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→Season 2024/25
==Season 2024/25==
* '''2025-Jan-13 to 2025-Jan-18 / 5,5 days / Hiking / SOBO / RR / Chris & Jule'''
TLDR: no problems with snow, dusty & exhausting gravel/ashes, absolutely stunning views all along, Don Victor was busy.
We had an issue with our GPSMAP67 (updated the firmware just prior departure), resulted in weird frozen mode with full backlight brightness in three occasions which drained half the battery. Due to this (despite backups) I was a bit paranoid, so the GPS remained mostly off and we followed footsteps & paths. This worked very well, only one time followed a valley too long. The paths are very obvious, it was easy to navigate.
Water: in all marked locations and many more. Usually every 1-2hrs we passed some stream. We had expected much worse and were a bit overprepared in the beginning. The ashes take water easily, but also give it as easy.
Rivercrossings: one, hip-high, quite some current but managable. we crossed where the OSM path crosses the river. Besides, dry feet all along.
Snow: some snowfields, one at the descend towards laguna las animas had to be crossed, all others were avoided.
Due the GPS turned off we were very surprised as we suddenly stood infront of Don Victors refugio. We waved and yelled hola, there were about 5-ish tents, so we thought he may have opened a camping space recently. As we wanted to go a bit further, we continued. He either didnt see us, or wasnt too happy - none from the refugio waved back. One person standing at the tents waved back though.
Next morning we met Volker who had gone to Don Victor and had a good chat and a drink with him. He had visitors, therefore was too busy to care for us. Later that day a group from the refugio passed on horses, everyone just friendly hola-ed back to us.
We met some chilean hiker that had tried to obtain all permits for a certain hike, CONAF told them, that since a few days Don Victor does not allow anyone anymore.
Going back to Talca: we heard busses leave at 7am, 1pm, 3pm, 7pm (at least on saturdays).
We ended up hitchhiking as we didnt want to want for 2hrs. It took us maybe 10min (maybe fourth car) to squeeze into a ride with wonderful chileans returning from bathing in some hotsprings.
* '''2025-Jan-03 to 2025-Jan-10 / 7,5 days / Hiking / SOBO / RR / Farah & Jan'''
