The major fire which has been raging in Torres del Paine since the 27th December has now been put out and it appears that the park will re-open on the 4th January.
At Pura we have been getting updates from conventional news channels, our suppliers locally and our guides and people on the ground actually in and around Torres del Paine so we hope to be able to give you the most accurate information possible. As you can appreciate, information comes in dribs and drabs via different means so we can’t be 100% certain about anything right now.
WHERE DID IT START?
The fire started in the area around the Refugio Grey, where the fire symbol is shown on the image above. The winds were blowing very strongly (gusting at up to 100km/h) towards the south. From the start point of the fire, the affected area appears very narrow on the image above. This is because frankly there is little to burn – to the one side you have the glacier, to the other, the mountains rise steeply. What this area does do is create a funnel in which the fire presumably could sit and really gain some serious heat and then momentum.
HOW MUCH OF THE PARK IS AFFECTED?
As you can see from the yellow circles on the bottom of the image, the affected area on day 1 was just 1.5 hectares, growing massively to 600 hectares on day 2. This then leapt to 3,500 hectares and finally 11,000 hectares on days 3 & 4.
Days 3 and 4 really represent the point at which the fire broke from the Paine mountains and split into two branches taking it along the land bridges to the south of the mountains. Those are much more open, rolling grassland areas so in dry weather are very easy prey for a fire of this size.
It would appear that the final damage will affect in the region of 12,000 hectares which equates to 5% of the park’s 242,000 hectare total. However, the fire has torn through what is really the most visited part of the park – including the Administrative centre of the National Park.
Of the areas affected, 1/3rd is woodland, 2/3 grassland though by looking at the image map above I would say that the proportion of grassland will be higher when final numbers are in.
Though the park looks set to reopen tomorrow, it will do so only partially. The areas around Refugio Grey and Paine Grande are not open. The boat across Lago Pehoe is not operating as Pudeto, the landing stage, simply isn’t there any more. Really anything to the west of Valle Frances is not likely to reopen at all soon and even then it’s going to look pretty bleak.
Valle Frances, the area around Los Cuernos and the Torres del Paine themselves are all open and unaffected. Hosteria Lago Grey is apparently unaffected though it sits in part of the Park which is not due to open tomorrow. It has been helping greatly in ferrying some of the 400 plus firefighters along Lago Grey in the hotel’s own boats.
The hotels in the park, such as Hosteria Grey, Explora, etc are all unaffected as they lie principally to the south of the lakes and to the south west of the Rio Serrano. If you see the outer limits of the marked red area (that affected by the fire) you will see that the bottom left edge follows a river – that’s the Rio Serrano. If the fire had jumped that river then it could have really got out of control.
There was a fire near the Valle Frances sector of the park but this has been put out by 40 volunteers from the Hosteria las Torres and the refugios of the Fantastico Sur group (Refugio Grey, Refugio Paine Grande and Refugio Cuernos) so thanks to them it seems that Valle Frances is safe.
The weather has now changed to high wind and lots of rain so this really does the job much more effectively than humans can manage in such a remote area. Don’t forget also that by and large, helicopters can’t operate down here as it’s just too windy too much of the time.
It’s worth remembering that there are important areas of the park which are not affected and will be open fully by tomorrow. You won’t even notice the impact of the fire.
WHAT CAUSED THE FIRE?
We are yet to find out definitively the cause of the fire though some tourists have been detained in connection with the outbreak. It would appear that they were either having a bonfire (prohibited in the park) or one of them failed to properly control disposal of their waste, shall we say.
It’s normal when wild camping to dig a small hole for a loo, once done, you can then light your soiled loo paper to turn that to ash before you cover the hole again. This creates an ash layer which aids composting of the waste. It’s really not that difficult to do safely and properly – you just need to dig a sufficiently deep hole, wait to check that any flames are properly out (it doesn’t take long with loo paper) and to properly cover the hole.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
If these stories are true then it’s probably a case of inexperience on the part of the visitors in question, if not negligence. However, it also calls into serious question the management of the park itself.
Comments on Chilean blogs and news sites are invariably rounding on the management of the park and/or the government for its failure to adequately control and manage visitors to Torres del Paine. With visitor numbers doubling or more in the past 10 years to some 100,000 annually, controls have changed little.
You do not need a permit to head out in the park to camp in the wild. In reality, that’s a scandal. It may well be time to have a look at the US National Parks model to really control and manage visitors to front and back lands of Torres del Paine. Take the 10% of the park which most people want to visit anyway (Glacier Grey and the Torres).
Improve the infrastructure there so that there are things like toilets and waste facilities so people aren’t digging holes any more. These don’t have to be permanent structures and can be entirely ecologically sound. Manage that area or those areas of the park to sustainably receive 99% of those 100,000 visitors.
The remaining areas of the park should then be kept open only for people with permits. They should be people who are experienced or are being guided by experienced people. Their numbers would be far, far lower as the costs would be higher.
I think I am right in saying that, by and large, experienced outdoors people are very rarely the cause of wildfires. It usually seems to be either nature (lightning or simple combustion) or careless and inexperienced humans.
THE COSTS OF THE FIRE
Where the fire passed through, the grasslands will presumably be back to some semblance of normality by next year, the woodlands are going to take far longer.
