Fitz Roy. Laguna Torre. Las Torres. French Valley, four signature Patagonia treks. A hotel and a real dinner every night.
Buenos Aires to the Southern Ice Field to the granite cathedral of Torres del Paine. Private guides on every leg.
Arrive at Ezeiza and transfer privately into the city. You already met the group at the welcome dinner in Chicago, so tonight is simply a good meal and a full night's sleep to shake off the flight.
A full unscheduled day to recover from travel. Sleep in, walk the neighborhoods, eat slowly. We head south tomorrow, so today is just about resting up.
Morning flight to El Calafate, then the road north to El Chaltén, a village of a thousand people beneath the Fitz Roy massif, built entirely around the trails that leave from its doorstep.
The signature trek. The trail climbs along the Río Blanco through dense lenga forest, then breaks onto a punishing final moraine that ends at a glacial lake with the three spires of Fitz Roy exploding straight out of the water. Roughly 20km, 8–10 hours. The photograph you've seen of Patagonia is taken from here.
The second of El Chaltén's two classic treks, now a full guided day. The trail follows the Fitz Roy River to a glacial lake beneath the granite needle of Cerro Torre, one of the hardest summits on earth to climb. Private guide, full day on trail. Afternoon transfer south to El Calafate.
Into Los Glaciares National Park and onto the balconies facing Perito Moreno, five kilometers of ice wall that cracks and calves into the lake while you stand in front of it. Then onto the water for a nautical safari, face to face with a glacier the height of a downtown Chicago tower.
Passports out. Three and a half hours south across the border and down to Puerto Natales, the gateway to Torres del Paine.
The defining hike of the park. A long climb through the Ascencio Valley and up a brutal final boulder field to the lookout, three granite towers rising a thousand meters straight out of a glacial lake. This is the image on every Patagonia poster ever printed, and you get there on your own legs. Park entrance included.
Early pickup, a drive through the park, and a catamaran across Lake Pehoé. From Paine Grande the trail runs the north shore, climbs past Lake Skottsberg with the Paine Horns ahead, and pushes into the valley itself, an amphitheater of granite with a hanging glacier above it. Twelve hours, nine of them hiking. Rated difficult. Catamaran and box lunch included.
Four hours north into Argentina. A final night in El Calafate and the last dinner of the expedition.
Morning transfer to El Calafate airport.
Led by Taliya Denham. $1,000 deposit holds your spot.
You'll spend $5,800 on nights out you won't remember. What do you have to show for it?
$290 on a night out — overpriced drinks, the same bar, the same small talk with the same people. Do that twenty times over a year and you've spent $5,800: a few blurry photos, some regrettable texts, and zero memories worth keeping.
"$5,800 on forgettable nights out, or $5,800 on the expedition you'll talk about for the rest of your life. Same money. Completely different person on the other side of it."
A year of Chicago nights out. Bars, Ubers, cocktails, a hangover, and conversations you've had a hundred times.
Eleven days in Patagonia with thirteen Chicagoans who become real friends. Fitz Roy. Perito Moreno. The base of Las Torres. French Valley.
The people who bond deepest aren't the ones who met at a bar. They're the ones who climbed the last moraine together, sat down at the same table every night.
Everything that's covered, what's not, and the upgrades. Line by line.
Rooftop dinner with live music. The first time the group meets.
Hikes around Chicago with the people you're traveling with. Included.
Casual night out. Gear talk and drinks before departure.
Reconvene back home. Share the photographs.
A private room for all ten nights. Only 4 available for this departure.
Crampons on the glacier itself, 90 minutes on the ice. Optional, Day 6. Shared service with other travelers.
You don't show up to this cold.
From October through February, the group hikes together once a month around Chicago, Starved Rock, Indiana Dunes, the Palos preserves. Rain, wind, January cold. All of it.
Partly so you're ready for four hard hiking days, in two back-to-back pairs, in Patagonia. Mostly so you land in Buenos Aires already knowing the people you're traveling with.
A welcome dinner in September, monthly hikes, drinks in December. Then Patagonia.
Anyone's welcome on these, whether you're coming to Patagonia or not. But if you're on the trip, by the time we fly you'll have been hiking with this group for months.
First hike follows October 10.
Led by Taliya Denham. $1,000 deposit holds your spot.
The same list gets you through the monthly Chicago hikes and the four hiking days in Patagonia. Buy it once, break it in, bring it.
Patagonian weather changes in a single afternoon. You can start a hike in a t-shirt and hit wind-driven sleet on the moraine two hours later. The gear above is what keeps a hard day uncomfortable instead of dangerous.
You don't need the most expensive version of any of it. You need the right version, and you need to have worn it before you land in Buenos Aires.
Four hiking days, in two back-to-back pairs. Not "scenic walk" hard. Actually hard.
~20km · 8–10 hours · steep final moraine
Full day · Cerro Torre and the glacial lake
Full day · brutal final boulder field
12 hours · 9 of them hiking · rated difficult
Days 4 and 5 are back to back. So are Days 8 and 9.
