The Viedmar glacier is also in Los Glacieres national park and lies about 200 km north of El Calafate near the town of El Chalten. According to glaciologists it is the largest of the Argentine glaciers, even larger than Upsala and Perito Moreno glaciers. All the glaciers feed east from the Patagonia ice shelf, which is argued to be the second largest after Antartica, and hence larger than Greenland. The Viedmar glacier flows from the southern Patagonia ice shelf and feeds Lago Viedmar, which itself drains via Rio Leona into Lago Argentino. It mainly flows south east before making a right turn and ending facing north east at the terminus.

I took the Patagonia Aventura trekking boat to the glacier - it is not possible to drive there and the hike would be too long and difficult. Luckily they advised me to re-book to the day I arrived in El Chalten (i.e. one day earlier expedition). The weather was constantly changing as westerly winds pushed clouds, drizzle rain and snow across us as we approached over the lake and also during our ice trek. However, the next day the weather changed much for the worse, and it would not have been possible to go.

The tour guides told us that the glacier is bigger than the Upsala, which makes it more than 54 km long. It is about 2 km wide at the terminus on the lake. It is looks over 70m high at the lake.

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This panorama was taken from the tour boat and is one of several attempts as the boat was rocking a bit in the water. I also have one with the twin bows of the catamaran but am not posting it here.

I did the 2.5 hour ice trek onto the glacier. Unlike the so-called 'Big Ice' tour from El Calafate on the Perito Moreno glacier, the Patagonia Aventura guides do not have a ridiculous age limit for participation on the Viedmar Ice Trek.

We had an experienced guide and two assistants, who helped most of the participants as they were all novices, doing their first glacier walk. As I regularly walk on glaciers, I took all my own equipment with, but the tour guides provide crampons for the normal tourists. However, only people doing the all-day ice climbing trek were given helmets, I wore my own helmet anyway.

The Viedmar glacier has a lot of morraine (i.e. dirt to us non-glaciologists) on its surface. You can see how the ice is exposed under the surface in the cracks and slot in the initial photos.

We had to clamber over rock, ground smooth for millennia by the ice for about 10 - 15 minutes before we arrived at the glacier. It took another 15-20 minutes to fit people with their crampons, I was able to take some preliminary steps while waiting for them. We walked for about 1.5 to 2 hours on the glacier itself. The guides made sure we did not get too close to the crevasses in the ice, while still allowing us to get close enough to get some good photos.  I had an interesting chat with the local guide about various glacier walks while the group participants were taking photos. Finally we went into an ice cave as the culmination of the trek. Overall I enjoyed the trek and can recommend it to others, although personally I would have liked to spend 4 - 5 hours on the ice, as I normally do.

The glacier is constantly moving but not in a uniform direction and speed. As a result ice caves are created - particularly around the sides near the terminus (the end). We entered this ice cave from the side of the glacier about 200m from the end.