As a tour operator specialising in Chile and in Torres del Paine in particular, it’s very upsetting to see damage on such a large scale being done to this stunning environment.
It’s also very upsetting on a more personal level as we know the potential impact this will have on the livelihoods of the guides, porters, drivers, hoteliers, restauranteurs, etc who rely almost entirely on a small window of work between January and March.
It seems apt to end on an environmental note. Though Paine is often referred to as pristine, it is worth remembering that the area was largely burned in the 19th century with the arrival of cattle ranchers. They took out matches to burn down the native forests which covered the landscapes.
It’s really the native woodlands which have been burned this past week which are the greatest loss since we lose areas which have never before changed at the hands of human interference.
Cruises are not normally our ‘thing’ here at Pura.
The sort of holiday which separates visitors from the countries they visit just doesn’t chime with our basic ethos. Really what we don’t go near are big ship cruises, there are places where boat travel is the best way to go. The Galapagos Islands and Antarctica being the most obvious. We have recently added northern Patagonia to our select list in the shape of the Skorpios II.
Sparsely populated, remote, rainy but incredibly beautiful, Chile’s northern Patagonia is a special place. Running from the port city of Puerto Montt south, it takes in the rolling, rainy fishing islands of Chiloé; the picture-perfect volcanic cones of Hornopirén and Puntiagudo; the pristine temperate rainforests of Pumalin Park; the stunning fjords of Puyuhuapi and the fantastic glaciers of San Rafael.
There is a road, of sorts through this region – the Carretera Austral – but even that doesn’t allow you to get near some of the real gems in the way that Skorpios does.
The story of Skorpios is interesting. Owned and operated by a Chilean family with ship building interests in Puerto Montt, Skorpios is the only tourist vessel in Patagonia specifically designed for these waters. In reality what that means is that the hull is ice strengthened which means that you can get really close to glaciers where other boats have to keep their distance.
In Chile’s it is often the case that people are so wowed by the landscapes that they forget that there are people living there. One of the great things about Skorpios is that it also acts as a supply vessel for some of the communities along its route. The weekly arrival of the boat is therefore genuinely a cause of some considerable anticipation. Not least amongst the youngsters who act as informal tour guides for visitors.
The customers of Skorpios are very mixed, primarily South American but most of the time you will have a veritable United Nations on board. This means that in and of itself, the cruise is a cultural experience – informal, lively, fun and great food.
Being a weekly journey, Skorpios is able to restock regularly as she sails. There is no pre-portioned frozen food on this ship. The food you are served is made on board, from scratch.
Oh, and did I mention that it takes you through some of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet?
To find out more about a journey on board Skorpios or our Chile holidays more generally please call us on 01273 676 712.
Looking out over the fjords of northern Patagonia
Chile is such a long country that it’s almost inevitable that there are bits of it which get a bit overlooked. Take northern Patagonia, the 500km or so running south from Puerto Montt as far as Coyhaique.
There is only one road through this region, the Carretera Austral. In reality it’s a bumpy dirt road wedged in between the high peaks of the Andes and the icy waters of the fjords.
At this point Chile is incredibly skinny, some 10s of kilometres wide. It is not an easy area to live in, not least because there is a certain lack of flat land to farm. However, it is strategically very important as the Argentinians would give their eye-teeth to have access to the Pacific.
The frontier between Argentina and Chile is simply defined by the direction the water flows. If the water is flowing towards the Atlantic, it’s Argentina. If it flows towards the Pacific then that’s Chile. Of course this means that the border effectively runs along the very peaks of the Andes.
In northern Patagonia the landmass of Chile is tantalisingly slight which dangles the prospect of Argentina being able to create a land bridge between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
Currently shipping can either go round Cape Horn and its famously fierce waters, or it can go through the Panama Canal. The commercial value of creating an alternative to the Panama Canal are almost incalculable.
As a result there has traditionally been a certain, shall we say, tension between the southerly neighbours Chile & Argentina. These tensions have been greatest where Chile was at its narrowest – Patagonia.
Where there is a large open area in the border, the Chileans placed a significant town and military base called Coyhaique. To the north was almost nothing until you got to Puerto Montt.
As recently as the 1980s, there was really not much to stop the Argentines simply pushing through one of the passes along the stretch between Coyhaique and Puerto Montt to establish a foothold on the Pacific coast.
That is until the inauguration of the Carretera Austral in 1992. This is a terribly grand sounding opening for what in the UK would pass in large part as a farm track though admittedly it’s one hell of an engineering project to even fit a road onto the available land.
The Chilean government then incentivised people with the offer of free land. If you could live in the region and make the land productive within a period of, I believe 5 years, you could keep it.
Of course small communities started to appear along the length of the road to create a far greater diplomatic barrier to Argentine incursions.
Things nowadays are much calmer between the neighbours and the area is one of the most precious places you could hope to visit. As long as you are prepared for some serious rainfall, the landscapes and the people are unforgettable.
One of the best ways to experience this part of Chile is on board Skorpios.
To find out more about a Skorpios cruise, or any of our holidays to Chile, please call Pura Aventura on 01273 676 712.