Cambios

South of latitude 39° S you do not find any more a continuous high mountain chain. Numerous depressions break deep breaches into the mountains (Spanish: cordillera). The depressions or valleys were created by immense glaciers during past ice ages and remain partly filled by lakes. Many of these breaches in the main mountain range are lower than 1000 m, some are just 200 m above sea level. These deep gaps in the cordillera shift the continental divide far to the east and cause a sometimes significant offset between the main maintain range and the continent divide (what caused more than a century of border disputes between Chile and Argentine that are not fully resolved now). The mountains of the Patagonian Andes are like islands in between these valleys or depressions with the higher summits are reaching mostly between an altitude of 2000 m and to 3000 m. Only few peeks exceeding 3000 m. Below the tree line frequent rain maintains a very dense, nearly impenetrable, forest that is also called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdivian_temperate_rain_forest Valdivian temperate rain forest]. Due to this geography the route (GPT13 to GPT40) goes up and down between the depressions and the island-like mountains. Here having a packraft becomes beneficial (GPT17P to GPT39).