I’ve travelled the length and breadth of Patagonia, but Los Glaciares in Argentina has always been my favourite national park. I first backpacked here in 2002, then again a few years later when I did a mad cross-continental bike ride from Rio all the way south to Ushuaia at the very tip of South America. I grab every opportunity I have to explore it, and in March of this year I spent ten days getting to know it all over again – visiting a few old favourites and discovering some new corners.
Like the Tehuelche people who first lived here, I never get tired of marvelling at the great craggy peak of Mount FitzRoy, but on this trip I chose not to hike the classic Laguna de Los Tres or Laguna Torre trails, but looked for alternative ways to catch a glimpse of its beauty. Here are five ways I chose to avoid the crowds in Los Glaciares National Park, and get a whole new perspective on its wonders.
1. Estancia Cristina
I wanted to build up to my first view of FitzRoy, so I took the long way around from El Calafate and headed to Estancia Cristina, a traditional Argentinian ranch deep in the wilderness. I’ve always loved reading about the exploits of some of the mountaineers who explored the region’s peaks, and I first learned about Estancia Cristina from the climber Eric Shipton in his book Land of Tempest, about his travels here in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Even getting here feels like an adventure. There’s no road, so you take a two-hour boat trip across Lago Argentino, where the waters sometimes bob with icebergs from Upsalla Glacier, which pours slowly into the head of the lake. When you get here, Estancia Cristina hardly feels as if it has changed in the years since Shipton was here. When he arrived, he was greeted by the Masters family, the ranchers who had settled here with near impossible grit. The family arrived in 1902 with a boat and a small flock of sheep, and they camped out until they had built a tiny one-room house out of rock.
Today’s Estancia Cristina is an all-inclusive comfortable lodge with a team of exceptional staff and delicious food, as well as views that seem to stretch on forever where you can marvel at the mountains that Eric Shipton came to climb. Part of the ranch is now a fantastic museum where you can learn about the history here – or like I did, you can escape into the vast landscape, hiking and horseriding far from the crowds.
2. Casa Madsen
After Estancia Cristina I headed to El Chaltén, that wonderful little Los Glaciares mountain town where the world’s hikers and climbers all seem to end up at one time or another, under the watchful gaze of FitzRoy.
El Chaltén’s first resident was a Danish pioneer called Andreas Madsen. He built the first house in the valley in 1903, some eight decades before the town was officially born. But he clearly knew a good spot when he saw it, setting his house down on the east bank of the Las Vueltas river, when the only residents were nomadic Tehuelches.
It was great to take a tour of this ramshackle house, built room by room (as he could afford it) from whatever materials were to hand. I took tea at his homely kitchen table, and it was fascinating to learn more about his life and the hardships faced by those early pioneers. I even felt a certain Patagonian kinship – both Madsen and myself named our sons Fitzroy after their favourite mountain (though the view from his front door is a little bit more spectacular than mine in the UK!)
You can’t sleep at Madsen House (I stayed at Chaltén Camp when I visited), but it’s a perfect non-hiking option for anyone who enjoys a good tale, a bit of history and a darn good view of one of the best mountains in the world.
3. Glass Capsules Via Ferrata
One of my jobs as Swoop Patagonia’s general manager is working with our partners to develop new experiences for our travellers, including finding new places to stay. My next Los Glaciares hotel inspection took me from the days of the first pioneers bang into the 21st century, though what I saw left me scratching my head as to what the word ‘hotel’ actually meant.
Ovo Patagonia is a series of four egg-shaped capsules made of steel and toughened glass bolted to the side of a cliff, nearly 300 metres above the ground. They look like the sort of place a Bond villain might go on a weekend break. To get to the capsules, I had to have a safety talk, hike for an hour and then travel for ten minutes on a via ferrata – an iron path of fixed anchors and cables bolted into the rock face.
