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Key take-aways:
-Lago Nef may be nearly completely covered with a small layer of ice (this time of year, ice as far as we could see from a vantage point before the lake). So unless you have warm sunny weather to melt it and or waves to break it up, be prepared for a longggg ice breaking journey. For us, on a sunny calm day, the ice was mostly melted .
-Rio Nef had flooded many sections of the trail for us. The worst being a 2km stretch in which we were able to easily bush bash up and down the bluffs. The second worse was what it did to ford 38.5. The river had taken over this ford and from the beginning it was over hip deep, we chopped a side path on the left. The last annoyances were just wet feet walking along this side of the route.
- Roman is a beast and Lauren + Sebastian are heros attitude wise to do this route through the rain. Download Romans tracks as they are still not in the GPT files. There wiki's are also better for base planning.
-We took it easy on this trip, rarely getting going before 930/10 and we were moving very slow due to terrain and heavy packs (in the end I had food for at least 10 days-oops). Average speed was no more than 2km/hr, maybe even less.
-We did not meet Aquilino Olivari but we stayed at his open puesto @ 39.1. Perhaps if we had contacted him for a request to stay at his puesto or even hire him for horses he would have given us up to date trail conditions.
-Machete was only useful for some overgrown rose bushes and making a trail to avoid Ford 38.5.
-The trail on the Rio Nef side was always visable (except for the main pass, where you need to check the gps more often). It was however already over grown with rose bushes up to the abandoned puesto and then slightly overgrown elsewhere with the low-mid height shrubbery. The trail in the Cross section valley was hard to follow visability wise. The trail in the last forest towards the second expedition shelter (labeled as steep part -47.22946, -73.21168 ) was in good condition (proper trail). It did get a little more difficult to follow after the shelter for a short bit.
-No issues with slippery/exposed rock (we had dry weather)
-No issues with Lago Colonia. For all water sections I wish I had warmer socks and or toe warmers. We sit in canoe style with our lower legs and feet pressed against the floor. We needed more breaks to keep our feet from fully freezing due to the glacial water.
-First rapid of Rio Colonia was happily skipped. The grey glacial water hides many large boulders and the flow is strong. Second rapid was also skipped (looked a lot easier than the first). Tomáš ran the rest of the rapids and I walked most (not a fan of the grey water, but in the end nothing was more than simple class02). The fourth rapid looked the largest wave wise but it was clean. We rarely had ground contact, but I think it is because we had higher water levels due to rain/warm weather. The grey water makes it difficult to judge.
- Don't expect to find good camping along Rio Colonia, it's mainly all spikey shrubbery and river rock. I suggest camping at a beach (only beach) near the end of Lago Colonia or the beach AT the end of Colonia on the other side (windy).
-A better alternative to walking or hitching the ~30km road to the ferry is to continue onto Baker. Tomáš thought of it last minute but I decided against it due to not knowing much about the Baker/ terrible weather arriving. To keep it short, it looks like you can get out near the Airport on the road to Tortel, walk ~10km and then hitch. We got a ride from Nef__, a settler just up river from the take out.