Nahuel Huapi Traverse
Travesía Nahuel Huapi
A hut-to-hut traverse in the mountains above Bariloche, from the Cerro Catedral ski base to Colonia Suiza via the Frey, Jakob, Laguna Negra and López refuges.
At a glance
- Starts in
- Villa Catedral
- Ends in
- Colonia Suiza
- Length
- 45 km
- On foot
- 4–5 days
- Countries
Argentina
About the trail
The Nahuel Huapi Traverse links a chain of mountain refuges in Nahuel Huapi National Park, the oldest national park in Argentina, in the Andes behind Bariloche. It starts at Villa Catedral, at the foot of the Cerro Catedral ski slopes, and finishes at Colonia Suiza, a village founded by Swiss settlers near Lago Moreno.
Each day crosses a high col between glacial basins: from Refugio Frey, below the granite spires of Catedral, to Refugio Jakob, then to Laguna Negra and Refugio López. The passes are steep, loose and partly exposed, and snow can linger late in the season, but each night is spent in a mountain hut.
Bariloche's official tourism site describes the four-refuge tour as a high-difficulty route of four to five days, with four to nine hours of walking a day, and notes that treks in the national park must be registered in advance. It gives no total distance.
Length measured on the OpenStreetMap line; no official figure checked yet.