Inside, I was safely cocooned from the elements, and the glass walls gave the most extraordinary views. As a rock climber, I’m used to snatching views during an ascent, but here – halfway up a sheer mountain – I could loll on the hammock-style floor or sit up at the counter with a glass of wine and drink in the panorama (the capsules have two levels for sitting or sleeping, plus a toilet).
The weather gods were kind to me that day with endless blue skies, and FitzRoy felt close enough to reach out and touch. But I also know that Patagonia’s weather can quickly play tricks on you, so I might also have found myself encircled by clouds and the capsule could be pounded by wind. What an adventure!
4. Lago del Desierto
The first view I ever got of Fitz Roy was from Lago del Desierto as I crossed by bike and boat from the town of Villa O’Higgins at the very end of Chile’s Carreterra Austral highway. This is a great place for day hiking and kayaking, about 90 minutes drive from El Chaltén. At the southern end there’s a small campsite where you can set out for Huemul Glacier and its unearthly blue lake. On this visit however I went north as if to retrace my steps on that trip from Chile, but crossed the lake to stay at Aguas Arriba lodge.
The owners Pato and Igor came here 15 years ago so that they could connect with nature, and bring guests to connect with it too. A bit like Estancia Cristina, you can only get here by boat, so I instantly felt like I was stepping into the wild. I hiked with Diego, one of the guides at the lodge, and enjoyed extraordinary vistas of the glaciers-clad mountains and the forested slopes around the lake. March was shading into April, so Los Glaciares was doing what it does best in autumn with the leaves dressing everything in rich golds and rusty oranges.
After dinner, I explored the ‘backyard’, where a network of trails braid their way around the lodge, with benches located all over for the enjoyment of guests. This wasn’t really hiking, it was more like forest bathing, demanding you to slow your pace and drink everything in with all your senses. With only five rooms at the lodge, the pace at Aguas Arriba is always going to be slow, and it’s hard to imagine a more exclusive way of getting off the beaten track. It was a wrench to cross back over the lake and back to reality!
5. Paso Cuadrado
As a mountaineer,I love the alternative perspective that climbing high offers you, and El Chaltén is a place with a long and storied climbing history. On this trip I was keen to get roped up and see where the mountains could take me. Using Explora El Chaltén as my luxury base camp, I set off before dawn with my guide Fede to reach Paso Cudrado, or the Square Pass.
There are plenty of climbs in the area, but Paso Cuadrado isn’t one of them. You need to be an experienced trekker with prior experience with crampons, and of course the weather forecast needs to be good. Fede and I followed the flat trail along the Electrico valley through dense lenga forest, lighting our way with headlamps and stumbling a little on the rooty trail. We climbed the step scree from the valley until the sun rose, lighting our way. We hopped across boulders past glacial lakes, then donned our helmets, harnesses and crampons to scramble up rocks and cross the glacier towards the pass.
When we did – wow! What an incredible vantage point. FitzRoy normally looks like it stands alone, but here it was surrounded by its friends, as just one part of a mighty range. The mountains of Guillaumet, Mermoz and Val de Vois were on one side, with Cerro Torre and Pollone waving across the valley on the other. It truly felt like being on top of the world.
On the way back, we enjoyed a freefall descent, with places that had been dark on the climb up now visible. We even saw some shy huemul deer on the quiet trail home, one of Patagonia’s great treats. I was happy to be staying at Explora, but there was part of me that wanted to come back and use a tent or a hut as a base. But there’s always next time – and always another mountain to discover.
But don’t avoid the crowds completely
My ten days in Los Glaciares showed me the value of getting away from the main trails, but for my last day I wanted to be reminded that popular destinations are popular for a reason. Perito Moreno Glacier is the jewel in the national park’s crown, and coming here and not visiting is like going to Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower. I hadn’t been since 2010 and I was so glad to renew my acquaintance.
There are a host of ways to see Perito Moreno, but after my climb to Paso Cuadrado, I decided to skip the ice hiking on its surface and take a boat trip across the lake to get close to its giant white cliffs calving icebergs into the water. This glacier is truly a marvel, a behemoth and a beauty – and the perfect end to a tour of the national park.
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