Glacier Trekking

From Puerto Madryn we made our way to El Calafate, right in the centre of Patagonia. It is a small town built around the Perito Moreno glacier. This is one of three Patagonian glaciers that are not receding and the experts don't know why. It advances into Lake Argentino and forms a dam with the land on the other side. When the pressure builds up enough, the face of the glacier caves, creating a spectacular big event. The last big rupture was in July of this year. The tour we did brought us to the national park where we got quite close to the glacier. It is addictive as you watch the glacier, waiting and hoping for a big chunk to fall off. We managed to see some small parts calve, nothing spectacular, though the noise would make you think it was a catastrophic collapse. The remainder of the tour brought us to the west side of the glacier where we did trekking on the ice. We were all given crampons, very basic metal spikes tied onto the foot with rope. It was a bit unusual to walk on at first but totally necessary if you wanted to be able to climb the ice. The bedrock underneath the ice is bumpy and the glacier follows that topography so the top of it is also bumpy, giving lots of wonderful shapes. The ice reflects the blue colour from the sun so the ice has an amazing blue hue. The trek lasted for 1.5h. It was great and for a few moments i imagined something of what Tom Crean and his fellow explorers must have experienced as they set off on their explorations. Needless to say i didn't discover anything new but was nicely surprised when we rounded the last corner and were greeted with a glass of whiskey- on ice!!!