Glaciers, ice and the milky green
Trip Start
Mar 01, 2006
1
293
551
Trip End
Dec 01, 2007
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El Calafate,
Argentina
Sunday, March 18, 2007
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When I got up at 6 it was still pitch black, and I had to get out of bed, and into the main lounge, to look through the giant window and see that the stars were visible. There were maybe a few clouds, but the weather was generally clear, so we had to go. I woke up Milva, we got ready, and hurried up to the travel agent that sold the glaciares boat tour. We got there in time to get tickets, and I even had time to buy coffees at the petrol station before the bus left. It took us 50 km west to Puerto Bandera, our point of entry into the Los Glaciares National Park.
On the way we drove along huge lago Argentino, surrounded by mountains, and the landscape colors were surreal, with tones of yellow-gold-brown-red on the blue sky, the dark mountains, the blue-green lake. And we could see also the ugly weather above the glaciers area to the west.
We paid our park entry fee, an boarded a big two deck catamaran, with another 60 or 80 persons maybe. We passed Boca del Diablo, the narowest part of the lake, where we saw a condor along the cliff, and then went upstream into Brazo Norte, still part of Lago Argentino (biggest lake in Argentinaif I recall correctly). We visited two more brazos. In the first one we saw glaciar Seco, a "small" hanging glacier, an then at the extremity of the brazo we reached glaciar Spegazzini, falling into the water. It was majestuous, its walls reaching 130 meters at the highest part. We were 300 meters away, it was difficult to really understand the shear size of what we were contemplating. The weather was not good, but the guide explained that thanks to the clouds, the ice appeared blue, wheter in full sunlight we would see only a white blinding mass. No good for the pictures, but magic for the senses!
We went back and started going up the brazo Upsala, to reach the upsala glacier. From the beginning of the cruise we had had a preview of the Upsala glcier... because the huge icebergs floating and moving along with the wind on the surface of the lake are from Upsala. There again, the size of the icebergs was difficult to evaluate, even though we were really close to them. At some point we saw the other catamaran near an iceberg, and understood how huge they were. And only 15% of their mass is out of the water...
The icebergs usually appeared white, with blue reflections, but sometimes they appeared completely blue, it was beautiful. The water was milky green, as it is called: the minerals carried over by the glaciers end up in the water, giving them this color, with almost no visibility due to particles in suspension.
And all around were mountains, twisted geological layers, abrupt rock faces plunging from the baren summits into the water. And there was a lot of vegetation too: evergreen forest on lower grounds, and lenga forests above them.
We approached Glaciar Upsala, spent some time near it, and kept watching it for a long time as we went away...
It has a 7km wide front wall falling into the water, and we had to stay 800m away because i can happen that the whole wall falls intothe water in one go... we did not get that spectacular experience, but the sight of the glacier was (another) unforgettable unique experience: it is 60km long, we could not see all the way back, where it reached the Campo Hielo Patagonicao, the huge continental ice mass on the Andes, from where glaciers flow into the valleys of Chile and Argentina.
Back in the days, Argentinians used a flat part of the glaciar to train for their ice and snow landings, in preparation for Antarctic expeditions.
I don't know how far we were able to see, but it was just huge, overwhelming. The Upsala glacier lookd flat, like a vast plain of ice, from afar. It is made of the ice from 30 contributing glaciers, so the lateral moraines of these glaciers leave brown lines up to the surface, a mix of crushed rock and ice, sothat the whole view is that of a flat sinuous mass of ice. When getting closer, the wall is like the Spegazzini: hard solid compressed ice on the lower part, and spikes of ice on the top, with large cracks going as deep as 20m below the surface. And on the hundreds of square kilometers of the surface of the glacier it is the same, peaks of ice resulting from the many cracks that appeared through the thousands of years the glacier moved down to the lake, these cracks themselves resulting from the glacier following the rock profile underneath.
We spent the whole time ouside on deck, even when it was raining and windy, because, because... because it was unique, a once in a lifetime landscape of milky greenwater and dark steep mountains, snow-topped peaks, white and blue icebergs of all shapes, and an ever changing sky, blue or grey, sun and clouds, all making for a light and color show, impossible to capture with a camera, just to be enjoyed on the moment, with somewhere a conscience of being priviledged to be there and able to enjoy it.
Most of the other tourists just went inside the boat drinking cofee to try get warmer, all rushing out when the captain told them there was something to see (but we occuppied the best spots as we were outside all the time, hehehe). That's when you realise how lucky you are too to be receptive to the beauty of nature, to be receptive to moments of feeling and reflexion.
At one point we saw a dark shiny blue iceberg: it had just capsized, and its surface had not started to melt yet, in fact there was still water running on it, flowing back to the lake. A few hours later it would become white like the others, but on the instant we could observe the underwater part of the iceberg, which had just come to the surface, certainly after the iceberg broke and changed its center of gravity.
After the glaciers, we landed in Bahia Onelli, and walked a short trackto lake Onelli. The track took us through lenga forest, the bosque patagonian austral, the preservation of which is the main reason for the creation of all the national parks in Patagonia.
Lake Onelli was covered with ice blocks of different size and shape, and glaciers Onelli and Agassiz were merging as they were falling into the lake. We had our picnic on the shore, the reflexions of the sky and mounains on the water and ice blocks and it was great.
Back to reality later, taking in every single moment on the way back, trying to imprint and record in our minds the images and the impressions of just a few hours before, of this trip into another world. And it was cool to be with Milva too, as she felt the same.
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Comments
thanks for the photos
i cant even try to describe the beauty in your pictures.... it just confirms the passion i have to travel south america