There are some trails that you know you want to walk as soon as you hear about them. For me, the Dientes de Navarino trek was definitely one. It wasn’t just the wildness of the name (dientes are teeth in Spanish, suggesting a certain jagged quality to its mountains) but its description: the southernmost trek in the world.
The teeth-like mountains in question run the length of Navarino Island which is part of Chilean Tierra del Fuego. As the region becomes better and better known as a trekking destination, I headed south to find out if the mountains here were as wild as they were in my imagination.
Navarino Island
Getting to Navarino Island is half the fun. You can fly in on a small plane from Chile’s southern gateway city Punta Arenas, but I started in the Argentinian city of Ushuaia, which is squeezed into a narrow strip of land between the mountains and the wide channel of the Beagle Channel. Directly across the water was Navarino island. To my delight, its profile rising out of the water really did like an enormous jawline full of fangs. It looked like I was in for some serious backcountry hiking. I jumped into a small boat that served as a ferry crossing and set out for adventure.
The starting point for the Dientes de Navarino trek was Errante Ecolodge, a lovely curved wooden lodge with an annexe that somewhat improbably also served as the island’s only dental clinic. After an evening checking through my gear, I set off with the rest of my hiking group – as far as the local police station.
As someone who worked for years as a hiking guide in Torres del Paine, I’m used to the process of signing people onto trails. But on Navarino the process seemed a little more serious than a quick signature on a register. My ID was logged followed by a checklist of questions: what colour was my tent? What colour was my sleeping bag, my jacket and my rucksack?
I knew that we were going somewhere remote, with unsupported wild camping, but this was a reminder that we really were at the very end of Patagonia, and the authorities needed to keep track of everyone coming and going for safety reasons. It felt like a long way from the W Trek.
Into the teeth of the mountains
It took just a couple of hours on that first morning to leave any traces of the modern world behind us. A trail led steeply uphill to a viewing platform where we could look down on Navarino’s main town of Puerto Williams and across the Beagle Channel to distant Ushuaia. From here we continued uphill to Cerro Bandera, a low peak topped with an enormous Chilean flag that snapped in the wind.
Cerro Bandera introduced us to the main theme of the trek. The Dientes de Navarino are jagged but low. The whole island is exposed to the great weather systems that drive in from the west. If there was wind, we were going to feel it. And if there was rain, we were definitely going to get wet.
We climbed a little higher on some gently rolling ground that allowed us all as a group to get used to each other’s pace. Then, after lunch we turned to pass into the interior of the island and made a steep descent towards a small lake called Laguna Salto. There was barely even a trail to follow, so we had to pick our way slowly – remembering to stop and look up every now and then at the primeval landscape we were climbing into.
There are no camping facilities on the Dientes de Navarino trek. The closest we came to an organised site was at the end of this first day, where earlier campers had built low semicircles of rocks half a metre high to act as simple windbreaks. It began to drizzle lightly as we pitched our tents (bright orange, as we’d registered at the police post), but we cooked and ate dinner under canvas, with the satisfaction of having spent a good day on the trail.
Mountains at the end of the world
On the second day it felt like we were really getting into my stride. Although the night had been wet, the weather broke clear in the morning, and we set out early in the most fantastic light, like the whole sky had been washed clean.
There were two beautiful passes to cross – Australia Pass and then the Dientes Pass, which is the highest point of the trek at 865m (2838 feet). There was a lot of scree, and though the scenery was wild, the passes themselves felt very gentle – so much easier than some of the big passes on the Humeul Circuit for example, which I’d hiked a couple of seasons earlier. .
The top of the Dientes Pass, brought an extra reward – a long clear view out into the Southern Ocean. The mountains weren’t hemmed in by the Beagle Channel, there was just wide blue sea. In the far distance there was a tiny cluster of islands, and hidden somewhere beyond those was Cape Horn. Beyond that, I imagined the cruise ships I’d seen in Ushuaia, making their way to Antarctica.
The second night was another night of camping in the rain, but this time we tucked ourselves into a forest of evergreen beech. Our guides were great at finding the best place to pitch, and knew exactly when to push us on for another hour or two because there was a weather front coming in.
I’ve rarely done a trek where our day felt so tied to the weather. The terrain felt more exposed than in Torres del Paine or Los Glaciares, but it was wild and exhilarating. The day after our rainy night, we found ourselves in a sheltered spot with barely a cloud in the sky, so we scrambled to get out our tents and jackets and spread them out in the sun to bake dry. I may even have taken a short nap in the sunshine. It’s the sort of rhythm I love on a trek.
Lord of the Rings landscapes
The third day was all about Navarino’s lakes, crossing the Guerrico Valley between forests and shorelines with the sharp mountains all around us. When our guide swept his hand across the view and said ‘This is Mordor,’ I knew exactly what he meant. The landscape was so fantastic it was easy to picture it as something from Tolkien’s imagination.
The rain continued to challenge us, but on the final day, the Dientes de Navarino really tested our hiking endurance. The moment we left camp and the shelter of the forest, we were faced with nearly an hour of very steep climbing on the route up to the Virginia Pass. Even my hands got a work out, helping balance myself as we rapidly gained elevation. The weather came in sharp and cold, and when we got to the summit we were faced with an equally steep descent. I’ve rarely been gladder to have my hiking poles to steady myself. It was the sort of terrain where you put your camera away because you know that nothing is going to capture just how steep it feels when you’re there. The Virginia Pass is not to be underestimated – the sort of pass you’re pleased to look back on when it’s done, proud of your achievement, rather than a pleasure at the time.
It felt like a relief to reach Laguna Guanaco at its base. We trekked around its edges, until we entered a darkening wood. It was another Lord of the Rings movement – this wasn’t a polite or neatly maintained wood, it was untamed and boggy under foot, and the sort of place where you had to pay attention to your rucksack getting caught on branches when you climbed over logs. It was thrilling.
It was also a fitting climax to the trek. As we emerged from the trees at the end of the afternoon, we were all surprised when someone’s phone pinged, picking up a signal for the first time in days. The Dientes had swallowed us up completely, but a short while later we found ourselves on a dirt track, and then there was a vehicle driving slowly towards us, driven by Jorge from Errante, coming to pick us up. We were astonished to discover that after four days in the middle of nowhere, we’d somehow finished just a 10 minute drive from the lodge.
Processing the trek
Civilisation felt like a bit of a shock, though I was definitely glad of the hot shower. In four days of trekking, we had seen just a dozen other hikers, and even then just at a distance. We never shared a wild campsite with anyone – it felt like we’d had the mountains as our own private playground.
Our only real company was the elements. More than any other trek I’ve done in Patagonia, it felt like you had to offer yourself up to whatever Mother Nature gave us. The weather could change every two hours, and you needed to be ready to adapt the day’s plans accordingly. That might not make this the trek for everyone – I’ve done physically harder treks, but this one required an extra level of mental toughness. As a group, we were completely autonomous, and had to work as a team with our guide more than on almost any other trek I’ve done.
But that team work and mutual support brings its own rewards. And if the weather changed every two hours, then so did the landscape. The Dientes de Navarino trek was a constant canvas of astonishing vistas. Before I arrived on Navarino, the idea of the southernmost trek in the world felt like a marketing promise that it couldn’t possibly deliver on. But the summit of the Dientes Pass made me realise that it wasn’t just hype. Looking down on an ocean that led all the way to Antarctica, and knowing that there was nowhere else in the hemisphere left to hike was an incredible sensation. And every drop of rain and every blast of wind had only made that achievement more satisfying.
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