You don't need to be an athlete and you don't need technical experience, every trail on this trip is well-marked and non-technical. But you should be comfortable hiking a full day and getting up to do it again the next morning.
If that sounds like the best week of your year, you're exactly who this is for. If it sounds miserable, I'd rather tell you now than at kilometer fourteen.
Not a tour operator. Someone who actually lived there.
I'm not selling you a trip I found on Google. I spent 17 months living across Latin America, navigating cities without tourist maps, eating where locals eat, building friendships in a language that wasn't mine.
Below are some pics of me in Torres del Paine National Park, Chile in 2023. I was working remotely at the time and wasn't able to get five straight days off, so I just took two day trips on Saturday and Sunday. So I am as excited as you are to spend some real time deep in the mountains.
I'm not new to the mountains, though. I've summited the Grand Teton and trekked in the Himalayas in Nepal. I'm not a mountain guide and I won't pretend to be, that's what the local guides are for. But I know what a long hard day feels like, and I know what it takes to get through one.
And this spring I started 1,000 Chicagoans, bringing strangers in this city together and watching them become genuine friends faster than I expected. I know how to create the conditions for real connection. This is that, with the best backdrop I know.
And just for the hell of it, here I am singing Bad Bunny in a surf town called Punta de Lobos, Chile.
Logistics on the ground are run by a Patagonia-based destination management company operating since 1999, vetted for small-group quality and sustainability. Every transfer and every excursion is private service, not a shared bus tour.
I'm not taking fifty people. Fourteen. That's it.
I've got a full-time job and can't take two back-to-back eleven-day trips off in one year. So I found someone who's done exactly what I've done — and she's a Chicagoan too.
Taliya Denham's bio and photos will appear here once they land.
I'd rather tell you this than have you figure it out later.
Cheapest option, and it's completely doable. The trails are well-marked. The buses run. You'll spend thirty or forty hours planning it. Flights, four hotels, a border crossing, park permits, a catamaran ticket, and figuring out which hikes are actually worth the day.
Then you go alone, or you go with the one friend who could get the time off.
Swoop wants $4,515 for seven nights, no flights. Intrepid's Patagonia runs $6,890. Good companies, real guides, everything handled.
You'll meet thirteen strangers from Denver and Toronto and Munich at an airport in Buenos Aires. Some of them will be great. You'll exchange numbers on the last day and never see them again.
Excellent company, 7–8 days, Argentina only. Most meals included, beautiful eco domes. You never cross into Chile, no Torres del Paine, no Base Las Torres, no French Valley.
About twice the daily cost for roughly half the geography.
Eleven days, everything handled, private guides on every leg. Domestic flights included.
And thirteen other Chicagoans you'll have been hiking with since October. A dinner before you leave. A dinner when you get back. People who live twenty minutes from you.
You're not booking a vacation. You're booking the middle of something.
Any of these four will get you to Patagonia. They're different trips, not better and worse ones.
If price is the only thing that matters, do it yourself for $2,500. I mean that, and you'll have a great time.
But if you've been waiting to do this because you didn't want to do it alone, that's the entire reason this trip exists.
Fourteen spots, led by Taliya Denham. A $1,000 deposit holds your place — the balance isn't due until December 1.
BOOK YOUR SPOT →No. Most people on this trip are booking solo, that's the whole point of it. You'll be paired with a Chicagoan of the same gender, and you'll have been hiking with everyone since October anyway.
Almost certainly, yes. That's what the monthly hikes are for. Five months is plenty of time to build up to a full day on trail if you start in October and actually show up.
Come to what you can. Nobody's tracking attendance. But the more you make, the better the trip is, and the later ones matter most.
It might. Patagonian weather turns fast and guides make the call on the day. If a hike gets pulled, we do the alternate the guides recommend. It's the one thing nobody controls.
Every hike has turnaround points, and the guides are used to groups moving at different paces. You go as far as you go and head back with someone. Nobody gets left on a mountain.
No. Every guide on this trip speaks English. I speak enough Spanish to handle the rest.
Yes, and a lot of people do, Buenos Aires is worth extra time. Just tell me before you book flights so we can line up your transfers.
Yes, it's required. It needs to cover emergency medical treatment abroad and emergency evacuation. Patagonia is remote and getting someone out is expensive. Trip cancellation coverage is worth having too, since your payments to me aren't refundable. Buy it soon after you book, since some policies only waive pre-existing conditions if you purchase within a couple weeks of your first deposit.
Seven days of PTO. You fly out Friday evening Feb 26 and land back in Chicago the morning of March 10, so plan for that day too. The only workdays you miss are March 1–5 and March 8–9.
$5,800 per person. A $1,000 deposit holds your spot. Led by Taliya Denham.
About $1,150 a month between now and February.
Fourteen spots. Be one of them.
$1,000 deposit holds your place. Balance due December 1.
BOOK YOUR SPOT →Questions before you commit? Email me at boldabroadtravel@gmail.com or DM @one_thousand_chicagoans. I answer everything myself.
