The breaking of the Perito Moreno: a unique experience
Glacier Perito Moreno is an active glacier. There are few of this in the World, and this is the only one in Patagonia, that move forward, so, unlike the Upsala for instants, it doesn’t extinct.
This movement, of almost 100 meters a year, generates another phenomenon of enormous beauty: the breaking of the glacier that makes the Brazo Rico of the Argentino Lake.
On the year 1917 the first breaking was registered. This process has been repeated on various occasions, with regular intervals, that made people fear that maybe the glacier was going to extinct. This is because the breaking, nowadays, is not only a natural phenomenon, but also man’s harmful involvement in natural processes had made it more dangerous, altering the natural balance.
Argentino Lake, a mirror made out of water at the bottom of the glacier, has a lot of arms.
The arm called Rico (rich) is behind the Magallanes Peninsula and empties on Lake Argentino through the Tempanos Channel. When the glacier moves so much forward that it reaches the coast of the Peninsula, a dike is made that made it impossible for the Rico to empty in the Lake.
This arm still gets water and snow, until it overcomes the lake by 8 or 10 meters, making more and more pressure on the dike. So as to make the pressure go down, water starts filtering through the parts where the glacier makes contact with the earth. The water erodes the base of the dike until the pressure is unbearable. The sudden break happens, leaving its witnesses amazed and surprised.
One of the last breakings was in 1988. Still fearing for the glacier’s disappearance, a new breaking happened with an unexpected frequency in March 2004 and 2006.
Experts assure that it is impossible to predict something like this. National Parks thought that during 2007 there wouldn’t be any breakings, but confirmed that the ice was moving towards the Magallanes Peninsula.
