Photos

This amazing and colourful sculpture is the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina. It can be found in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares in Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia. The nearest town - and best place to organise an excursion to the park - is El Calafate, about 80km away.

The 250km² ice formation, of 30km in length, is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field located in the Andes system shared with Chile. This icefield is the world's third largest reserve of fresh water.

The Perito Moreno Glacier is one of only three Patagonian glaciers that are not retreating. Periodically the glacier advances over the L-shaped "Lago Argentino" ("Argentine Lake") forming a natural dam which separates the two halves of the lake when it reaches the opposite shore. With no escape route, the water-level on the Brazo Rico side of the lake can rise by up to 30 metres above the level of the main lake. The enormous pressure produced by this mass of waters finally breaks the ice barrier holding it back, in a spectacular rupture event. This dam/rupture cycle is not regular and it naturally recurs at any frequency between once a year to less than once a decade.

The terminus of the Perito Moreno Glacier is 5 km wide, with an average height of 60 metres above the surface of the water, with a total ice depth of 170 metres. It advances at a speed of up to 2 metres per day (around 700 metres per year), although it loses mass at approximately the same rate, meaning that aside from small variations, its terminus has not advanced or receded in the past 90 years. At its deepest part, the glacier has a depth of approximately 700 metres.

The Perito Moreno glacier was named after the explorer Francisco Moreno, a pioneer who studied the region in the 19th century and played a major role in defending the territory of Argentina in the conflict surrounding the international border dispute with Chile.

The photo above shows a small section of the front wall near the edge of the lake. The tallest part you can see there is about 30 metres high so most of those holes you can see really are big enough to walk into quite comfortably! Not that you can do that, of course. The front wall of the glacier is an extremely precarious and volatile place to be. Deafening cracks and groans like thunder-claps or a shotgun being fired reverberate around the valley as huge chunks shift and move and eventually fall off this colossal piece of ice.

Full-frame shot, framedin Photoshop. Increased contrast in sky by +15 to bring a bit of colour back into it as it was a little over-exposed, otherwise unchanged. A sensible person might have used a lens filter in the first place! ;)

Regards,

Rich