Valle de Cochamó

The Valle de Cochamó is an incredible valley in Chilean Patagonia surrounded by magnificent granite cliffs. While we only spent 3 days there, you could spend weeks exploring all the different side trips, scrambling to different peaks and even doing some big wall climbing. There is also a route over the mountains and across the border into Argentina! This was my first adventure as part of a much longer 2025 South America foray of digital nomad/start up/social enterprise nature. With the only knowledge about the destination being that it’s like Yosemite, my companion of chaos Kris and I set withvery non-existent plans, but that was really all we needed to know.

The journey down into the valley is a bit of a slog through the forest. It was a maze of interwoven paths worn super deep into the mud by cowboys on horses. We never figured out exactly what the cowboys were lugging around but they looked pretty schmick riding past in their woollen frocks, hats and cute doggo companions.

Every now and then we broke out of the forest to cross a side stream and got our first few glimpses of the massive granite cliffs that were going to soon surround us. It was, all in all, a very unassuming approach for the wonders we were about to see.

The arrival into camp La Junta finally gave us a proper view of all the granite peaks. provided a grand spectacle as we were able to fully comprehend just how many granite peaks were surrounding the valley. That combined with the beautiful open campground and horses scattered about, we were pretty excited about our choice of adventure.

Unfortunately our arrival was soured by the realisation that Kris had lost her sunglasses. Thanks to some key detective work we knew that we would only need to retrace the last hour or so. After setting up camp and a quick lunch we set off with high hopes back into the muddy forest on a recovery mission.

Unfortunately the sunglasses were never seen again. The thick mud and infinite choice of routes through the dense forest were no help to us on our quest. Returning to camp defeated, we cooked up a risky but extremely successful pumpkin soup pasta for dinner, followed by the required hot choccy and Oreo’s to boost morale.

After a nice long sleep in and a relaxed breakfast we get ready to head off and explore the surrounding granite cliffs. We talked to the absolute chiller of a dude at the campsite about extending the route to La Laguna up past the lake, along the ridge and to Cerro Bella Vista. His only word of warning for starting our 10 hour day at 10:30 was along the ridge, try to walk on the rocks and be very careful of the little plants, they are delicate.

The first obstacle of the day was using a little gondola to get across the river. Kris went first and gracefully made it over the other side. My journey was not quite so smooth. I wasn’t able to hold the cart still while hopping on so swung out to the side and got caught on a tree. A couple of not so gentle nudges sent me soaring off over to the other side of the river. Once there, I tried to pull myself a little further up the river bank and the next thing I knew I was falling arse over tit and eating sand. Thankfully Kris got the whole dismount on video for everyone to enjoy!

Safely on the other side we head back into the forest and up into the Trinidad valley. After 2 hours walking through steep, dark and dense forest with multiple creek crossing made on bridges of fallen trees we reach The Trinidad. With zero warning we are greeted by a looming cliff up to the summit and I’m lost for words. Never have I been this close to such a huge slab of rock, and the top was still hiding in the clouds!

We skirt along the base of the granite behemoth before entering into the woods once again to venture further up towards La Laguna. Here the forest is less dense giving us more views of the cliff walls now surrounding us close by on both sides. We follow a beautiful creek for a short period full of colourful granite boulders. It also gives us an incredible view back down to La Junta.

As we get higher and higher the forest trees get smaller and smaller, transitioning to the classic Patagonian shrubs. We pass a few marshes with a small deceptive sign that says Laguna with a tiny arrow pointing further down the path on it. Glad that these marshes aren’t our intended swimming destination we continue up to finally reach the actual Laguna which appears to have been cut straight out of the side of the granite wall.

A bit concerned with what the weather is doing, we only have a quick stop as we still have some serious ascent to cover for the main event, the ridge climb to Cerro Bella Vista. We dive back into the forest and follow a significantly less trodden path. Here the going got really steep, with us swinging from branch to branch us we storm up through the trees up to the ridge. We stop for some lunch so we don’t stumble and fall on the last summit push. The main cloud layer sits just overhead hiding the surrounding higher peaks but the clouds down in the valleys swirl around giving brief windows out towards the mountains in the distance.

Fuelled up, we crack on up the ridge to the summit. It’s not the most precarious or exposed ridge line, but the cairn markers can be extremely misleading. The entire ridge acts like a false peak, with the next hour spent feeling like the summit is just ahead, fueling our descent into mountain madness. It was pretty obvious when we finally reached the summit as the other side is sheer cliff! We treat ourselves to some well earned lollies and chocolate (while still hoarding snacks for the way down of course) and take in the views. Unfortunately due to the clouds, we didn’t get to see too much of the prophesied volcanos and mountains across Chile and into Argentina.

We don’t sit around too long as we’ve already hit our turn around time and can see the lower clouds starting to creep more and more over the ridge. Naturally we end up on a fairly different route on the way down, those cairn markers weren’t the most useful, but this did result in some pretty extreme looking photos of me scrambling down!

Once down off the ridge, so begins the next 5 hour descent back down the 1600m in elevation and into madness. Time was not on our side, with both of us having bad knees past our age, and well aware that rain and darkness are chasing us down to camp. We do of course make a quick pit stop for a skinny dip in the Laguna!

As night falls, we put off donning our head torches for a bit longer. Without a word, this unanimously transitions to let’s not use our head torches at all if we can! This was heaps of fun and fairly easy for the most part. One really cool aspect of it was the freshly fallen leaves being extremely reflective of light and almost shining a path for us to follow. With only a few small mishaps we finally reached a point where it was way to dark that we begrudgingly donned our head torches. Turns out this was 3 minutes away from the final river crossing signifying the end of a long but rewarding day! Finally back at camp, we head to the hut to cook up dinner and reward ourselves with hot choccy and dunked Oreos while sitting by the fire. After all this, we find out our chill camp attendant bursts in worried about our safe return.

The next morning we cooked up the rest (envision an absurd amount) of our oats, tried to dry out the tent, packed up camp and said farewell to the beautiful valley. On our way back out through the forest, we again kept our eyes out on the hunt for the missing sunglasses but still had no luck. The trek back out, while with lighter packs, still felt like a slog with both our knees complaining after all the elevation from the day before.

Just as we get to the end of the hike I catch a glimpse of a bus waiting by the road. We quickly check out and run down just in time to catch the bus back to Puerto Varas. Pretty lucky considering we weren’t fully across the bus route and schedule before we left off and were preparing to walk another couple of hours down to the main road.