February 01, 2004
Frozen Thunder
No, it is not the name of a new action movie! It is the sound of the
glacier. When you spend a little time around glaciers, you start to have a
feeling that they are alive. You can look at the mass of ice, turn away
from it and when you look back again it will be completely changed. This is
because of the glaciers amazing way of reflecting and absorbing light. A
tiny little cloud makes a huge difference.
José Pera, our on board mountaineer, has also walked on the ice at night and describes it like this:
Sleeping on a glacier is great; the sound of the wind is
special. If you walk on the glacier during full moon nights you have the
impression that you are walking on the surface of the moon. The blue colour
of the ice disappears at night. It is beautiful and isolated at the same
time. It's a weird feeling. You walk on top of a cold surface with metal
nails on your feet to avoid slipping, and make a chipping sound every time
you take a step.
The glacier sounds like rolling thunder when a
piece breaks off and falls into the water. I've seen icebergs roll around
like big whales. This happens when the iceberg melts more on one side, or
looses a part: rolls to regain its stability. It is a humbling experience,
especially if you are sitting in a boat of the smaller kind!
Today we visited the San Rafael glacier, one of the highest glaciers of the Northern Patagonian Icefield.
The San Rafael retreats about 70 meters every year. A local company that brings tourists to the glacier have started painting
numbers on the mountain wall by the front. These numbers mark the years,
and show how much the ice have retreated. They started doing this in the
seventies. The glacier is now very far from where it was in 1976.
That glacier even looks alive. Like some coral encrusted unicorn of the sea. Being a tribal artist, I notice these kind of things.
Posted by: Rob at March 3, 2004 07:15 AM.
Posted by: Zulma Lapalma at March 20, 2004 06:56 PM