Forest Colossi

About 15 minutes’ ripio drive from Caleta Gonzalo, aside the Carretera Austral, is a magical forest of bejeweled, green giants giving a rare glimpse of how much greater the still spectacular Valdivian rainforest once was.

The Alerce pine is among the world’s oldest and most massive living things. These remarkable trees (see last blog) were once common over thousands of square miles of Patagonia; today, Pumalin Park retains about 25% of the world’s population. The Alerce Trail, along which Carlos and I are hiking, traverses the translucent, tumbling river that drains the surrounding mountains, swollen by yesterday’s heavenly outburst (today’s broken cloud and patchy blue sky are a welcome relief). I feel like a mouse crawling through a corn field as the trail weaves us around stout, towering columns in the domain of giants. The Alerces, festooned with moss, ferns and other hanging greenery, sparkle like a million fairy lights as yesterday’s captured raindrops glint in shafts of sun. Their fibrous, red-brown bark coating trunks of massive girth is similar to that of California’s sequoias, as is their slow rate of growth. Alerce timber has been sought after for decades causing the rapid decline of these trees. Their regeneration on surrounding hillsides has been stymied by frequent forest fires as witnessed by their denuded, white skeletons, frozen, grasping for the sky above the surrounding southern beeches. Thankfully the protection and restoration afforded by Pumalin’s dedicated people means that, in patches, the Alerce forest is gradually returning.

Uplifted on leaving the impressive Alerces we continue south along the Carretera Austral, Carlos pointing out features of interest on the way. Although the park is private land the Carretera running through it is a public road and, as the authorities maintain the road, they lack care over restoring the natural aesthetic and leave linear, eroding scars of bare soil and uprooted trees that line the road for miles through the wilderness. A contrast to the elegant forest experience that I have just had; come on Chile, you can do better than that!