The Cordillera Sarmiento is a mountain range located in the Chilean Patagonia to the west of Puerto Natales named after Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, who was a Spanish explorer who navigated the region's waterways between 1579 and 1580. On the official maps of the Chilean IGM, not a single feature of the Cordillera de Sarmiento has been given a name, in part due to the total lack of human presence in the area. Nevertheless, over the years, explorers and climbers have named the summits, lakes, glaciers, and rivers. With nearly 2,000 metres of jagged relief, the cordillera has a profile somewhat similar to the French Alps, but its glaciation is much more extensive, sending large glacier snouts into tidewater.
The fjords and islands of southern Chile are as about as remote as you can get. Punta Arenas, easily the largest and most important town and focal point of the region, where most visitors arrive to explore the Patagonian wilderness, is only accessible from northern Chile by air. Only one, solitary road leads out of it to Puerto Natales, three hours’ drive away and the jumping off point for visits to Torres del Paine National Park and beyond. The surrounding wilderness is made up of sculpted fjords and glaciers, at the point where the ice-spiked Andes finally crumble into the sea. Its landscapes are a mosaic of mountain ranges, forests, glaciers, fjords, lakes, wetlands, and valleys—virgin ecosystems of unmatched beauty—and are home to a wide variety of plant and animal species.
