I divide the huts I visited into three categories: 1. The organized, reservable huts that I expected to encounter when I proposed Chile as a country to visit for my project. Most, but not all of these, were veritable systems, with connecting trails that could take 8 days to traverse, like in Torres del Paine and Nahuel Haupi. 2. The second category is shelters and family farms that offer little or no services. These shelters, like the ones in Puyehue and La Quebrada, are usually not reservable. The huts in both categories 1 and 2 are owned and run by private organizations or individuals. 3. The third, surprising category is the CONAF (Chilean park service)-run huts that were all rendered inaccessible, such as in Lauca, Chiloé, and Huerquehue.
Category 1.
The huts of Torres del Paine, large cabins offering welcome relief from the sideways rain and strong winds, are run by a private concessionaire although CONAF does have a cabin or two along the trek for rangers. It is possible--and indeed necessary-- to make reservations in advance through websites or tourist agencies. The refugios are on par with Swiss huts in terms of comfort level, with bunks and sleeping pads, hearty meals, flush toilets, and high prices. The two refugios at the trailheads, one on the shores of a milky-green glacier lake, are kept well-stocked by bus and boat. Horses supply the other huts daily. Because the park is filled to over-capacity for the entire summer season, the huts are almost always full. While the lucky ones (or the planners) sleep inside, the majority of park visitors camp in approved pay-campgrounds near the huts. The places I stayed there had from 40 to well over 100 tents in the forest clearing. The camping crowd was younger, made up of those who didn't want to pay so much to visit the park and those who didn't make reservations. While theoretically these scrubbier campers were allowed in the refugios, in practice the groups remained separate. Campers and day hikers could technically purchase food at the refugios, but at least when I was there, the refugios ran out of food at meal-time and had nothing to sell to people dropping by. Campers had their own bathrooms, their own kiosk to purchase food, and were mostly glad to stay outside and brave the elements. It was a case of elitism on both sides--the warm, well-fed hut sleepers reveled in their comfort while the campers boasted of their purer, more complete understanding of the park after sleeping only inches from the freezing rain.
The Nahuel Haupi huts were more similar to the Swiss huts I've visited because they were run by a local mountain climbing organization. There were even traces of a European connection dating back a century, with huts and natural features bearing Slovakian or German names. The rock. concrete, and wooden refugios of Nahuel Haupi were all supplied by horses. The park was busy, especially on summer weekends, but nowhere near as busy as Torres del Paine, so hikers could find a space in a hut without planning ahead or come up for a meal and expect to find food available. The park was more accessible from nearby cities than Paine, and much less expensive, with neither entrance fees nor camping fees. The difference in clientele, including some rock climbers camping near refugios for weeks at a time, meant the energy surrounding the huts was less competitive and more inclusive. Like Switzerland, there were day trippers just visiting for lunch, but in the evening when just the overnighters were left, the guest kitchens buzzed with the conversation of rock climbers and scouts and hikers cooking all together. The inclusive, informal attitude extended so far that I actually heard a refugiero (hut guardian) voice a kind of mountain ethos that would be impossible in the overcrowded Torres del Paine: A girl my age asked in there was space for the night --"There is always space," the refugiero said, "If there isn't space we make space." That reminded me of my first night in Switzerland, when I showed up at Berghaus Aescher with no reservation on a Friday night that happened to be the national holiday as well. There wasn't space, but they made space for me.
I spent a week tramping around in each of those parks. Some of the huts were more exclusive or expensive than others, but all offered a warm sleeping space and hearty mountain fare (even a bife de chorizo).
Category 2-Stand-alone huts with minimal services
When I planned to stay at a farm in La Quebrada de San Lorenzo, I excepted something similar to a Swiss experience, where I got to try the food they produced right there. But the campesinos were offered a bed (with puma skins for warmth) and nothing more--no smelly cheeses or cured meat. The family hospedaje in the village of Parinacota in Lauca NP likewise lacked an enthusiastic presentation of local products. The family served meals of quinoa soup and alpaca meat if you asked for it, but they seemed surprised to get such a request and did not readily advertise it on arrival. The refugio el Caulle in Puyehue was another shelter with little to offer--some rough slabs of wood nailed together made crude bunks and there was a slow combustion stove for warmth. There wasn't any sign-in book or extra fee for that hut; it was just what the El Caulle company maintained in addition to the adjacent campsite. The people at the category 2 huts--the farmers and locals--were the least friendly. I got an "hola" but nothign more--it seemed like hikers were intruding on their busy lives and they put up with the inconvenience in order to earn money. The farm in La Quebrada and the hospedaje in Parinacota were not built for hikers--they existed for the families long before hikers came along, unlike the refugio systems of category 1.
