I'm still fairly amused by this blog entry, from October 22, 2004: 56 miles + 5 days snow, rain, sleet, hail and freezing rain + 40-pound backpack + 40 mph wind = good times. Trip report from Parque Nacional Torres del Paine coming tomorrow. The nice thing about hiking nearly 60 miles in five days is that you get plenty of time to think about what you want to say when you get back. And here it is, my story from backpacking through Chile's utterly fantastic Torres del Paine, which may be the most beautiful park in the world.

	Heavy snow around the backside of the park's iconic granite towers.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for Patagonia: The wind fiddles a screeching melody on my tent poles with two uprooted tent stakes while the rain taps out a syncopated drumbeat on the canvas roof.

I slide a little further into my sleeping bag, pull the drawstring over my head and settle in to fight the feeling of isolation wrought by the haunting symphony outside.

It's midnight, and darkness rules over the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.

At 5:30 a.m. my alarm goes off. I unzip the tent cautiously and peer out. Any evidence that it rained for 10 hours yesterday has sailed off the edge of the fiery red horizon. The rising sun renders a fantasy world of turquoise lakes, shimmering pink glaciers and soaring, rusty, craggy mountain peaks.

Light floods over the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, banishing the wind and rain and darkness of the night before.

Light and dark have clashed here for milennia; sun, wind, water and ice battling over the land on a geologic time scale while backpackers flit across in fast-forward, hoping that their incredibly brief appearance corresponds with a period of sun.

On my first day I ask a ranger how he's doing and he looks up at the rustling trees, quivering like rubber bands in the wind, and says, cheerfully, "Great weather. Yesterday, it snowed."

"And tomorrow?" I ask.

He shrugs. "This is Patagonia," he says.

After talking to the ranger I climb up a rockfall, past the treeline, to look at the Torres del Paine, three sheer granite towers soaring above the snowy fields and glacial lagoons. Under a brooding overcast sky they look heavy and foreboding, malignant spires of rock impervious to everything except the fire, ice and wind that shaped them. The silhouettes of circling condors become the black wings of the Nazgul, riding the furious wind out of the cracked peaks of Mordor.

The wind screams across the exposed ridgeline and drives whitecaps across the scratched, flayed surface of a small, boulder-filled lagoon. A strong burst knocks me off my feet and I pick myself up, unsure how to react, because there is actually nothing I can do except to brace myself and hope it stops and I see the sun again.

	One of the park's major lakes, green in the sun.

Suddenly, on my second day, the wind does stop, and I think I'm deaf without the constant rushing background noise. The sun is shining and the still lakes that dot the landscape look like optical illusions: huge, rough-edged holes in the earth where the sky shines through from the other side.

I'm hiking through a meadow around the backside of the "horns," massive, fantastically-shaped white mountains capped with black tips, supported by thick rock cords that snake from valley to peak like thick veins. In the still, quiet afternoon, the park looks surreal, with twisted, multi-colored crags and an undulating, dark landscape plugged with turquoise oases.

Around the back of a small ridgeline I stop to take a picture and a water droplet appears on the lens of my camera. In the time it takes the shutter to open and close, the sun goes. A dark cloud streams out from behind the horns like steam escaping from factory smokestacks. I stuff the camera back into the bottom of my backpack, put on my waterproof jacket and stand up, and the wind returns with a freezing embrace.

Snow and rain come flying off the tail of the wind. The trail turns into a muddy, slippery bog. I'm still four miles from the nearest campsite and refugio, and camping is only allowed in these designated areas. Tonight I will have to pay $6 a night to set up my tent, but it's better than walking another 5 miles in the rain to the next free site.

About half the campsites are near small, unobtrusive hotels, called refugios, which offer beds for $30 a night and meals for $12 each. Most of the people I pass don't have to carry a tent or food; they just walk from refugio to refugio for five days. The refugios are mostly wooden cabin-style buildings, with huge windows, warm heaters and hot drinks, a luxury for those who can afford them.

There is one exception: The Albergue Pehoe looks like a modern hotel, a huge, incongruous metal-roofed monstrosity which the backpacking riff-raff are not allowed to enter. The administration keeps us separate from the paying customers, giving us a gazebo out on the grassy plain, away from the luxury dining facilities and cozy armchairs of the refugio.

It's quite a contrast at Refugio Cuernos, where they allow me to dry my wet clothes by the heater and watch from inside as the storm rages across the lake, kicking up towers of spray that look like the froth of a feeding school of tuna. An Irish couple and their English guide, sits by the window drinking wine out of glasses, and a French-Canadian camper dries his stuff next to me.

	A meadow in front of the main peak and cuernos (horns). This vast plain, freezing and windy and completely desolate, is possibly the single most scenic place I've ever stood.

We're all doing the most popular hike in Patagonia's most popular park. Called the "W" because of the shape it traces on a map, it's much less crowded now than in high season (December-February).

I walk by myself for kilometers and kilometers, past enormous golden meadows of ethereally thin grass waving in the wind, up valleys and rocky landslides, around the shores of enormous lakes, rarely seeing anyone other than the Irish and the Canadian.

One sunny morning takes on the feel of a Disney cartoon when a small bird lands three feet from my face and bursts into song. I brush gently past it and soon see the Canadian, hopping with carefree abandon from rock to rock down a landslide. We stop to chat beside a rushing river, under the twinkling, sparkling smile of a glacier-capped peak.

He soon hops away down the valley, and I look up -- to where the glacier just was. A huge cloud of white streams off the back of the peak, like the snow is evaporating into the air. The towers behind me reclaim their "evil" look. The sun disappears and a few snowflakes pirouette past me and into my backpack. "Cut the ballet," I snarl at them.

The rule with glaciers, I learn, is reciprocity. Do unto the glacier and it will do unto you, except it is bigger and will do with ice. As I snarl, the glacier roars, a thundering boom that reverberates down the valley. Avalanche. Across, on the steep mountain slope, a cloud of snow rises into the air on the tracks of the snow fall. A few minutes later there is another hiss-BOOM and I watch a chunk of ice break off and roll down the black rock, crashing into the snow below it in a spray of white.

Thinking, "ok, quickly now!" I retreat back down the valley, the glacier counting cadence for me ... hup-2-3-boom! At the bottom I turn around the base of the mountain and the cloud hovers, misty fingers probing outside the valley for new ground to touch. Today the snow wins, but I have two more days to go.

On the morning of my fifth, and last day, the eastern horizon turns crimson. The towers and horns, visible over an otherwordly turquoise lake, turn pink. The glacier-capped peaks in the distance shine as the sun strikes the snow.

The light is winning this morning.