Torres del Paine: Day 4 - Hiking on Glacier Grey

Sunday, March 8

We woke up with plans to continue our hike up the trail along Glacier Grey, but something caught Lily’s eye. A lodge at the back of the camp was advertising hikes on the glacier itself. We made a group decision to splurge on the glacier hike and hopped on the boat just before it shoved off for the glacier. Everyone was gleaming with excitement as the boat made its way across the lake to the “calm’ side of the glacier. The guides explained that a glacier is a frozen river, and there are parts of the glacier that are more calm than others just like calm spots in a river. The "calm" area located behind a giant rock island was ideal for the hike because it was more flat and didn’t involved the dangers of ice crevasses.

When we landed on the island everyone strapped on the mandatory gear of crampons and ice picks. This couldn’t have been more hardcore. After a quick rundown of the safety procedures, we were off with our guide Pancho. The colors were even more remarkable than we had pictured. The sun was shining and highlighting every shade of white and blue imaginable. We crossed the frozen landscape and approached a deep blue ice cave where we saw the only living organism on the glacier…the Patagonian Dragon. This insect-like creature looked like a scorpion and fed off the lichen in the pools of the glacier.

We continued our journey across the glacier, when the guides stopped us to look into a Moulan. Moulan’s are deep crevasses caused by water running through the stress lines in the glacier. The holes then expand at an exponential rate due to the strong winds blowing across the surface of the ice. The result, a hole 10+ meters deep with rushing cascades of water. The guides strapped on lines to our safety harnesses and served as anchors as we leaned over the edge looking down into the moulan. I had never been so happy to be wearing crampons because one false step and I was toast. After about 3 hours, our journey was coming to an end, but not before Daniel and I filled up our water bottles with sweet crisp glacial water. It was absolutely delicious.

The guides led us back to the boat and the captain played frogger with the icebergs as we crossed the lake. I think 200 icebergs broke off from the glacier from the time we were dropped off until now. We were told that the iceberg had been retreating almost 30 meters per year. An astonishing rate to say the least. It was beautiful, but also a bit nerve-wracking because one false move and we would be in the water with the floating chunks of ice. We made it across and put on the after burners to make it back to Refugio Pehoé to catch the last ferry. The trail back was scheduled to take 3.5 hours which would put us back by 6:15pm with the ferry scheduled to leave by 6:30pm. We made the hike in 2:45 hours and had plenty of time to relax in the grass before the ferry came. This trip couldn’t have been more amazing. We were extremely fortunate with the weather, saw some of the most spectacular scenery nature has to offer, and got to hike on a frozen river!!! Trips don’t get much better than that.