• Condor Viewpoint

    We did the condor viewpoint walk in El Chalten

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    There were condors soaring around.

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    You could also see the spikeys.

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    The skies were pretty clear.

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    With just a few clouds.

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    But it was very windy.

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    Matt almost got blown off his feet.

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    The path wound toward the spikeys.

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    The other directions were pretty too.

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    But not as pretty as the spikeys.

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    In the other direction.

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  • El Chalten

    We went to El Chalten

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    El Chalten is all about long hikes to see these spikey things.

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    Which is a bit weird

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    Because that picture was taken from our hotel, we barely even needed to get out of bed to see them.

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    Each spike has a name. This one is Cerro Fitz Roy/Chalten.

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    The highest spike to the left of it is Aruja Poincenot.

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    This is Aguja Val Biois and Aguja Mermoz.

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    This is Aguja Guillaumet.

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    Lots of condors fly around the spikey things.

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    And lots of snow, because it’s still early in the spring.

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    Our first big hike will go right to the bottom of the snow.

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    Across the valley and zigzagging up the mountain

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    And then across the bottom of the snow.

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    But not the really deep snow.

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    Or the blowy snow.

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    Or the steep snow.

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  • Finding the Glacier

    We followed the little ice breadcrumbs

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    Toward the glacier

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    OK we paid a bus to drive us to the glacier

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    But the bus driver was definitely navigating by ice breadcrumbs.

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    We found the glacier.

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    It was big.

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    It’s big when we’re not in front of it too.

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    There’s a narrow part over here that sometimes gets blocked with ice and makes the lake level rise.

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    But that hasn’t happened in a long time.

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    The glacier was very noisy.

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    It made a lot of creaking and cracking noises.

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    Lots of chunks fell off of it.

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    But we didn’t catch any on camera.

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    We did get the waves from a chunk that fell off the bottom and floated up to the top though.

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    It was also noisy.

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    The easiest thing to catch on camera was us.

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    We have a lot of glacier selfies.

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  • Above the Glacier

    We climbed up to the waterfall.

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    From up there you could really see how dirty Matt’s whiskey rocks were.

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    Kerri was not sorry she refused to drink the fresh glacier water.

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    The waterfall was not as impressive as Iguazu

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    But we took a selfie anyway

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    The views back at the glacier were nicer.

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    Although there were some pretty flowers up there.

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    We walked back to the foot of the glacier.

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    Which was still very icy.

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    There’s no ice outside the glacier because it’s summer

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    Except for the little icebergs that float to the other shore.

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    There were a lot of them.

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