The Best Ways to View the Most Impressive Glaciers in Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina

I felt invisible shoves from the wind gusts. With my knees gripping the saddle to remain upright, my horse stomped along the northern face of Cerro Frías hill. The prickly shrubs that give El Calafate, the closest resort town, its musical name, scratched on my leather chaps. We jogged quickly to a hilltop where I could see the milky-blue Lago Argentino to the north and the huge estancias of the Anita Valley to the south. The tawny grasses waved in the breeze. 

Quiet beauty, rather than blatant splendor, emerges in the Patagonian grassland. I could make out a turquoise lagoon dotted with pink flamingos in the calm valley below. A solitary condor flew southward toward the three granite pinnacles of Torres del Paine, which are located just outside the Chilean border.

If I could have kept my eyes open, I would have lingered here for hours, soaking in the chamomile tones of the southern steppe. Whirlwind winds blew at them, causing tears to fall and then reappear on my face. On top of that, I had anticipated that my horse, Al Capone, would become irritable at hearing his name. We returned to his house and my hotel on foot, the latter of which was apparently thoughtfully planned with the region's wind in mind. The wind is a major factor in Argentinean Patagonian life. 

As I took off my chaps, resident manager Valentín Virasoro said that Eolo is named after the Greek god Aeolus, who is the keeper of the winds. Virasoro flipped his silver hair, which was disheveled by the breeze, out of his eyes. Together we made our way to the foyer, where we stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows and stared. "Most buildings in this region are set in protected valleys, but Eolo sits on top of a hill," according to him. The lodge was positioned, he went on to say, somewhat daringly, to take full advantage of the unbroken austral winds that race in from the Southern Ocean. 

Eolo was brought to life in the style of the early estancias in Patagonia by Fernando Bustillo, grandson of the renowned Argentine architect Alejandro Bustillo. It first opened in 2004 and remained the sole five-star establishment in the vicinity until December of last year, but there are six in Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. Beneath its gabled roof, a perfect square of seventeen rooms surrounds a central courtyard. The massive windows serve as the hotel's entertainment system rather than flat-screen TVs; guests may enjoy the view of the raging winds as they paint clouds like Van Gogh's brushstrokes. 

With the view outside the glass walls performing a nightly play, the entire restaurant had an air of dinner theater. After indulging in chef Juan Pablo Bonaveri's whimsical, contemporary dishes—that evening's highlights were roasted artichokes and flaky pink cusk eel—I retired to my room with a bottle of juicy Malbec. The evening was unusually hot, even for late January—summer in Argentina—so I threw open the windows. The influx of air agitated my hair and tangled the beige curtains. I thought, "I've made it back to Patagonia," as I raised my glass in joy. And its powerful pull ensnared me once more. 

When I was last in this region in 2015, the wind prevented me from seeing El Calafate. Any native can tell you that it was a rookie error on my part to allocate a month to explore Patagonia in both Chile and Argentina. "He who rushes loses time," an old saying shared with me by a store clerk in Cochrane, Chile. I was left stranded in the frontier town of Villa O'Higgins, unable to board a ferry to Argentina, due to gales at the end of Chile's Carretera Austral, also known as the Southern Highway. 

It was a frustrating five days. The Fiesta Costumbrista was a summer fair where I ate spit-roasted lamb, drank boxed wine with gauchos, and saw children race pigs as couples danced in their best berets to chamamé folk music. An uncancelable hotel reservation in Torres del Paine forced me to alter my plans and return to Chile before I could reach Argentina. 

After making it back to Argentina, I planned to take it easy for a while. The original intention was to cover both sides of the 2,800-square-mile Los Glaciares National Park, which is home to an incredible 256 glaciers. I began my journey to the southern end of Eolo on my second day there, riding the winds that would carry me to the Andes. 

In the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the majority of glaciers eventually melt, creating lakes with a beautiful moraine tint. To get to the park's main feature, I took a 20-minute ferry over one of these lakes. Standing at an impressive 19 miles in length, Perito Moreno is an ice mass bigger than Bueno Aires that stretches 200 feet east of Lago Argentino's eastern shore. I preferred to observe the glacier up close, to feel the icy winds and water that transformed the snow into ice curtains, rather than the typical tourist route of boardwalks and overlooks. With the help of a guide and my crampons, I limped out into its heart. 

