Spectacular Calving at Perito Moreno Glacier

Saturday, January 10, 2026

If you make it to El Calafate, chances are you're going to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier, a unique glacier in the world. It exhibits an incredible phenomenon of growing and advancing rather than most other glaciers that are receding.

The total drive time to the glacier's parking lot from El Calafate takes 1 1/2 hours. However, you reach the entrance to the national park pretty quickly. "It doesn't look like we are close to a glacier," Kate comments. Suddenly the massive glacier explodes into view, eliciting a car-full of excitement: "Pretty cool!" "Wow!" "Whoa that's so cool!"

Perito Moreno Glacier emerges from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, a remnant of the last Ice Age, which stands as the second-largest ice field in the world.

A remarkable size, Perito Moreno Glacier spans an area of 100 square miles, stretches 3 miles wide, and rises up to 250 feet above the surface of Lake Lago Argentino.

Perito Moreno Glacier’s surface is bigger than Buenos Aires!  We could see it from our plane to Punta Arenas.

The main draw of the glacier is its frequent calving that occurs about every 30 minutes during the summer. Often it is preceded by a deep cracking sound bursting from within the ice, signaling a dramatic fall is about to happen. When the ice breaks, it's a powerful, booming sound, like a bomb, with huge chunks plunging into the lake, creating massive splashes and icebergs. Imagine watching a 20-story building come crashing down.

Watching the glaciers calving is addictive: massive chunks of ice break off and plunge into the turquoise waters below with the thunderous, resonating sound of crashing ice and huge waves

The calving process is a spectacular display of nature's power

Patiently waiting, listening for any loud warning sounds - camera poised

You just can’t take your eyes off it

I wanted to get closer and closer to the face of the massive glacier

Kayaking allows you to experience the immensity of the glacier from water level. There is no way any of those kayakers watched the horrifying videos of the exceptionally large chunks breaking off - shooting shards of ice and massive waves for 1000 feet.

There are 3 miles of various walkways that offer exciting views and bring you close to the glacier. With so much trail to explore, Greg said, "let's go". But it's so hard to pull yourself away - you don't want to turn your back or have trees blocking your view and miss a chunk of ice falling.

It is a good thing we didn't react quickly to Greg because his words triggered another huge chunk of ice to fall. "That had no warning," said Chris, having heard no preceding loud cracking sounds.

Video of calving at Perito Moreno glacier

In total we were on the walkways for 3 hrs including stopping to eat our picnic. 

For dinner, Chef Chris made us a delicious steak dinner

Logistics

• At the entrance to the park (28km before the parking) there was a very long line of people at ~9:30am, assumably to buy tickets to get in. The line didn't seem to be moving. We showed our pre-purchased tickets and passports to the gate guard and got right in.
• Everyone either parks or gets off their bus at the lower parking lot. Then you want to find the line for the free shuttle to the Acceso Principal where you can start walking the trails. The shuttle comes about every 15 minutes. Alternatively you can walk there along the blue trail which took us 20-30 minutes.

Line up for the shuttle next to the boat sales hut. Find the sign that says “queue here”