Visiting Perito Moreno: Patagonia’s Most Famous Glacier

While in El Calafate, we took the opportunity to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier, a 90-minute drive away, located in Los Glaciares National Park. The visit involved exploring the area via a series of walkways built across from the glacier, followed by a boat tour to get even closer to the glacier and its floating icebergs.

It is difficult to grasp the size and scale of the glacier. The ice walls rise 50 to 70 meters (165 to 230 feet) above the water; that is, the height of a 15 to 20 story building. Below the surface, the ice extends an additional 100+ meters (300+ feet) into the waters of Lake Argentino. The glacier spans approximately 5 km (3 miles) across its face and stretches about 30 km (19 miles) in length, covering a total area of roughly 250 km² (90 square miles).

Visiting Perito Moreno involves witnessing frequent collapses of ice falling from the glacier’s edge, creating a thunder-like sound as it crashes into the lake. This process, known as calving, is part of a glacier’s natural lifecycle, but the frequency and intensity have increased in recent years due to climate change.

The Retreat of the Glaciers

After remaining relatively stable for roughly a century, the Perito Moreno Glacier has been progressively retreating since around 2019, with some areas having receded by more than 800 metres (0.5 miles). In addition to this retreat, the glacier is also thinning at an average rate of about 5.5 meters (18 feet) per year.

Once considered one of the few stable glaciers in the world (accumulating mass at a rate similar to its loss), the glacier, along with others fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, is now retreating at an alarming pace. Glaciers that took thousands of years to form are shrinking within decades, with significant environmental consequences. Seeing this up close, it’s hard not to feel a sense of sadness about the realities of climate change.