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Distance: 55.5 km. Altitude range: 812 m. Total climb: 2,183 m. Total descent: 2,180 m. Duration: 2-3 days. Grade: Medium to difficult. Recommended: warm, weatherproof clothes, and hiking boots.
Registration is not required for this trail, but the trail should not be undertaken when the round trail is not recommended due to the bad weather. A harness could be rented, but there are many people along the trail, which will help you with their harnesses over the lower part of the Tunel River. Otherwise, you can just cross the river (with wet feet) a little downstream where it divides.
You can do the trail in two days, either hiking up to Paso Huemul in the evening or morning. The trail between El Chalten and the camp site is 6-8 hr. Hence, it might be better to: 1) hike in the first day until the camp site, and see the sunset onto the glacier from there in the evening, 2) spend the next day hiking up and beyond Paso Huemul and exploring the region around the view points and even down until the end of the glacier, and hike back to the camp ground in the late afternoon, and 3) on the third day hike back to El Chalten.
Note, on the way from El Chalten, you have to go down a hill right before the Tunel boat station. This hill should be descended inside the farm land towards the mountain, otherwise you will have to fight with plants full of spikes.
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8-hr (mostly easy) round trip from the town. There are outstanding views of the Mount Fitz Roy range along the way. The trail ends at the stunning cobalt-blue Laguna de los Tres, at the base of Mount Fitz Roy. The last 1.5 km of this hike are very steep and exposed to the elements and as a result some hikers choose to overnight at the nearby Campamento Poincenot prior to climbing the difficult last stretch however in good weather its no more than a hard slog uphill, in bad weather it would be very difficult perhaps even dangerous. A 500-m well-marked additional trail winds around to the left of Laguna de los Tres and leads to a spectacular, cliffside overview of Laguna Sucia, some 200 m below Laguna de los Tres. It is possible to shorten this walk somewhat by getting a transfer to Rio Electric (approx $18,000 as of 2026) and starting the walk from there, many walkers do this. A list of businesses offering transfers is available at the bus station.
6 hr easy round trip that leads to a lake at the base of the dramatic Cerro Torre, which, although only 3,100 m tall, was not summited until 1975, a generation after all the more than 8,000-m Himalayan peaks had been conquered. Cerro Torre's near vertical walls and a permanent, unstable ice veneer at its summit defeated all earlier attempts.
This is the easy way, referred by most packaged tour tourists, but you will not see much of the glacier, only its end. A boat trip combined with a glacier trek on the Lago Viedma and the adjacent Glacier Viedma. No longer possible due to the receding glacier as of November 2023.