A landmark that is always changing is Perito Moreno. A large portion of the five feet that the glacier loses each day due to calving and melting is lost as it slowly retreats from the Andes. With a smile on his face, my ponytailed guide Iñaki Cezón informed me that the trail we are currently walking might not even exist tomorrow. As I drew near the glacier's edge, I heard crackles and roars as massive white stones slammed down, diving into the lake to make their exit known. 

As I continued to descend, the glacier's veins became more visible in the caves and rivers. They were a bizarre blue color, like laundry detergent or toothpaste. The mineral-rich, refreshing water from the sapphire ponds was filled into my bottle. For a little while, this cocoon provided refuge from the winds. However, they burst to life again as we rode back across the lake and down onto the steppe. 

El Chaltén, my destination, and El Calafate, my home, are the sole settlements in this section of Argentine Patagonia. El Calafate has been a popular tourist community for many years, and it is located on the shore of Bahía Redonda, a little bay on Lago Argentino. Chocolate factories, BBQ joints, and gift stores selling bittersweet jams produced from the berries of the town's namesake plant line the town's pine-shaded avenues, which provide a welcome splash of greenery on the otherwise parched steppe. 

Four hours of northward journey across grassy plains grazed by skittery guanacos—undomesticated cousins of the llama—were required to reach El Chaltén, the second town. As one traveled down National Route 40, the only indication of civilization was the lonely roadhouse known as La Leona. American bandits Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid supposedly made an airborne landing there in 1905 following a bank heist. La Leona became a popular stop for hikers and campers in the decades that followed, drawing in eager mountaineers who were preparing to climb the towering peaks in the distance, such as Mount Fitz Roy. El Chaltén, "Argentina's newest town," became a popular rest station for climbers and hikers in the mid-1980s, but it wasn't until 2021 that the community reached the legal age to have a public cemetery. 

Campers with wild hair sipping yerba mate on the streets of El Chaltén, which has flourished into Argentina's trekking capital during the last 30 years, and trailheads on its outskirts that lead into the northern sector of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. Restaurants that fill the air with the aroma of grilled meat, quaint guesthouses, third-wave coffee shops, and artisan breweries or taprooms can be found on every block of Avenida San Martín, the main thoroughfare of the neighborhood. 

El Chaltén has come a long way since its December arrival of a new Explora hotel. The firm gained notoriety for setting the standard for all-inclusive adventure lodges in off-the-beaten-path South American locations, an approach that subsequent companies quickly tried to imitate. The most recent lodge from Explora is located in the exclusive 14,000-acre Los Huemules natural reserve, which is situated in an exceptional setting ten miles west of El Chaltén. Twenty simple rooms gaze out over the faraway Marconi Glacier. 

I hiked the six miles to the glacier after checking in, following the pale blue Río Eléctrico. As the river valley came to a close, a gentle wind transformed into a raging storm. I had to hold on to a slick boulder until I reached a lookout point over Marconi's sharp moraine. I felt like someone was stabbing me in the face when a horizontal drizzle veered across my face in the afternoon. "Everybody is going crazy for forest bathing," Yelena Bayeva, a Russian tourist who had accompanied me on the climb and appeared to share my masochistic pleasure of rough air, said me as she approached me. Wind bathing, in my opinion, is going to be huge soon. 

The manager of the hotel, Marisol Sciorto, gave me a knowing look as I returned with stories of violent storms and dreams of flying like a human kite. The Southern Patagonian Ice Field, she explained, unleashes a raging wind through a tunnel where Explora was situated. "The entire property had to be built in a modular fashion in Mendoza, the wine region, and brought here in 90 trucks," according to her. The end effect is a building that prioritizes minimalism, with subdued earth tones and clean lines to draw attention away from the breathtaking scenery. "It's all about the luxury of the essential," Sciorto clarified. 

