Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

So we started our final tour of Patagonia by visiting the Glaciares National Park for a second time. We´d done a little bit of it previously, but this time we did a full loop around the best parts of the park, with a bit of glacier walking thrown in at the end.

Well, I´m glad we went back. The weather was better, the parts we hadn´t seen previously were just as good as the ones we had and the glaciar walking (on Glaciar Grande at the base of Cerro Torre) was awesome.

The best part though was once again the weather. The first time I did the Laguna de los Tres walk there were low-hanging clouds and hail coming in horizontally on the way up. Needless to say we didn´t get the best views. It cleared up somewhat later in the day but by that stage we´d come back down and missed the views that Cerro Fitz Roy is famous for.

This time however, we were just plain lucky to be there during what the mountaineers in the area (and probably everywhere I guess) call a “window”. This is a (sometimes small) period of time during which the weather is good enough (mainly no wind) to go climbing up a sheer wall of granite (and you thought I was crazy). January had not had a window until the 15th of Jan… which happened to be the day after we arrived. It lasted the whole time we were there and then some (by the end of Torres del Paine a week later the weather was still glorious, absolutely amazing). As soon as I get technology at this end working I´ll show off some more with some photos

Anyway, apart from the usual sights (our walk was a loop from El Chalten to Laguna Capri, Laguna de los Tres, Lagunas Madre y Hija, Lago Torre, Cerro Torre and back out to El Chalten) we also did some glaciar walking, which was pretty cool. All that´s needed are some gloves and crampons on your shoes and you can walk straight onto it. Having guides and great weather (windstill!) probably made things easier, but still. The glacier we did was Glaciar Grande at the foot of Cerro Torre. This had the nice side effect of actually being able to walk several kms (not all on the glaciar) closer to the base of Cerro Torre for even better views of what would have to be one of the coolest peaks I know. Some ice climbing (only a few meters) after lunch as part of the glacier walking topped off a great day, which in turn topped off an amazing couple of days around Los Glaciares.