Glacier Grey

Wednesday, Mar 19 – Day 93

We wake up at the base of Glacier Grey. From here, it’s a pretty easy hike up the mountain for a view of the ice field, then back down to the refugio. The round-trip took about 5 hours, and I did the hike alone without carrying any gear.

The viewpoints for this glacier are further away than the Perito Moreno glacier I saw earlier, but they are much higher, so you have a wider field of view and can see the incredible ice field stretch for miles and miles and miles. I sat on a ledge for about an hour just enjoying the absolute silence and looking out over this huge expanse of old ice. They estimate that it takes about 100 years for what was once snow, to make its way down the ice field and calve off as an iceberg into Lago Grey. So at the refugio, you can have a glass of Scotch with 100 year old ice. Ha!

The whole time I was up there on the ledge, not a single hiker came by, which I thought was strange. Back at the refugio later that evening, I met some hikers that were on the back side of the Circuit on the day we had planned to start. They were a day ahead of us, and started their 20 mile day in good weather. They hiked through rain and knee-high snow at some points, and heavy cloud cover blocked their initial view of the ice pack coming over the Gardner Pass, which is one the primary reason people go the long route. As it turns out, we probably would have been stuck out in the wilderness for a day or more if we had followed our original plan as they closed the trail later that day. So in the end, we felt pretty good about our choice to switch to plan B.