Category 3
The third category of huts includes all those that CONAF, the Chilean Park Service, rendered inaccessible. I thought a combination of bad luck and bad timing prevented me from staying in a hut in Lauca, the first CONAF-run place I visited in Chile. The CONAF office in Arica, the nearest large city, assured me I could reserve space for the Lago Chungará refugio from a little town called Putre, at the base of the park. I spent 24hours acclimatizing in Putre and never once found the park service office open, despite the posted hours and despite returning at various times over two days. I found my way to Lauca without any park service information, so when a truck dropped me in Parinacota, I headed to the CONAF office at the end of town (which was only about 200 meters from the front). The office was locked and dark despite posted hours of opening. I could see bunks and a kitchen inside a building attached to the office but no sign of life. When a CONAF truck finally pulled into town the next day, I fired question after question at Ernesto, the park ranger. It turns out that the Parinacota refugio did use to be open to the public but now it is only for CONAF personnel and visiting researchers. I asked when the last researchers were there... months ago. And park service personnel? Well, Lauca only has 5 rangers total, only 2 on duty at a time, and with offices in 3 locations all with long (promised) opening hours, they can't be everywhere at once. And while on duty, they don't actually sleep in either of the park refugios--they descend down to Putre to sleep. So is there any refugio then? The Lago Chungará refugio was open theoretically, but you had to reserve it in advance otherwise there would be no ranger there to open it up. And how can I reserve it if I can never find the rangers? It was a bad cycle. Ernesto was friendly as I peppered him with questions, pointing mostly to inadequate funding as the source of this disorganization. Lauca receives few overnight visitors so there probably aren't too many people demanding to know how lodging there works. And so I left Lauca having seen the refugios but never having seen any sign of life, from a ranger or otherwise, inside of them.
I explained my experience (or lack thereof) with CONAF refugios in Lauca not to complain but rather to show what Category 3 huts are like. I assumed that my Lauca experience was an anomaly, until I visited other national parks with huts ran by CONAF and never managed to stay in them either. I arrived on the island of Chiloé because I read about the refugios like Colé Colé in the national park right on the Pacific Ocean. But when I asked at the Castro CONAF office, they said the refugios are closed. Of course I couldn't just accept that as an answer. I insisted, pointing out that the maps and trail descriptions written by CONAF all mentioned the availability of refugios. But they insisted, saying that they existed but were nonetheless closed. At the park I got the same story; we were welcome to camp, but there was no access to the refugio, and no reason as to why that was. At Huerquehue, I was less than surprised when the CONAF rangers told me there was no hut. Although the guidebooks and signs still pointed to Refugio Renahue, but the rangers said that the weight of snow had caved it in and now it was gone. And that was it. So we camped at Renahue where we couldn't even see a trace of the refugio that once was there.
Only when I saw a sign in Nahuel Haupi posted on the door of Refugio La Pedrita warning of the HANTA-virus in the rats did I start to wonder again about the reasons behind CONAF's reluctance to discuss huts. It was a fellow hiker who posted that note on La Pedrita, based on information he got from refugieros at Frey. CONAF, a government organization, didn't dare mention the diseased rats (or other distasteful problems) in their refugios, choosing instead to shut down their operations without explanation.
My time in these parks was not wasted even if the refugios I planned to visit were inaccessible.I kept hiking as usual and I found other places to sleep of course. Most importantly, I learned as much about Chile and CONAF's conception of wilderness from not being able to access the huts as I had expected.
What's the big idea?
