Glacier – RDZ Photography

Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina – January 2020 – Hiking on a Glacier

Los Glaciares provided a chance to do something I had never done – gone hiking on a glacier.

To get there we took a short boat ride across the lake in front of the Perito Moreno Glacier, and ‘docked’ – which was really a stop along rocks shaped somewhat into steps.

We headed across the rocks and beach toward the huts to get prepared – the huts looked tiny compared to where we were headed.

As we were standing on the beach getting some background on how glaciers work a 70 meter (210 foot) high wall of ice came falling down (aka calving). It was very cool – but I do not have room for the 30 or so photos I managed to take in burst mode!

Finally we reached the hut and received our crampons.

The wall of ice was daunting – but we were headed for a more gradual rise.

We were broken up into English speakers and Spanish speakers, then further into groups of 15. Our leader was Ceffi.

And we were off…

Before long we were in the middle of the ice going up, down and over obstacles.

The staff was very helpful, making sure we didn’t fall into crevasses.

The views were fantastic.

Near the end of our 2 hours on the ice we celebrated with a whiskey on ice – straight from the glacier. Ceffi and the rest of the staff were excellent – fun, informative and foremost making sure everything was done safely.

And with that we returned to the starting point where we could reflect on how awesome the hike had been – on top of this massive glacier.

Cerro Tronador, Argentina – December 2019 – Thunder Mountain

Nature

Tronador is an 11,000 foot high extinct volcanic mountain just south of Bariloche, containing numerous glaciers. It’s name is Spanish for Thunder, the sound of the ice cracking in the glaciers.

It is in all day effort to drive up, and hike around, the mountain and the glaciers. We started by heading south on Ruta 40 – passing the ever present hitchhikers seen in the area.

A few miles south of Bariloche you make the turn to the road leading up the mountain. It is a narrow dirt road, so narrow that it is one way up the mountain from 10 AM until 4 PM, then one way back down the mountain until 7 PM.

The initial part of the road passes through a valley floor and Lago Mascardi.

It is a 48 kilometer drive up this road, but about 1/2 way you begin to get some amazing views.

Eventually we made our way to the National Park where we were surrounded by towering walls and waterfalls. The area to the right is known as the Black Glacier due to the amount of debris it picks up off the mountain as it comes down.

Eventually it was time to head back down the mountain and our funky little rental car (which we named La Cucaracha – the cockroach – it was a no frills, nasty little car but no matter what we did to it you couldn’t kill it) hung on through the now wet, curvy downhill.

Southeast Alaska Panhandle – September 2017 – “Uncruise” Part 1

Nature

(please note there are 20+ photos on the next few postings, they might take a bit of time to load)

One place we had always wanted to see was Alaska, but much of it is very difficult to get to. We decided the best way to see it was on a cruise.

I had been on a large ship cruise once for 3 days and kissed the ground when I got off, the tacky shows and lines for everything got old fast. For this trip we chose to go on a small ship cruise from a company aptly named ‘Uncruise’. And no this is not an advertisement for them, but an honest assessment on how great this turned out to be.

We set sail on a rainy Saturday evening from Juneau. The next day we arrived at a fjord called Endicott Arm. The walls soar 1000′ above the water for dramatic effect.

At the end of the fjord is Dawes Glacier, a tidewater glacier.

The main ship was close enough to get some dramatics up on the glacier with a zoom lens.

The difference between the large ships that most people cruise on and the small ships like Uncruise is you get off the boat and do things other than shop at trinket stores in ports. For this portion groups of 8-10 people took ‘skiffs’ the last 6 miles up the fjord to within 1/4 mile of the 200′ high face of the glacier.

As we neared the glacier a guide plucked what she thought was going to be a small piece of ice out of the water. It turned out to be much larger. This piece of ice was brought back on board the ship for a contest when it would finish melting. It took 3 days.

We spent about an hour at the base of the glacier in the skiffs. Every once in a while you would hear loud cracking sounds and nothing happened. For us though, we were fortunate enough to see a major ‘calving’ event, when a large chunk of the glacier fell off into the sea.

As noted this face is 200′ high, so the splash it made is likely + 75′. Amazingly it does not create a tidal wave, just some small ones like someone went by with a small boat and created a wake.

We returned through the icebergs on our way back to the ship.

The Wilderness Adventurer is about 190′ long with 30 passenger cabins. Our trip had 55 passengers and a crew of 20 (or so – I didn’t do an exact count !). As shown below the ship has a number of 2 person kayaks, some paddle boards and the skiffs (which are missing on this photo since they are out at the glacier.

After everyone had returned to the ship we continued on our way we came upon a number of whales who were diving for food. They came upon a couple of sea lions, one of which took refuge on the back of the ship, which got the crew all excited as they said they had only heard of this only ever happening once before.

Since we were stationary at the time he sat there for a while. Once the crew was confident these particular whales had moved on they shoo-ed him/her off the back.