El Chalten and a walk on a glacier

After a much deserved chill day in Puerto Natales, we took a five hour bus to El Calafate followed by a three hour bus to El Chalten.  Both cities are in Argentina so we made our requisite border crossing along the way. We arrived in El Chalten abut 4 PM and after a slight delay in finding our hostel due to my address dyslexia (280, 820, whatever), we settled into the Nunataks guesthouse for a couple days.

El Chalten is a tiny town with only 1500 residents. It basically shuts down outside of summer and people really come here for one reason, hiking (or climbing) in Parque Nacional de los Glaciers (Glacier National Park). During the summer, the town is full of tourists and has loads of restaurants, shops, cafes, gear stores, etc. One interesting thing I noticed is that the town seems like a work in progress. Many buildings are half finished with stores, hostels or restaurants on one floor and the skeleton of another floor above. From all over town you can see the nearby peaks.

Since my ankle was (and unfortunately still is) recovering from TDP, we changed our plan of two epic day hikes to Laguna Torres and Laguna de los Tres for views of the Fitz Roy range. Instead, the first day we took two short hikes to lookouts closer to town which both had great views of the range and the second also had views of Lago Viedma to the south. After hiking, we went to brewery for dinner where they make Esquel beer and I discovered my favorite beer of the trip to date- the roja.

The next day we set out after breakfast at Nunataks (most hostels in Chile and Argentina include a basic breakfast- nice perk!) on the Laguna Torre trail. The hike to the lake is 9km each way and takes about 3 hours. Rich and I hiked together to the lookout over the mountains 3 km in and then he continued on to the lake with the better views (and glacier views) while I slowly went on another km and then pouted my way back to town to wait for him.

That evening, after Rich made it back from the lake, we took a bus back to El Calafate.  The next day was our glacier walk!

We got up before 6 am and headed to the office of Hielos y Adventuros (ice and adventure) the company that runs the glacier walks. We took a bus 90 minutes to anther part of Parque Nacional de los Glaciers and paid the entrance fee.  Then we took a 20 minute boat ride to the foot of Perito Moreno glacier.

To say the glacier is massive is an understatement.  The ice towers stories tall above Lago Argentina (which is currently up 10 meters higher than usual due to a huge ice chunk from the glacier that fell into it last week). We got off the boat a 15 minute walk from the glacier’s edge and walked over to huts next to the glacier to put on crampons.

I am admittedly no expert in crampons given that this was my first experience with them. That said, I am fairly sure the ones we used have been around since crampons were invented. They seemed super old school, but hey, they worked!

After a two minute talk on walking with crampons on ice we set off on a 90 minute loop on the glacier. It was (literally) so cool! The ice is white, grey, black, and hundreds of shades of blue. There are pockets of running water and natural sculptures everywhere. And there is just something fun about stomping around on ice with big metal spikes strapped on your feet. At the end of the hike they gave us chocolate and a choice of glacier water or whiskey served on glacier ice (yup, I went whiskey-when on a glacier…).

We then had a lunch break by the dock where most of us sat staring at the glacier hoping to see calving (when chunks of ice break off the glacier and crash into the lake). We saw a couple of small ones and then, right as the boat docked, there was a huge calving event that caused the boat to have to go back out into the lake and re-approach.

After the boat trip back we took a bus to the other side of the glacier where there are four trails of viewing boardwalks. We walked two of the trails and saw 8-10 more calving events. The pics below are a before and after shot of one of them.

That evening we went for dinner on Calafate’s main drag Liberatador. Then we went to an ice bar to have drinks for 30 minutes in a bar where the walls, bar, chairs, and glasses are made of glacier ice.

Today we said farewell to Southern Patagonia and flew to Bariloche.  We’ll be here 5 days before heading to Santiago to meet my parents.  The adventure continues!