For many, Christmas Break consists of binge watching Netflix and Hallmark Christmas movies and relaxing with friends and family back home. For freshman, Hannah Walker, however, Christmas Break was the perfect opportunity for an adventure.
Over Christmas Break, the Walker family went on a five-day backpacking excursion to the Patagonia region of Chile.
This trip was not Walker’s first backpacking trip, however. In fact, her family has been doing outdoor activities for years and usually sets aside a week or two for backpacking each year. This trip to Chile was a bit different from past family vacations, because they were traveling, not only to gain more backpacking experience, but also to visit Walker’s sister, Sarah, who has been studying abroad in Chile for a year.
“It was really neat to meet her friends and all the people that she’s spent the past year of her life with,” Walker said. The trip was appropriate, as Walker and her sister both share a love for backpacking, making it the perfect way to catch up for a family of adventurers.
The family went to the Patagonia region of southern Chile, where they spent five days backpacking on the “W trail,” which is named for its unique shape.
While it is the winter season in North America during Christmas, it is the summer season in southern Chile. “I knew that the weather was going to be funky,” Walker said. “[One day on the W Trail] it started sleeting and snowing and raining…and the wind was blowing like 60 miles per hour.”
Despite her family’s trouble with the weather on the trail, Walker states that her trip was beautiful.
On the first leg of the trip, the family went to see a glacier. “[It] was so cool because it was miles of this massive piece of ice and all the water and lakes around there are crystal blue. It was really beautiful,” Walker said.
Although the trip was enjoyable and a positive experience, it did not go without a few bumps in the road. “We didn’t bring a stove [on the hike] because it was too heavy to carry in [our] backpacks, but we had counted out granola bars and everything.” As their food supply started to diminish they knew they would consciously have to ration their food.
Then, on Christmas Eve, while resting at a campsite area the Lord sent a “Christmas miracle.”
“A woman that we had seen on the trail came over and said, ‘I’m hiking another four or five days and I have too much food. I can’t carry it all. Would you take some of it off of my hands?’” Walker said. The family eagerly agreed.
The next morning, Christmas Day, Hannah and her family woke up at 3 a.m., planning to hike two hours to see the sunrise. The family had to climb up rocks, eventually making it up three rock towers to witness a “fiery red” sunrise. “It was the best weather we had for the whole trip,” Walker recalled.
One of her favorite parts of the trip was when her family read Matthew together as their pastor back home had challenged their whole church family to do during the Advent season.
“The last week [of the reading] was the week leading up to Christmas, so my whole family was reading Matthew together every night, and it was just really cool because we would be in wet sleeping bags and wet tents in the freezing cold…It was so much fun.”
It was moments like this that Walker is most thankful for as it grew her relationship with her family the most. “It was just really cool to spend that time with my family because [we were] together the whole time in little tiny tents,” Walker said. “I think I grew a lot closer with [them] because we’ve done stuff like that before, but this was definitely the most intense [trip] that we’ve done with the weather being like it was.”
Walker advises beginner hikers and backpackers not to rashly attempt this trek, as it takes a lot of preparation. For instance, Walker’s family invested time and resources to experience this adventure together, preparing in advance by learning the fitness, health, and practical skills necessary to survive the outdoors.
With this said, Walker suggests that everyone should go on some kind of adventure. Her advice for anyone wanting to have an adventurous lifestyle would be to simply “start small—get your hair cut, try something new…next thing you know, you’re backpacking around the world.”
By Camryn Reeves, staff writer
