the ups, downs, and arounds of los glaciares (1of2)

from el califate it was up to el chalten, the sleepy one-dirt-road town whose seemingly sole purpose is to accommodate the hoards or hikers and climbers who come to experience the beauty of argentina’s parque nacional los glaciares. although the park is just across the border from chile's torres del paine, the landscape and trekking is quite a bit different.

the first day was a glacier trek on glaciar del torre. the trek started with lots of beautiful scenery through beech groves, then onto laguna torre where we could see the impressive peak, cerro torre--- more walking, then it was time for the zip line, which wasn't as easy as it looks. you get halfway across before realizing you actually have to put some work in to put yourself up to the other side. after the zip there were some up and downs and arounds before coming to the glacier. here we strapped on our ice picky shoe things and it was finally time to walk along the glacier. the glacier itself was beautiful with small coves and blue-ish puddles, and we had some softly falling snow to make the picture complete. after walking around aimlessly for a bit it was time to do some vertical ice pick climbing. unlike the zip line, this wasn't quite as hard as it looked, and once i got a rhythm down (and realized i wasn't going to poke my eye out with either of the ice picks), i made it to the top with no further ado. some more glacier walking, then time for the three hours trek home.