February 02, 2004
Ashby's dream of flying
Flying above a glacier is an experience I never dreamt would happen to me. And then it did.
As the heli was catapulting itself closer and closer to the massive sheet of ice I could see with
intense clarity the features of HPS 31.
It's mouth was opening into the near frozen sea in the form of a cave the color of blue azur.
She must have been at least 60 meters high and equally deep. From the depths of this blue
abyss came raging water heading straight into the fiord from a source unclear.
It was coming to dusk and the heli was hovering at the entrance while shining lights inside to better
illuminate the intenisity of the blue.
Reflections of the strikingly smooth interior were contrasting completely to the starkly white irregular
ice shelves surrounding the cave. From here we flew up the continuing glacier which was
varying dramatically in and out of pure white ice mounds
and deep unending blue crevasses.
Pressing on up and up and up in the mechanical bird, the white ice became smoother and smoother until a vast part appeared a perfect ski slope. Though, just as my eye was adjusting to finally looking at something recognizable again, nature changed her course. As if needing a breath, a field of jagged bright turquoise spikes forced their way through the previously meandering slope demanding the attention they much deserved. Ouch, I thought as the heli pilot hovered only meters above them for a better look.
And then it was over, all within minutes I was back on the deck of the Arctic Sunrise...thinking, "Will I ever be able to describe that experience with words?"
Ashby
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.