Elevation Gain: 832m
Distance: 10.90km
Total Time: 4 hours 36 minutes
Date: November 18th, 2023
Cerro Manquehue is the tallest summit among a small range located directly north of Santiago. It boasts an exceptionally popular hiking area, somewhat akin to Grouse Mountain or The Chief. Andrea and I had a spare day in Santiago and we wanted to explore some of the nearby mountains. We were without a car, so that eventually narrowed our options down to the Manquehue area which was at least somewhat transit accessible.
Andrea did an awesome job planning for us as I was feeling very under the weather and with just one train ride and a bus transfer we had made it to an intersection with G-19 Highway which would lead us directly to the trail head. The bus initially blew past our stop and so we had to tack on an extra 500m of walking but we were soon back on track.
We walked through what appeared to be a very affluent neighborhood, replete with surveillance systems, tall fences and the occasional guard dogs at the perimeter. After about 3 and a bit kilometers through various neightborhood streets, we reached the trail head where tons of locals were filtering in and out. High above we got our first glance of the summit and it looked like it’d be a nice hike up.
With that we hit the trail and followed the well marked signs up and through the forest/brushland. At around 1250m the grade steepened quite a bit and the trail turned to compact dirt with kitty litter on top. No fun for the way down, but we clambered up without too much issue. As we crested the end of the steep section we discovered a false summit with the real summit still a ways off. The trail was less steep beyond though and after a short while we reached the true summit and found a nice spot to take in the views.
After our summit break we headed down, treading carefully on the kitty litter section and then back to the paved neighborhood roads. We bussed back from a nearby spot and that concluded an easy day out.
Not much to add to this one, there’s tons of information online!