Category: Glacier

A Far Country IV: Tempanos Fjord

The environment around Iceberg Glacier….

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This is a view of the fjord countryside from the Oceania Regatta position about 4.75 miles from Iceberg Glacier . As the Regatta proceeded at the slow rate of 4.6 knots, I captured this high valley and waterfall from the position marked with the central pushpin in the following GoogleEarth image from 14,000 feet altitude.

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The following photograph is the view North.  The far waterfalls are fed by two mountain top lakes, waters that feed into Tempanos Fjord.  We are in the Chilean Aisen (also spelled Aysen) Region (XI) looking into a valley between Tempanos, Farquhar and Bernardo fjords.  This island and valley has NO name, as far as I can tell.  The region is uninhabited, part of the Bernardo O’Higgins National Park.

A Far Country: Tempanos Fjord 004

This was taken with a handheld Sony DSLR-A700, the variable lens at 200mm, 1/800 sec at f/13.

The Scale of Iceberg Glacier

Why is the glacier face blue?

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Glacier ScaleA glacier is more than ice; not alive, it crawls; not feeling, it groans, cackles, shouts; passive, it is dangerous to approach closely backed as it is by the southern ice field, over a mile high. The ship nudged as close as a half mile from the massed ice, navigating using the bow thrusters to face first port, then starboard and back to port. I was lucky enough to be on the 11th deck, pictured above, when we caught sigh of the fast ship’s launch, manned by ship’s crew.

Iceberg Glacier Scale
Three person ship launch and glacier base at head of Tempanos Fjord

The crew prepared for a run to the rock face, almost 100 feet high, beneath 500 feet of glacier. Enjoy the views! Click any photograph to visit my online gallery. Purchase a photograph from this newly published series or any of my other popular works.

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Orientation, Iceberg Glacier, February 17, 2016

Maps of our visit to Iceberg Glacier beginning from Cape Rapier, the Pacific Ocean

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Here are a series of maps to aid your understanding of this series of blogs, starting with sunrise off Cape Rapier and ending with my next blog, the approach to Tempanos Fjord and the Iceberg Glacier.

overviewicebergglacier
cape-rapier-to-iceberg-glacier
messierchannel

Iceberg Glacier First View

The ship turned and the glacier, 500+ feet high, 0.7 mile wide, came into view on port.

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At 5:09 PM (daylight savings time for Chile) the Regatta turned to starboard to navigate around a headland of Farquhar Island.  Iceberg Glacier came into view from our port side stateroom terrace.  I was set up with the Canon 300 mm variable lens set to 120 mm (1/500 second, F11, ISO500), tripod mounted, to capture the ice from 5 miles distance.  The location is marked on the above GoogleEarth view. The red line leading in is our course. On the right, the white line is the boundary between Chilean regions Aisen and Magellan.

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Visible is the .75 glacier front, 500+ feet above the head of Tempanos Fjord. On the GoogleEarth view the front is marked with a red line.  Yes, more than 500 feet above the water.  In mid-view there are two rocks in the water.  Behind them, under the glacier, is a rock face.  That rock is 100+ feet tall.

Twenty seven (27) minutes later I used a handheld Sony with variable lens set to 200 mm (1/500 second, F13, ISO800) to capture this image of the ship bridge superimposed on the glacier.

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All you see is part of the Bernardo O’Higgins National Park. Named for a founding father of Chile, the country’s first head of state, the park covers 13,614 square miles.

The Striking Colors of Petrohué Waterfalls

Emerald Water, colored by glacial minerals

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Glacial meltwater from Lake Todos los Santos (All Saints Lake) forms Petrohué River and, where the river flows over lava from the Orsorno Volcano, Petrohué Falls. This set of photographs features the emerald color the river originating from glacial minerals.

Click any photograph for a larger view.

A strangeness of these photographs is this is the middle of February, Chilean summertime.

Force of Nature

Another strangeness, not readily apparent, is the effect of the Coriolis force. Here in the Northern Hemisphere water (any moving mass, really) moving perpendicular to the rotating surface of the earth (a property of water is the surface follows the contour of the solid surface over which it flows) will tend to flow in a clockwise direction. Crossing the equator, in the Southern Hemisphere the tendency reverses, tending to flow to the left, counter-clockwise. With some imagination the effect of the Coriolis force can be seen in the following photograph.

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experience a glacier of Patagonia

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Two person ship launch against glacier base.
Summer was the season for our visit to the edge of eternal, for now, Patagonian ice fields.  Remnants from the last ice age, larger than some (small) countries.  The site is surprisingly noisy with sharp, explosive, ice crackles.
More amazing even than the sounds, the dark shading on the ice is volcanic dust from recent eruptions of many cones. 

Click this link for my series of posts about Chilean fjords and glaciers we visited February 2016.

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