The W Trek in Torres del Paine: Itinerary and Booking

The W Trek is the classic way to see Torres del Paine: four to five days on foot, roughly 70–80 km, tracing a W-shaped route between the park's three great sights. It's not a technical climb, but it is a logistics puzzle — and the booking, not the walking, is the part that catches most people out. If you'd rather sample the park in day trips, see our guide to Torres del Paine day hikes instead.

The short version: four to five days, 70–80 km, three valleys. Park entry is a separate CONAF ticket from your beds, and the beds come from two different operators. Reservations for a season open the previous April to June, not a few months out — that timing, more than anything on the trail, decides whether the trek happens.

What the "W" actually is

The route draws a W because it runs up and back down three valleys along the park's southern face. From one side to the other, the three arms are:

• Base Las Torres — the steep climb to the glacial lake beneath the three granite towers, best reached at first light. This is the eastern arm.
• The French Valley (Valle del Francés) — the central arm, climbing between the Cuernos and a hanging glacier to the Mirador Británico.
• Grey Glacier — the western arm, following Lago Grey to the face of the ice and its floating icebergs.

You can walk it east-to-west (starting at the Las Torres sector) or west-to-east (starting with the catamaran across Lago Pehoé to Paine Grande). West-to-east is popular because it saves the hardest climb — the towers — for a strong, acclimatised finish, and puts the wind more often at your back.

Booking: the part that trips everyone up

There is no single booking site, and this is the thing to get straight first. The refugios and paid campsites are run by two private operators, split by geography, and you often have to book across both for one trek:

• Vértice Patagonia — the western side: Paine Grande, Grey, plus Dickson and Los Perros on the longer O circuit.
• Fantástico Sur (Las Torres Patagonia) — the eastern side: Torres Central, El Chileno, Los Cuernos, Francés and Serón.

CONAF, the park authority, handles park entry separately — but its old free campsites (Italiano, Paso) have been closed since the pandemic and remain shut, so don't build a plan around them.

The booking window is earlier than most guides suggest. Reservations for a given season open the previous April to June, and the season itself runs roughly October to April. Booking "four to six months ahead" for a January trek means arriving to find the beds gone.

Popular dates on the front side of the W — Chileno above all, then Cuernos and Francés — go within days of the operators opening their calendars. If you are reading this in the second half of a year for the season already underway, assume the refugios are full and plan around camping platforms or day hikes instead.

An aggregator such as TorresHike shows live availability across both operators in one place, which saves a lot of cross-checking, though you can book each operator direct. Booking Patagonia publishes a step-by-step for the current season's calendar.

Park entry and the 2026 fee change

The CONAF ticket is not included in any refugio booking and is checked at the gate. For international visitors in 2026 it runs about US$35 in high season (1 November – 31 March) and US$18 in low season (1 April – 31 October).

From 1 May 2026 the park moved to charging by route rather than by length of stay. What you pay now depends on which circuit you have registered for, so the ticket you buy has to match the trek you actually walk.

Buy it in advance. The park caps daily entries overall and sets tighter limits on individual sectors, and the front of the W reaches capacity early in high season. The current fee table is worth checking close to departure, since this is the second change in two seasons.

One more thing to watch for 2026: the first phase of the park's trail regeneration project opens 3.3 km of rebuilt path, separating walkers from the horse traffic that supplies the refugios. Sections of the approach may be re-routed from the maps you downloaded last year.

What the whole thing costs

Budgets sort into three bands, entry ticket and transfers included, before international flights:

• US$600–900 — self-guided, camping, carrying your own food and stove.
• US$1,000–1,500 — a mix of camping platforms and refugio beds, some meals bought.
• US$1,600–2,500 and up — refugios throughout, full board, transfers arranged.

December to February sits at the top of every band. Shoulder months either side cost less and put fewer people on the trail, at the price of shorter daylight and the odd closed sector — the trade-off is worth reading before you commit, and our notes on the Patagonia shoulder season go through it.

Two ways to sleep: refugios (dorm bed, hot shower, cooked meals, heating — roughly US$120–150 a night with meals, and no need to carry a stove) or camping (your own tent on a paid platform, far cheaper, but you carry the gear and food). A mix of the two is the usual first-timer's compromise.

A typical west-to-east itinerary

The most common four-day shape, starting with the morning catamaran from Pudeto to Paine Grande:

• Day 1 — Paine Grande out to Grey Glacier and its miradors, then back (or overnight at Grey). The western arm.
• Day 2 — Paine Grande to the French Valley: up past Italiano to the Mirador Británico for the amphitheatre of peaks, then on to Los Cuernos or Francés.
• Day 3 — a shore-hugging traverse under the Cuernos to the Las Torres / Central sector.
• Day 4 — the pre-dawn climb to Base Las Torres for sunrise on the towers, back down, and the bus out.

Add a day if you want to walk Grey as an overnight rather than an out-and-back, or if you'd rather not rush the towers. For getting to the trailheads in the first place, see getting to Torres del Paine.

Gear and conditions

Patagonia's weather is the real difficulty. Wind can top 100 km/h and all four seasons can pass in an afternoon, so pack in layers with a genuinely windproof shell, waterproofs, a hat that won't blow off, and broken-in waterproof boots.

Trekking poles save your knees on the long descents and steady you on the exposed, gusty stretches between Cuernos and the Central sector, where the gaps in the ridgeline funnel the wind hardest.

Carry it light. In refugios you need no tent, no stove and no sleeping bag beyond a liner, which turns a 15 kg pack into something closer to 8 — the single biggest comfort decision on the trek, and the reason the mixed camping-and-refugio plan appeals to first-timers.

Take everything back out with you. The park's leave-no-trace rules are enforced, open fires are banned outright after the fires that burned through parts of the park, and rangers will turn back anyone carrying a stove into a closed sector.

The towers themselves reward an early start more than good gear. Most people leave Chileno or Central in the dark to be at the lake for first light, and the walk out afterwards is long enough that a rushed sunrise ruins the rest of the day. Getting to the trailhead in the first place is its own problem — see getting to Torres del Paine and the Puerto Natales gateway guide.