Glaciar Perrito Moreno
View from Glaciar
In crampons and climbing harness, hiking on Perrito Moreno
We arrived fresh off a 19 hour bus ride to El Calafate from Ushuaia at 1am, took a taxi to our hostel, America del Sur, and went straight to bed. Even though we had all slept all day on the bus, we still slept all the way through the night until 9am the next day.
El Calafate is a somewhat bizarre little town. It seems that people really only come here to see the glaciar, Perrito Moreno, and then they leave. The town is about the size of Estes Park, CO and has about the same layout - lots of outdoor stores, restaurants, tourist agencies, and hostels. We explored the city the first day and then booked our tour for the next day from the hostel. We decided to go for the ¨BIG ICE¨tour. We hopped on the bus at 7am, drove about 1.5 hours and arrived at the lookout point for Perrito Moreno glaciar. It was incredible!!! I wasn`t sure what to expect, but it was almost as good as Iguazu Falls. I had never seen a glaciar before and my guess is that not many can top this one. Within the first 10 minutes of looking at it, we saw a HUGE chunk break off, accompanied by a crunching noise, and watched it sink into the icy water below. The glaciar is nestled between two sizeable mountains on either side and reminded me of the glacial valleys of the Andes in Ecuador, except with an actual glaciar still inside! We then crossed the water in front of the glaciar, met our guides, and started hiking. We were a group of 20, but eventually split into two groups for the ice trekking. After about an hour we reached the ice, put on our climbing harnesses and crampons, had a lesson in walking with crampons, and started out across the ice. The guide told us that they can´t take the same route every day because the ice is constantly changing but somehow he always knew where the crevasses would be and he carved them out for us to jump over. In some places, water collects on the top of the glaciar and it was an incredible crystal blue color that I have never seen before. Also, there are glacial rivers that find weak spot in the ice and carve their way through. They have found rivers running through the ice that can be as long at 8km. The glaciar, from one end to the other is 30km. HUGE!!! We could only walk on one part of it because it becomes too craggy to walk on without knowing how to ice climb on either end of the glaciar. There was about 5 inches of snow on the glaciar as well, which was somewhat unusual, but it had been snowing for the 3 days previous to our tour. We were the lucky ones who got the first blue sky day in a long time. At one point, we were looking down into a huge sink hole that was bright blue and all of a sudden, one of our guides, from New Zealand, jumped down into it and started climbing down using his ice ax and crampons - not roped into anything. Crazy people.
Lucy Page and Cortney decided to go horseback riding today, Saturday, but Amy and I chose to stay behind to save a bit of money. Also, I twisted my knee a bit on the glaciar because I turned around too fast and my crampons were still pointing one direction and my knee went the other. It is just a bit swollen, so I am hoping that it will be fine by Monday when we start our trek in Torres del Paine. Tomorrow we take the bus to Puerto Natales and then on Monday we will be in the backcountry for about a week - so it might be awhile before another post.
We are all relatively healthy (a couple of colds are going around) and all very happy. In other news, I received my Peace Corps post in the Spanish speaking Caribbean as an Environmental Education representative. I will be working with NGO`s, local schools, and eco-tourism agencies to evaluate the effectivness of environmental ed curriculum and develop youth leadership programs. Very exciting!! I leave in late February.
El Calafate is a somewhat bizarre little town. It seems that people really only come here to see the glaciar, Perrito Moreno, and then they leave. The town is about the size of Estes Park, CO and has about the same layout - lots of outdoor stores, restaurants, tourist agencies, and hostels. We explored the city the first day and then booked our tour for the next day from the hostel. We decided to go for the ¨BIG ICE¨tour. We hopped on the bus at 7am, drove about 1.5 hours and arrived at the lookout point for Perrito Moreno glaciar. It was incredible!!! I wasn`t sure what to expect, but it was almost as good as Iguazu Falls. I had never seen a glaciar before and my guess is that not many can top this one. Within the first 10 minutes of looking at it, we saw a HUGE chunk break off, accompanied by a crunching noise, and watched it sink into the icy water below. The glaciar is nestled between two sizeable mountains on either side and reminded me of the glacial valleys of the Andes in Ecuador, except with an actual glaciar still inside! We then crossed the water in front of the glaciar, met our guides, and started hiking. We were a group of 20, but eventually split into two groups for the ice trekking. After about an hour we reached the ice, put on our climbing harnesses and crampons, had a lesson in walking with crampons, and started out across the ice. The guide told us that they can´t take the same route every day because the ice is constantly changing but somehow he always knew where the crevasses would be and he carved them out for us to jump over. In some places, water collects on the top of the glaciar and it was an incredible crystal blue color that I have never seen before. Also, there are glacial rivers that find weak spot in the ice and carve their way through. They have found rivers running through the ice that can be as long at 8km. The glaciar, from one end to the other is 30km. HUGE!!! We could only walk on one part of it because it becomes too craggy to walk on without knowing how to ice climb on either end of the glaciar. There was about 5 inches of snow on the glaciar as well, which was somewhat unusual, but it had been snowing for the 3 days previous to our tour. We were the lucky ones who got the first blue sky day in a long time. At one point, we were looking down into a huge sink hole that was bright blue and all of a sudden, one of our guides, from New Zealand, jumped down into it and started climbing down using his ice ax and crampons - not roped into anything. Crazy people.
Lucy Page and Cortney decided to go horseback riding today, Saturday, but Amy and I chose to stay behind to save a bit of money. Also, I twisted my knee a bit on the glaciar because I turned around too fast and my crampons were still pointing one direction and my knee went the other. It is just a bit swollen, so I am hoping that it will be fine by Monday when we start our trek in Torres del Paine. Tomorrow we take the bus to Puerto Natales and then on Monday we will be in the backcountry for about a week - so it might be awhile before another post.
We are all relatively healthy (a couple of colds are going around) and all very happy. In other news, I received my Peace Corps post in the Spanish speaking Caribbean as an Environmental Education representative. I will be working with NGO`s, local schools, and eco-tourism agencies to evaluate the effectivness of environmental ed curriculum and develop youth leadership programs. Very exciting!! I leave in late February.
1 comment:
Kate, congrats on your posting for Peace Corp! I love your blog -- the only problem is I don't get reminded to check it often enough, like when you sent emails. But the pictures and added ability to review your past stops is great. Looking forward to your next installment . . .
Love,
Elizabeth
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