Perito Moreno is one of the few glaciers on Earth you can watch at work. Its ice front rises an average of 74 metres above Lake Argentino in Argentine Patagonia, and blocks the size of buildings regularly break away and crash into the water. Photographer Jakub Polomski was standing in front of it in February 2014 when one of those blocks fell, and his Living Ice series follows the moment from first crack to spray.
Jakub Polomski’s Living Ice photographs
February 2014 was Polomski’s second trip to Argentina. “I was lucky to have good weather while standing in front of one of the most spectacular glaciers in the world,” he wrote when he shared the series. His set moves from wide views of the glacier between forest, lake and mountains to close studies of its fractured blue surface, and ends with a sequence of a very large block of ice falling from the front.
Perito Moreno Glacier: size and setting
The glacier lies in Los Glaciares National Park in the south-west of Argentina’s Santa Cruz Province. It is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the world’s third-largest reserve of fresh water, and it begins across the border in Chile.
- Area: about 250 km²
- Length: about 30 km, and about 5 km wide
- Ice front: averages 74 m above the lake surface, with a total ice depth of around 170 m
- Name: after Francisco “Perito” Moreno, the 19th-century explorer who studied the region and defended Argentina’s case in the 1902 boundary arbitration with Chile
Through the late 20th and early 21st centuries Perito Moreno was famous for staying roughly in balance while most glaciers in the world retreated. That has changed: since 2020 its northern front has been pulling back.
Calving and the famous ice-dam rupture
What Polomski photographed is calving: chunks of ice breaking from the glacier’s front as it pushes into the lake. Detached ice then floats away as icebergs, as NOAA explains in its iceberg overview. Because the front ends in the lake, calving here is easy to watch from the shore.
The glacier is also known for a much rarer spectacle. Its front reaches across to the Magallanes Peninsula and dams the Brazo Rico arm of Lake Argentino. Water behind the ice can rise as much as 30 m above the main lake until the pressure breaks through the ice barrier and releases a flood into the main lake and the Santa Cruz River, with peak flows of up to 8,000 m³ per second. The cycle can repeat about once a year or go quiet for more than a decade. Ruptures have been recorded from 1917 onwards, including 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012, twice in 2013, 2016, 2018 and 2019.
How to visit Perito Moreno Glacier
The gateway town is El Calafate, about 78 km from the glacier, with an international airport and plenty of tour companies. At the glacier, a large visitor centre leads onto a circuit of walkways and balconies facing the southern flank and the main front, the best places to watch calving. Boat trips on Lago Argentino run close to the northern face.
For a closer look, guided ice treks walk on the glacier itself: a short “mini-trekking” of around an hour and a half, or the “big ice” option of about five hours, usually with crampons supplied. Keep to the walkways at the front; falling ice sends waves and fragments well beyond the face.
Continue with Patagonia’s wider landscape collection, or compare the floating ice in Lana Tannir’s Iceland photographs.
Related reading
- Jakub Polomski’s Patagonia Journey: 8,000 Kilometres Through Chile and Argentina
- An Iceberg Rolls near Argentina’s Upsala Glacier
- Walking on Perito Moreno Glacier with Richard Watson
- Ventisquero Colgante: Ice, Water and Forest in Queulat
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