaky rocks. By the way, the fur trade never took off. Now Argentina and Chile are looking for the way to eradicate beavers, which may cost up to £26 million.

Time

The distance is only 55 km, but it is not your relaxing Alpine route. No matter how experienced you are, you will definitely spend some time and effort just in route searching. Most people we talked to finished the circuit in 4 days, combining the last two days into one and hitchhiking 7 km of the empty coastal road to Puerto Williams. We spent 5 days hiking. In the extremely good weather for a very fit hiker it is possible to finish the route in 3 days, but such experience will not be enjoyable.

Before the hike you have to register at the police station in Puerto Williams, which is open 24/7, and don’t forget to visit them after the hike to let them know you are back.

There are signs that mark the trail, but they don’t appear often.

Weather

‘Cambiante mucho’, said a guy at the police station. And it was true indeed. Wind, rain and sun changed each other every few minutes, and sometimes even combined together to create a rainbow or to puzzle a hiker who can’t decide what to wear. I remember sunbathing near a laguna one afternoon, and hiding in our tent from a terrible storm just an hour later. After being soaked in a day-long rain the next day, we woke up to a snowstorm that changed for sunlight every now and then. There were patches of snow to cross during second day, and I imagine there is more snow during cold summers. Despite all the sudden changes, the overall weather forecast was quite relevant. We checked windy.com the week before the hike, and, seeing a sunny window between rainy weeks, decided to buy tickets to Puerto Williams and were not disappointed.

Sleeping

The only place to hide from the elements on the route will be your tent. There are designated camping spots at the end of each day, some of them are more or less sheltered. It is possible to rent the equipment in the town, but I don’t know much about that as we used our own. Because of the horrible weather and little choice of sheltered camping spots you have to be absolutely sure it is reliable. The route is a challenge for all the equipment. Our new tent passed with high mark, standing up to the strong wind up to 120 km/h, but not without the help of heavy stones on each of the pegs.

Our down sleeping bags, however, absorbed the humidity from the air during the last night, and we were sleeping wrapped with patches of wet down that didn’t warm us much. This is the first time I saw it happen: there was no leak, no wet clothes touching the sleeping bags, but the air was so humid, that they visibly deflated. So I guess synthetic sleeping bags could save you a hassle in a swampland like this. We also lost a cooking pot to the gust of strong wind, so I’m in a good position here to remind you to pin down every little thing with a stone :) And one more thing: one night I woke up to some rustle and turned on my torch just to stare into gleaming eyes of a weasel stealing our trash bag. So if you have a possibility, use a tree to hang up the food and trash bags.

There are a few camping grounds marked on the route, all the other places are not a camping option because of a steep slope and lack, or, in most cases, excess of water. Some spots are quite exposed to wind. It is possible to find a more or less sheltered place, but one has to be persistent in search. Sometimes we walked for an hour before finding a suitable place to camp.

This is not some kind of pagan altar, this is a camping spot — with a bench! As sheltered as one can get.

Another cosy spot that we found after a long search is helpfully surrounded by several trees.

Ok, this is a bit exposed, but hey, it makes a cool picture :)

Eating

The best thing you can do is to bring your own freeze-dried food to Puerto Williams. Since we had run out of it on our previous hikes in Argentina and Chile, we had no choice but to go to one of the few shops in the town and buy a supply of old-school macaroni and cheese there (I had to forgo my vegan diet for these hikes). Cheese did a good job of surviving for three days, and when we were done with it, we switched to instant potato or quinoa with knorr sauces. We found the diet quite agreeable, if not very much balanced. Most of all we were cheered up by chocolate, which, as we have discovered during our second day of hike, contained rum-soaked raisins in generous quantity.

Gas cartridges are available in the same small shops, together with crunchy pieces of flat bread that can hold up for a few days in a cheese sandwich.

If you see purple mushrooms, don’t eat them.

Do not make fire anywhere on the circuit. It is dangerous and irresponsible. Use your cooking stove only.

Hey, Siri! How to get a cooking pot from the bottom of a mountain lake?

Water

Because of the beavers and their damned dams, the water is everywhere on the route, but it is not safe to drink it in most cases, including lake water. We were told that the running water from rivers is safe, but even then we checked the source of the river on a map, picking the ones that don’t begin in the lakes. The water used for cooking can come from any reasonable source, we just boiled it for 2-3 minutes before making our cups of tea. In this fashion we never carried more than a litre of water at any time and didn’t have to treat water.

Getting there and away

Puerto Williams, where the circuit starts, is like a closed club for tough hikers. Few other tourists visit the town, it doesn’t yet have an infrastructure suited for its southernmost fame. So all the people we met in our hostel were divided into two groups: apprehensive hikers, looking for information about the route, or relaxed hikers who finished the route, looking for booze and pizza. We were staying at Refugio el Padrino on the west end of the town. Its family atmosphere means no booking is available, no questions are asked, and no rules are explained. But it is a perfect place to share a few drinks together with other hikers in a small kitchen warmed by wood burning in the stove. It is cheap and cosy, and feels like home.

There is a ferry from Punta Arenas that comes and leaves once or twice a week, and it is recommended to use it at least one way, though it takes 32 hours to get to Puerto Williams. The ferry navigates between islands and passengers can see great landscapes, approach close to huge glaciers, and observe wildlife on the way.

However, we were tight on schedule, so we had to take a flight from Punta Arenas, and book an expensive ride in private boat that takes only 30 minutes to get to Ushuaia from Puerto Navarino, a tiny port in two hours of nauseating ride from Puerto Williams.