In reality, this translates to minimalist rooms with comfortable beds and powerful showers, bath products infused with indigenous herbs like paramela, and ceramic tableware crafted by the Alfar studio in Ushuaia from a combination of Andean clay and local stones and minerals. 

It wasn't until that night that I found out the locally sourced notion even went into the food. The cuisine was crafted by restaurateur Pablo Jesús Rivero and chef Guido Tassi of the renowned Buenos Aires establishment Don Julio, which was named the best restaurant in Latin America in 2020. The dishes on the menu showcase regional produce and meats, with lamb being the standout. In the quincho, a little smoke-filled shack close to the kitchen, I observed the meat being grilled over an open fire. The earthy reds from the northern Patagonian regions of Río Negro and Neuquén are fresher than those from Mendoza, where the powerful winds that roll off the Andes cool the vines all year, which is why these wines were paired with them. 

Of course, they were just the swag I brought home every night from my thrilling guided adventures. According to the expedition crew, which consisted mainly of women, I would have the rare opportunity to climb to the base of Mount Fitz Roy the following morning because there would be no wind. Stock photos, Google searches, and the emblem for the apparel business all include the 11,171-foot, sawtoothed peak as Patagonia. In 1968, Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins, co-founders of the North Face and the Californian Route up Fitz Roy, were the pioneers of this route. 

Our 14-mile trek to Fitz Roy began at daylight, when we followed the Río Piedras Blancas to the glacier that bears its name and cascades down an hourglass-shaped cliff. Going farther, I plucked a handful of chaura berries—tasting like apple skins—and chewed them for a burst of energy. On the trail ahead, rustling through gnarled lengas—trees that live for approximately 300 years before spending the next 400 years decomposing on the forest floor—trilled morning anthems, a bird species known as a thorn-tailed rayadito. We started a strenuous 1,400-foot climb, winding our way over the tree line, close to the Río Blanco campground, to reach Laguna de los Tres, a turquoise lake that like a mirror. 

A thought crossed my mind as we neared the peak: "This feels like it's been stolen from a fairy tale." With its unmistakable peak penetrating the clouds, the majestic mountain stood tall over the hundred or so mourners who had come to pay their respects. The legendary peak, a granite mansion with many stories, captivated my gaze. 

The Cagliero Glacier was the last large expanse of ice I would see on this journey, so I headed into Los Huemules to see it on my last day. The favorable weather window had already closed by this point, and by dusk, the prediction was for winds of 65 miles per hour. However, our guide had high hopes that our little party of six could traverse the area before the weather took a turn. 

We saw two emerald-green austral parakeets, which seemed much more tropical than their environment, when we were near two lagoons with far-off views of Fitz Roy. We made our way across the Río Diablo on a suspended bridge and cautiously traversed little streams on bridges that were the size of balancing beams. The bald granite domes that stretched out into the distance reminded me of the cliffs of Yosemite. 

At times, the forest was so quiet that the only sound was the song of birds. Then, the whirlwind of newly-energized air settled into a motionless drone as we emerged at Cagliero's milky moraine lake and witnessed waves lapping at the shoreline like an ocean. 

Now, lenticular clouds shaped like UFOs were slinking down toward us from the mountaintops, like clocks designed by Salvador Dalí. These ethereal clouds were a sign of strong winds. Near the glacier's foot, we took refuge in a little building warmed by fire. As soon as we started to chew on our sandwiches, unexpected squalls whirled up pebbles, which started knocking against the windows. Swiftly transforming into boulders, the pebbles slammed into the windows, shattering them into a tangled web of broken glass. 

In the far corner of the shelter, our hiking party waited for our guide to give us instructions on how to escape. The changing room was a mess of Helly Hansen shoes and Arc'teryx jackets. In hindsight, I should have been terrified. But the fact is that I was overjoyed, and I still was, even after we got back to the hotel two hours later. 

During my journey, the wind and I had engaged in an unusual tango. I was familiar with this duet since it had enticed me to return to the southern tip of the Americas no less than five times in the past ten years. The untamed weather of Patagonia is just as forceful as the landscape itself.