Iceberg Flips Over near Upsala Glacier, Argentina: Video and Facts

A huge blue iceberg in Argentina’s Lago Argentino, close to the Upsala Glacier, suddenly rolls over in front of a tour boat, lifting a fresh face of ice out of the water with a deep roar. The clip, filmed by YouTube user osibaruch, shows how restless the ice in Patagonia’s Los Glaciares National Park can be.

Watch the iceberg flip over

The video, titled “Iceberg flipping over…”, shows the berg tilting and turning over near the boat, bringing ice that had been hidden below the lake surface up into the light.

Why icebergs roll over

Only about a tenth of an iceberg shows above the water. Glacier ice has a density of around 920 kg per cubic metre, a little less than water, so most of the block floats out of sight. As the berg melts and cracks, chunks break off and its centre of gravity shifts. When the balance tips far enough, the iceberg capsizes until it finds a new stable position.

Rolling is most likely soon after an iceberg calves from a glacier, while it is still settling, and it can happen without warning. A rolling berg also pushes out a wave, so tour boats keep their distance.

The Upsala Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park

The Upsala Glacier flows south from the eastern edge of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field and ends in the Upsala channel of Lago Argentino. It is the third-largest glacier of the ice field and is fed by three smaller tributaries, the Bertacchi, Cono and Murallón glaciers. Its name honours Uppsala University in Sweden, which sponsored the first glaciological studies in the area.

The glacier is shrinking. Its retreat has been recorded since 1810, and after 2008 the front pulled back roughly ten times faster than in the eight years before. By 2018 it had shrunk back so far that it no longer held back the Bertacchi Glacier. All that retreat feeds the lake with icebergs.

The glacier lies inside Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina’s largest national park at 7,269 km² and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981. Lago Argentino, at 1,466 km², is the country’s largest lake.

How to visit Upsala Glacier

• Base: El Calafate, on the shore of Lago Argentino, where the national park has its headquarters.
• By boat: lake excursions weave between icebergs to reach the Upsala front, which is otherwise hard to reach.
• By land: day tours from El Calafate also go by 4x4 or on foot to viewpoints above the glacier.
• Combine it: the park’s most visited glacier, Perito Moreno, can be reached by road, and Mount Fitz Roy rises above El Chaltén in the north of the park.

More than 700,000 people visit Los Glaciares each year, but most head to Perito Moreno, which makes Upsala the quieter choice for big ice. For more glaciers in motion, see Chasing Ice: Watching a Glacier Front Change in Minutes and Striped Icebergs: Blue Bands and Dark Layers.

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