Glacier Cruising in the Chilean Fjords

 

15 March 2014

Today was all about slowly cruising through the Chilean fjords and viewing snowcapped mountains and glaciers. The Southern Patagonian Ice Field covered all of southern Chile 10,000 years ago and helped to form the inlets that we are cruising through today. Along with other icefields, almost 3% of Chili remains ice covered. The day culminated in a stop at the Amalia Glacier.

We spent the entire day either sitting in our room looking out the balcony sliding glass door or on our balcony wrapped in our jackets and gloves and hats taking endless pictures of the beautiful wilderness. About 5 pm, when we neared the Amalia Glacier, we went up to the Lido deck where an interpreter gave a talk about the area and the glacier.

Amalia Glacier is a tidewater glacier located in Bernardo O’Higgins National Park (O’Higgins was the founder of current day Chili.) The glacier partially surrounds a volcano and is eroding its left flank. Like most other glaciers in the world, Amalia Glacier has been shrinking; from 1945 to 1986 its terminus retreated over 4 miles.

We have been in this cold weather for six days now. I am looking forward for something a bit warmer. It has been interesting to see the locus of activities for the ship shift from the open decks of the pool area to the promenade level and atrium area where the shops are. People are taking over any place where they can find a table and chairs to play cards and board games. The International Café with its specialty coffees is especially popular.

Now we sail out to the Pacific Ocean and our next stop, Puerto Montt.

 

Some of the glacier scraped mountains on the way to Amalia Glacier.

Entering the inlet that holds the glacier. The clouds were very low hanging, but they moved up a bit and things became a bit brighter as we got closer to the glacier.



A relatively large iceberg. It is difficult to estimate the actual size from 10 floors up, but I think this is at least 60 feet long.



The glacier is in the background.



Amalia Glacier. There are at least 3 flows that merge into the final flow that goes down to the water.



We were amazed at the stillness of the water as well as the large number of ice chunks.



You can see what they mean when they say that 90% of an iceberg is under water.



We didn’t get too terribly close to the glacier because of the size of our ship. You can see how the glacier has wrapped itself around the volcano.



The glacier is very fragmented at its terminus. It has a lot of blue ice which is very old ice. The color is blue because the ice has been compressed so much there is little air in it and the ice absorbs all color except blue.

There were countless waterfalls along the shoreline.