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Published: October 18th 2010
When we arrived in El Calafate, it was windy and rainy the entire day. Which was fine considering we scheduled one day to get things organized before we head out for 2 days of intense all-day hikes. But having to do 2 days of 12 hour long hikes in the rain, snow and wind would have taken all of the enjoyment out of this part of the trip. But once again we got lucky and we woke up the next morning and the clouds and rain had cleared. When we got into Parque Nacional los Glaciers there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, which was awesome because the surrounding mountains and cliffs really added to the whole experince.
We first stopped at the observation decks that look out onto the face glacier to get a panoramic view before we actually started the hike. The glacier is 5 km long so even from a distance it’s impossible to capture the whole width in one picture. The coolest part was that you could actually hear the glacier cracking from the observation deck. Then at certain moments, you could see a part of the glacier break off and fall into the lake below.
This happened several times and it sounded like thunder as it echoed off the mountains.
After the observation deck, we took a short boat ride across the lake to where we would start our hike. It was pretty crazy being on a boat with big pieces of ice floating by. At some points, you could even hear the boat run into small pieces of ice, which seemed really sketchy.
Once we reached the other side of the lake we were fitted for crampons and harnesses before setting off on our hike. We hiked about 5 km from the front of the glacier on a winding dirt trail and passed waterfalls and awesome mountains along the side of the path before reaching the point where we would begin our hike on the ice. It took a little time to get comfortable walking with the crampons and learning how to use them to your advantage when you’re making you way up the slopes in the ice, but once we did then things got more interesting as we made our way over large cracks in the ice and up and over peaks. Along the way, you see big holes in the
ice that extend down as far as you can see. The holes allow water to run into the middle of the glacier creating waterfalls on top of the ice. In all, we walked probably around 3 km into the middle of the glacier before stopping to take a break and eat some lunch.
From there, we thought the guide would probably just take us back but as it turned out, our guides were intense climbers that only did this job so they could further explore the glacier. The tour is the only way that the national park will allow them to trek on the glacier, so these guys spend the next few hours exploring down some seemingly sketchy holes in the ice and climbing some large faces that were deeper into the glacier than we had previously traveled. We were also given the chance to learn how to climb some of the slopes, which was an awesome experience.
The climbs and exploration of some of the ice caves and holes turned out to be the highlight of the experience. I knew that this was going to be one of the coolest experiences on the trip, but it turned
out that it even surpassed my expectation for the trip. When planning the trip, I thought it seemed a little crazy to head to one of the southernmost towns in South America just to hike on a glacier, but it turned out that the scenery and the adventure was totally worth it. Plus, it turns out that Mt. Fitz Roy is only about 220 km away from El Calafate so tomorrow Jeff and I are taking an early bus to the closest city, El Chalten, to do another all day hike through the surrounding mountains.
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Aaron
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The View
What an amazing environment; just spectacular! Thanks for getting it on camera for us all.