13 March 2023 – Estero Las Montanas and Bernal Glacier

The Canal of Mountains

The zodiac in the foreground gives you an idea of the size of the glacier we were to approach

Today after cruising along the Estero Las Montanas surrounded by tall mountains with lush slopes and many glaciers, we loaded into zodiacs to be off loaded on the rocky shore – we were to walk to the face of the huge Bernal glacier and few Km inland - I know it doesn't look that far. I was!  

Top L: Magelanic fuchsia, Top R: pretty daisies buried amongst Devil's Strawberries, Bottom: an unidentified flower or seed cone and lots of different grasses and mosses. 

No this is not someone's pet rock! Brilliant slashes of hematite.

It was further in than we thought but quite breathtaking along the way through dense vegetation, over rocks and stones of many colours (red, soft pink, green, yellow), across melt lakes to finally crunch through rough graved (moraine) and over massive boulders - and just to add to the atmosphere it was raining off and on!  All so we could touch this shimmering blue river of ice moving imperceptibly slowly until it could not support its only weight and tumbled great blocks of itself into the growing melt lake in front of it. What an amazing beast.

We were dwarfed by the landscape

We stopped to take a selfie and admire the flowers (take a breather)

We were aiming for that spot circled in blue - it seemed so far away over terrain that was a little challenging at times!

It's stunning up close and the colours had to be seen to be believed.

And we made it. The last 100m or so was over big slippery boulders (I simply walked in the water). Lindsay climbed up to touch IT but it was a 'glacier too far' for me. I got within arms reach but by this time my vertigo was doing a crazy dance in my head so I didn't want to risk falling. I got sooo close and touched the rocks it was temporarily resting on. It was enough for me, I was happy - and very aware that we had a 2-3 km walk to get back to the zodiac.  It was enough!

The zodiacs were a very welcome sight.