Bikepacking in Carretera Austral

Chile's Ruta 7 is a road that barely qualifies as one: twelve hundred kilometres of mostly gravel threading the fjords, hanging glaciers and temperate rainforest of northern Patagonia, with ferries stitching the gaps where the land runs out entirely. Ridden south from Puerto Montt, it is less a route than a slow immersion in a region that had no through-road at all until the 1980s.

The riding is hard in a specifically Patagonian way. The surface is loose, the rain is frequent, and the wind can stop you dead on the flat — but the compensations are constant: the marble caves on Lago General Carrera, roadside hot springs, glaciers calving into lakes you camp beside, and the near-total freedom to pitch a tent wherever the day ends.

Go in the southern summer, December to March, when the daylight stretches long. Carry everything, plan around the ferry timetables, and accept that the weather, not you, sets the pace.

Ride it in the southern summer; carry camping gear and plan around the ferries where the road runs out.