Big Ice, Leche de Glaciar

During our Patagonia trip, Annie and I visited many big glaciers, all part of the Southern Patagonian Icefield. The streams, rivers and lakes of Patagonia are filled with pure, azure glacial runoff. You can stick your head right in lake and start drinking. Locally, they refer to the milky blue glacial water as "leche de glaciar" or milk of the glacier, due to its milk appearance. It looks this way due to the high mineral content in the melted runoff.

In this image, Annie is hiking down the valley to the Cerro Torre glacier, where we did a trek on the ice with crampons. We hiked about 3.5 steep hours and crossed one river via Tyrolean traverse and balanced on boulders to cross another, before arriving at the glacier. It was a 12 hour day, followed by about 12 cold cervezas.

And ... here's Annie, getting ready to attack the ice, complete with crampons

This is our guide, Diego, trying to stay dry on a river traverse. The guides enjoy dunking each other on this traverse by pulling the line up and down as someone attempts to cross. It was Diego's birthday on this day, so it seemed appropriate that he should get wet. I'm sure it was all very safe and calculated ...


This is a shot of the Perito Moreno glacier, which puts on a show 24/7 for spectators, dropping thousands of tons of ice into the lake for onlookers. This photos doesn't do it justice, the wall is 80 feet high, towering over a lake filled with ice bergs. When chunks come crashing down, the valley thunders and waves of whitewater rip across the lake.