I’d hoped to hike the Martial Glacier trail while we were in Ushuaia. That didn’t happen our first full day in Ushuaia because we went birding. We spent most of the second full day in Ushuaia solving SIM card problems and waiting in line at Western Union to change USD to Argentinian pesos – only to find out after 90 minutes of waiting that, unlike Buenos Aires, they don’t offer this service in Ushuaia.

Our last morning in Ushuaia, we had a spare 2.5 hours before embarking on our Antarctica, South Georgia and Falkland Islands/Malvinas expedition cruise. Despite the cool temperature, gusting wind and intermittent rain showers, armed with a small trail map courtesy of our hotel, we headed out on the Hayas Trail and ended up at Beagle Viewpoint.

NOTE: If you prefer your hike reports in video format, check out Mr GeoK’s Relive recap.

Getting There

The trail starts just outside the Las Hayas Resort. If you’re staying elsewhere in Ushuaia, a taxi from town cost us about 2,000 pesos in November 2023 (about US$2). If you have a vehicle, there’s a dirt parking lot across the road (Luis Fernando Martial) from Las Hayas Resort. There are publicly-accessible washrooms in the resort lobby.

The Trail

We turned sharply left after exiting the resort’s front doors, and found ourselves on a short set of stairs and then a boot beaten path leading up into the woods.

We came to several trail intersections, all unsigned. Equipped with nothing but a pretty good sense of direction and the little map from the hotel, we did our best to make some kind of hike of it. We had to turn around once, and after retracing a few hundred meters, found another trail intersection we’d missed on our uphill walk.

That branch took us to Mirador Turbal de las Tres Lagunas, which translates to “peat bog with three lagoons viewpoint”. This was not included on the little map from the hotel, nor was there a sign marking this viewpoint. We learned about it from a Google search after returning home from our vacation.

Mirador Monte Martial

We knew we were on the right track – at least according to the little map from the hotel – when we spotted the sign for the Mount Martial Viewpoint, less than two hundred meters along from the peat bog. The Martial glacier, as far as I can tell from studying maps of the area, is in on the slanted slope connecting the pyramid-shaped mountain on the left and the two pyramid-shaped mountains on the right.

We’d only been hiking about 45 minutes by this point, so we carried on. That was a good decision, because we saw a lot of interesting trees that reminded us of of scenes from The Lord of the Rings.

I agree with the sentiment on this old metal sign we spotted nailed to one tree trunk – it translates to “Beautiful Woods.”

We saw mistletoe, holly berries, arrow-leaved marigolds, Indian Bread fungus and lots of unfamiliar-to-us trees.

Time to Turn Around

About 1 hr 20 minutes/4.3 km after we set out, we came to a trail intersection sign. It marked the start of a wilderness trail to Cerro Bridges (“Bridges Hill”), a summit about 3.5 km away with an elevation gain of some 600 meters, rated a moderate/difficult hike. With an estimated return trip hiking time of 6 hrs 40 minutes (according to the sign), we simply didn’t have enough time to make venturing up that trail worth the effort. Checking our watches, we decided it was time to turn back.

Just a few minutes after turning back, we saw two other hikers – the only other people we encountered until we were just about back at the hotel.

Mirador Beagle

About 1 km after turning back, I spotted a very faint trail branching southward towards a possible viewpoint overlooking Ushuaia. We decided to chance it, knowing we could always turn back and retrace our outgoing route. That’s how we arrived at Beagle Viewpoint (aka Mirador Beagle).

This windy overlook provided an over-the-tree-tops view of the Beagle Channel from Ushuaia, heading towards the Drake Passage. And it’s one of the viewpoints shown on the little map from the hotel.

From here, we took another very faint path heading generally to the hotel.

It soon rejoined the path we’d followed outgoing, so we settled in to enjoy the 45 minute walk back to the hotel. I’d been derelict in terms of taking photos of Mr GeoK, so I tried to make up for it during this leg of our hike!

Back at Las Hayas, we had just enough time for a ping-pong game before boarding a bus to the port, for the start of our Falklands, South Georgia and Antarctica expedition cruise itinerary.

Our expedition ship had docked earlier in the morning. So to give the crew and support time another few hours to bring on supplies and thoroughly clean the cabins and common areas, the expedition itinerary begins with an optional catamaran cruise in the Beagle Channel, which we’d seen from the Beagle Viewpoint on this hike. You can see what a great wildlife viewing preview it gave us by watching Mr. GeoK’s Relive video recap.

Summary

This turned out to be a short, easy hike, mostly in the woods. Highlights for us included the peat bog environments, the unfamiliar-to-us plants and Beagle Viewpoint. Due to the lack of trail signs, a very good sense of direction is required. Or a map of better quality than the little handout from our hotel!

Distance = 8.1 km
Elevation gain = 447 meters
Hiking time = 2 hours 45 minutes, including numerous photo stops