Crampons strapped on, we prepared to begin the initial ascent. I could feel the chill from the huge mass of ice towering above me.
My first step forwards and I felt the crampons crunch into the ice. Lifting up my foot I tried to remember everything the guide had told us about climbing on ice, that we should keep our feet well apart to avoid tripping over the crampons, that we should walk flat-footed so that all the spikes in the crampons engaged the ice, and that we should try to keep our centre of gravity a little further forwards than usual.
It took a while to adapt to this unnatural gait. Going down steep slopes was especially nerve-wracking to begin with as we were told not to turn our feet sideways, for fear that we would twist our ankles, but to walk feet forwards down the slope. This gave a sensation that we were going to topple face first.
But after a couple of slopes I started to trust that the crampons were going to hold me and began to marvel at the utterly amazing views around me.
Approaching the beast
The initial approach to El Perito Moreno glacier on the road that runs through the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares is one of the most memorable experiences of my life. The first clear view of the glacier is awesome enough, stretching through the valley out of sight past the mountains.
But it’s only as you draw closer that you start to comprehend the sheer scale of it. It towers 70m above the lake’s surface, and extends a further 170m below the surface. Standing in front of the 5km wide face it’s incredible to think that this huge mass of ice is advancing towards you at a rate of up to 2m a day. As it advances, the pressures and strains on the ice cause it to break. Huge slabs of ice crack, with a noise like gunshot, break off and smash into the waters below, a process known as calving. It is an awesome and mesmerising sight.
People used to be allowed to walk right down on the shoreline but the authorities closed off access and built raised walkways after many people were killed by falling ice
And this is the beast we were walking on!
Mind the gap!
Navigating on a glacier is not easy. The surface of a glacier is not smooth but is composed of huge crevasses, which open up as the ice flows over the bedrock below. This means that you spend a lot of time in gullies, surrounded by peaks of ice on all sides, impossible to get a clear view across the ice to check your direction.
On top of that the glacier is constantly shifting so the routes change all the time. And then there are the chasms that open up all the way into the heart of the ice, that you by no means want to fall into to. What horror to be trapped inside that constantly moving, massive beast of a glacier. The guides were skilful in leading us safely around these, thankfully!
From time to time as we continued our trek we would hear the crack of the ice echoing across the bay, as its front continued to collapse under the weight of all the ice behind it pressing forwards. A reminder that this was in a way a live animal that we were trekking on, constantly twisting and writhing.
A different planet
The colour of the ice is fascinating. That deep blue is totally natural, and the reason for it is that the ice is so compressed that air bubbles are forced out of it. Usually those air bubbles would scatter the light, but without them the light can penetrate more deeply. The light at the red end of the spectrum can penetrate deepest of all, meaning that the light that is scattered is composed more of the blue end of the spectrum.
Walking up there on the glacier was like being on a different planet. The blue white surface as far as the eye could see, the plodding gait, like being in space boots perhaps!, the focus we all had on just putting one foot in front of the other, hands gloved in case we fell onto the sharp ice, even the air seemed extra pure up there on the glacier. It was so easy to lose track of time. We walked in total for probably no more than an hour, but it felt like we had left the world far behind us.
Back to earth
On our final descent we spotted a small bar set up on the ice, and there our guides poured us glasses of whiskey with glacier ice.
Cheers! The whiskey is just what we needed to bring our minds back to this world after what was a truly awesome and mesmerising experience.