If you remember back to my 1st quarterly report, I concluded that wilderness in Switzerland and India existed where ever there was danger. So the snow and ice-covered mountain peaks frequented by climbers was much more of a wilderness to the Swiss than the easily accessible and well-marked mountain farm land with trails running through it. In India, it was not the danger to human life but rather the threat to national security that turned mountain areas into wilderness. The "no rules-no rescue" warning posted at the entrance signs in national parks in Chile matches up with the impression of wilderness-as-danger that I got in Switzerland and India. These CONAF signs warned that there would be no search-and-rescue parties, no helicopters flying in for a deus-ex-machina finish, and admonishing visitors to be responsible for their own safety. But in Chile, the most relevant questions to the wilderness question were not related to danger, but rather to boundaries and ownership.
When hiking in Lauca, I sign a sign that said "Private Property No Trespassing Fine." It surprised me because I thought I was in a national park--how could the land be privately owned? Then Ernesto, the park ranger at Lauca, told me that 95% of the land encompassed by Lauca National Park is privately owned. This was the effect of years of making decisions about the park from the capital without effectively transmitting the information to the people who lived there. Now in Lauca there is a precarious balance between the locals who maintain houses there and who want to have farms or run hospedajes, and the CONAF and governmental officials who want to preserve the land as it is.
But Lauca is not the only place where I was confused by a national park label. In Puyehue, I paid an entrance fee to a private company, El Caulle, rather than to CONAF. The owners assured me that I was entering "one big farm" where no one would check up on me. But Puyehue was a national park at the same time. El Caulle owned the land at the entrance, and so it was that company, not CONAF, that created and maintained the trails and basic refugio. I had to get off the trail for their cows being driven up the mountain. Down there it was a ranch, not a park, but at some undefined point, there was a switch, and I was in a national park, climbing up a volcano.
In Huerquehue national park, there were no services besides pit toilets ever since the Renahue refugio fell. But the lack of services didn't really matter, because individual families lived at strategic points just beyond park boundaries and offered what the park itself could not: showers, hot bread, a roof for rainy nights. I knew where the park ended and private land began because the barb-wire fence indicated that there were animals to be kept out or in, but the exact boundaries did not really matter. What mattered was that any sense of isolation in the park was broken by the sign at a trail intersection that said "homemade bread, 15minutes" with an arrow pointing downhill.
In the places where CONAF was definitely in charge, I liked thinking about how much control they had over how visitors experienced the park, even if that meant rendering refugios inaccessible. It seemed that by taking away shelters and services, or by not rebuilding what had once existed, CONAF was making national parks even more wild. When there are not huts, no trails, and no permits, basically anything goes. I met hikers who left a note with rangers saying they would be camping near a certain lake for 3 days, and I met other hikers who left no note, who wanted to travel under the radar. In the case of those kind of visitors, the "no rules- no rescue" saying is even more true.
Another important consideration for wilderness (and on my list if I ever created a checklist) is: can I drink the water? I felt incredibly free dipping my Nalgene into rivers in Patagonia and being able to drink the icy water without purifying it. The more the boundary between national park and farm blurred, the less safe it was to drink directly from streams. The presence of animals, ski lifts, and even refugios above a stream meant that I had to treat the water. And untreated water felt very much like wilderness. The cleanliness of water isn't a requirement for my understanding of wilderness in the US, where I would always treat the water. But it does make sense to add it to that informal checklist on wilderness.
My experience in Chile was a great success. The frustration I felt in India because of limitations on spontaneous hiking, limitations like permits or guide requirements, dissipated in Chile. I felt free and safe in my movements, and my ability to speak Spanish gave me a chance to have better connections with the locals in the huts and parks. One of my best conversations was with a park ranger, Guillermo, in El Morado. He told me about his vision for building a refugio in the small park in the mountains outside of Santiago and about the surveys that Chileans filled out that said that most wanted their national park free of park benches and BBQs. My conversations in Switzerland and India never got as detailed as that--I could ask pushing questions without communication barriers. But that doesn't mean that I have more answers as a result. This report is a description of the huts I visited along with some musings about what makes the question of wilderness in Chile different than in other places. As I write this from Tanzania, I know there is a lot left to discover. I anticipate some of the same frustrations as India, because there are requirements about guides, porters, and contracting agencies here. But there will be some new twists--- like the fact that my guide on Mt. Meru will have to carry a gun to protect us hikers from any aggressive elephant attacks. As I write this from Dar es Salaam, just having landed on a new continent, my muscles are twitching. They are ready for me to once again head to the hills.
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