6
ediciones
Cambios
Tim Magdalena 2025
==Season 2024/25==
* '''2025-01-04 til 2025-01-08 / 5 days / Hiking / NOBO / RR / Magdalena, Tim'''
Beautiful section, we saw lots of dolphins, whales, interesting birds.
We met about two groups per day walking to the cape, and many dayhikers before the lighthouse.
Personally, it feels bad to walk the same way back, although the tide keeps changing the landscape and where you walk on the beach.
Sometimes tourists or locals come by boat to some part of the coast, you might be able to hitch back with them or even arrange to go with a boat and start from the cape. On the way to the cape we saw people with a boat in Bahia El Aguila. S 53.78485°, W 070.99936°
Day1:
We hitchhiked from punta arenas to the end of the MR. Lots of traffic on the weekend, less on weekdays, popular spot with both locals and tourists. We arrived in the evening and camped 2,5km in on the bank of the pebble beach. There is also an established campsite nearby on the edge of the forest. Roughly here S 53.76104°, W 070.97575°
Day2:
The trail until the faro San Isidro is good, but mostly it's just CC in the small rocks. The further you get from the Faro the tougher the trail becomes. The ford of the Yumbel River can be done without even getting your feet wet at least in our case. On the Western side the GPT track could use an update, but it's not hard to find a way.
There are not many water sources in this part and none of them very good, the water is usually pretty brown and earthy tasting. We usually filtered.
In the evening we reached Rio San Nicolás, which is the hardest ford imo. Here the tide forecast helps a lot. We crossed it both times in between low and high tide so not ideal, but we had only one low tide each day, the other was deep in the night.
The best spot is marked by two big sticks of driftwood. It's way out at sea, don't try it until you can at least see the sand bench leading out to the sticks. In between tides the water reached upper thighs/lower hips for us (we are 1,80-1,85m). We crossed late in the evening both times. The cold was definitely a challenge when we had to search for the way first.
Both times we camped on the other side afterwards, there are established campsites on both sides of the river in the forest.
Day3:
As the coast gets steeper the water situation improves a lot. We didn't filter in this section, many clear small streams. The first water we saw after Rio San Nicolás was: S 53.84134°, W 071.11935°
From here on, trail finding is more challenging, as the trail frequently bypasses cliffs through the forest, but you have to climb over and under many dead trees as it doesn't seem to be maintained. The best trail is usually marked with colored bands.
At S 53.88623°, W 071.23081° about 30 dead trees from a landslide are blocking a section of beach (GPT and OSM track are pretty much impassable). We followed a faint BB trail through the forest which we would not really recommend. On the way back we just walked through the sea below the trees at ~2 hours from low tide. The water came only to the knees. This is definitely the fastest way, but maybe not doable during high tide.
The ford of Rio Nodales is much easier than San Nicolás. Even in between tides it only went just above the knee. Again it's marked by a stick.
We set-up our tent at roughly S 53.89397°, W 071.28945°
ate dinner and walked without packs to the cross on top of the hill at the cape.
Day 4/5: same way back, not describing it again. Hitching back on the MR was more difficult since it was a weekday. We had to camp another night on the side of the MR and finally got a hitch back to punta arenas.
==Season 2023/24==
