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==Season 2024/25==
* <span style="background-color:aqua;">'''2025-01-10 to 2025-01-12/ 2days / Packrafting/ SOBO/ RR&RP (ridge) / Natalie & Tomáš'''</span>
Note: I wrote this when out of service without reading the last three new entries, so many things could be repeated, apologies.
Day 01: El Poncho to Cenizo basin; ~14km
After a short paddle from our, "alternative hot spring camp" (see gpt20), we arrived at El Poncho port. Unfortunately like others have said, there is no infrastructure there, the GPT has it misplaced. There is just one vacation home and SWARMS of tabaños. This was disappointing because I (Natalie) wasn't careful during the last resupply stop and did not buy enough food. Tomáš set up the tent to organize our things and I wasted an hour swinging a paddle into thin air trying to kill as many tabaños as I could. I will be having a good laugh for a while when I think back to what the Chileans must have thought when they saw me walking along the road, wearing a neon colored drysuit, and swinging a paddle up a down like a lunatic. I was very close to the skipping point as my body was exhausted from stomach issues that started at the beginning of gpt19, but eventually I came to terms. Plus, Tomáš had plenty of extra food as a back up so we set off around 12:30.
The trail is an old CONAF trail and there is an covered seating area/shelter near the start (no water). The trail was in surprisingly good shape and well traveled until the turn off for the gpt trail around -40.89986, -72.27375. We recommend taking the left fork (on OSM), it looked more traveled than the right and it went well (Tomáš of course cleared some bamboo to make it more obvious, hope it helps). There is also a stick blocking the GPT route at the top when they connect again. The OSM route first takes you to two settler houses, except if you hit the second s
house, you have gone too far, the trail veers upwards in the grass just before the second. After that it is pretty easy to stay on route, there are just a couple of alternative paths that intersect at times. The last one km of the OSM route is a bit overgrown, but it is just annoying, not slowing you down. There is no water until past the "Camping Alerces". If you plan to camp there, you can walk westward ~300m to a good flowing creek that should hopefully provide water year round..
After the camping, it's a walk up a semi dry creek bed until a waterfall blocks further advancement. The trail leaves the creek bed on your left about 100 m before this waterfall, Tomáš magnified the cairns there so hopefully you can see it. Then it's a simple but steep at times walk to the ridge, absolutely amazing views of Puntiagudo (Osorno's evil stepsister) and the the surrounding area. I give the ridge walk a 10/10 for views. We slept (the night was thankfully windless) in the basin underneath Volcan Cenizo. If there is snow and sun you may find water in the afternoon/evening, but no water in the morning/early afternoon so the last water would have been the waterfall.
Day 02: Volcan basin to Lago Todos Los Santos; 20 km
The next day was very straightforward. We hiked up Cenizo , aiming more to towards the north ridge for easier climbing. The peak to it's east looks like a possible fun scramble (from the west!) if you find a good way (without bag of course). There was no snow melt on the way down and like Roman has mentioned the turn off into the forest can be easily missed; -40.95687, -72.18367. The path down was in surprisingly good shape, lots of orange cut marks as well. The tabaños were in FULL force in the valley. They were the worst around the hotspring 19.2. The hotsprings are in a locked shed and nobody is living in that spot, they live a little further down valley on the trail (Sergio?). The worst of the tabaños were there but they continued to be terrible anytime we were not in the shade of the forest. We had lunch at the main hub of the valley; Refugio Dos Condors (aka Laura and her son Augustin, Rudy being the head of the family?). They are formally set up to take guests, so it is unlikely they will ever "not" be there. They have a couple menu's and prices for alternative requests. We had lunch for 16mil each. It was well worth it for my sake because I had been under fueled for a while. I also bought eggs (300pp), bread (400pp) and half a kilo of honey (3mil). Tomáš was overjoyed to be able to eat as mucj cherries from their trees as he could and also some raspberries. They are notnripe yet, should stay available maybe till end of month? We then made good time and got to the beach "ferry" early enough to rest before an early morning paddle the next day. P.s. we almost accidentally went to the beach of the settler to the east of the ferry, seemed like a prettier spot. Also, if you camp at the ferry, there is a large light near the boats/trail entrance, so I suggest camping on the far right (loling onto the beach from the lake). There was a trickle of water that seemed questionable, so our last source of water was the bridge 27.1.
Day three: Lago Todos Los Santos (TLS) to Petrohue - 22 km
We chose to go to Petrohue as we have walked to Ralun last year via Argentina. Tomáš had the idea of crossing the lake and then following the south shore of TLS as it was less distance. I hesitated as I didn't trust the lake, so the safest option sounded like the north shore, but we had a good weather window so we went with Tomáš's suggestion, making one quick stop on the island (a nice stop if it wasn't for the tabaños. Sadly we had almost no tabanos before the stop but after that they followed us to the end - must have killed over a hundred). In the morning we set off at ~6:15am and glad we didn't set of any later. One reason being the attack of the horseflies while paddling but mainly because when we got 1km close to the end we got hit by some strong headwind and waves. Advancement was slow but we made it. A tourist boat came to us looking panicked but we assured them we would make it. Goes to show that it is true, conditions can change VERY fast and I am personally glad we were not any further from shore. Petrohue is an awful touristy place. Bus to Puerto Varras leaves every half an hour and there were swarms of cars with tourists. There are several telecommunications towers, but no working Entel internet (Edge!).
25-01-08 - 25-01-11/ 3,5 days / NOBO-EABO / RR-OH2 (Tronador) Volker
