South American Explorer

Adventurer Rianna Riegelman explores the remote corners of a forgotten part of Patagonia on a packraft.

 

There is a valley in Southern Chile called Valle Exploradores – Valley of the Explorers in English. It is an enticing valley with an inviting name – a fantasyland of dramatic granite peaks, thick green Patagonian rainforest, glacial blue lakes and a milky gray river that joins a wide channel called the Elephant Fjord.

 

Located west of the village of Puerto Tranquilo on the shores of Lago (Lake) General Carrera, this valley was the inspiration for two epic wilderness expeditions my traveling partner and I embarked on during the Southern Hemisphere summers on the coast of Chile along the western side of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field.

 

The Northern Ice Field covers about 1,600 square miles (4,200 sq km) and has 28 major exit glaciers.

 

It is smaller than the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, its sister to the south­, but is still one of the largest expanses of continuous ice in the world.

 

One of the biggest motivations for our expeditions was the opportunity to visit some of the rapidly retreating glaciers of the Northern Ice Field. Several of the exit glaciers on the eastern side of the ice field can be reached by road. Most of the glaciers on the western side are much more remote and only three of them are accessible by normal means.

 

We wanted to visit the remote glaciers that could only be reached by abnormal means – a packraft!

 

Much of the land in Southern Patagonia that is not covered by ice is swathed in jungle so impenetrable that navigating the rivers and fjords makes more sense. Historically the few people that have been able to eke out an existence on the margins of the coastal Patagonian wilderness have relied solely upon water as their connection to the outside world.

 

Still today there are villages—such as Puerto Eden on Wellington Island, known as the last home of the Kawésqar people—that can only be reached by boat.

 

It was fitting then that when my partner and I returned to Valle Exploradores to begin our Patagonian adventure, we each carried with us a revolutionary piece of equipment that would allow us to travel seamlessly by land and water—a lightweight, portable, inflatable packraft.

 

The concept of the packraft has been around for a long time but it was not until about ten years ago that commercial production became successful. We came to the sport at what seems to have been the perfect time. Our first packrafts were some of the best that have ever been produced.

 

Alpacka packrafts are tough as nails, weigh a mere 4.5 pounds (2 kg) and roll up smaller than many two-person backpacking tents. They were originally designed for adventure racing in the Alaskan wilderness but could not be more perfect for exploring Patagonia.

 

By lifting the limitations of water barriers and weight restriction, our packrafts allowed us to plan an independent adventure through a wilderness of jungles, rivers, beaches, fjords, mountains and glaciers that would not have been possible with any other craft.

 

In February my partner Jarek and I began our first packrafting expedition, which lasted 34 days.

 

We carried a month’s worth of food and equipment on our backs or strapped to the front of our boats, and we navigated carefully planned routes using GPS and printed satellite maps.

 

Our journey took us down the Exploradores River through a handful of isolated frontier settlements and then slowly south through open water down the Elephant Fjord to Laguna San Rafael. San Rafael is one of the glaciers on the western side of the Northern Ice Field that can be visited by tourists.

 

After three days of sailing, most boats spend about half a day moored in the laguna allowing passengers to witness the dramatic calving of the glacier’s 230-foot- (70-m-) tall face.

 

 When we paddled into the laguna (which is actually the terminus of the Elephant fjord) in our packrafts we had the glacier all to ourselves. One violent overnight storm brought ocean-like waves to the laguna and hundreds of massive icebergs crashing up onto the narrow shore of the Ofqui isthmus where we had pitched our small tent.

 

We survived the storm with all of our equipment intact and enjoyed fresh melted icebergs for morning tea.

 

On our return, we visited two remote glaciers north of San Rafael – Glaciers Gualas and Reicher. Paddling in front of Glacier Reicher was one of the most memorable events of our journey. Our five-year-old satellite maps of Glacier Reicher showed a white glacial tongue swooping out and across a gray lake to meet a sheer granite wall, the lake oozing out on either side of a wall of ice.

 

Given what we had read about the rates of recession on some of the ice field’s other glaciers we made a guess that there would now be an open passage on the far side of the lake that we could paddle through. Doing this would allow us to return to Valle Exploradores along a different route.

 

When we arrived at the shore of that ooze-shaped lake, we stood in silence. We watched the mist rise silently over a long milky gray lake, no glacier in sight. We stood in shock realizing that Glacier Reicher had retreated all the way to the opposite wall in the short time since the satellite photo had been taken.

 

Paddling in that serene lake and seeing Glacier Reicher tucked back up against the mountain was an emotional reminder of how quickly some of the world’s ice is disappearing.

 

After a successful first expedition, we came back for a second a year later. This adventure took us to lands even more rugged and isolated than the first. Our biggest goal for the second expedition was to visit four more remote glaciers on the western side of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field: Glacier Benito, Glacier San Quintin, and two yet-unnamed glaciers called HPN1 and HPN2.

 

This time we started at our previous turnaround point, the Ofqui Isthmus on the southern shores of the Laguna San Rafael. We followed an ancient path and a network of slowly meandering black rivers across the isthmus to an 18-mile (30-km) stretch of pristine beach called Playa San Quintin.

 

On one side of this beach was the rolling furious green waters of the Golfo de Penas (Gulf of Sorrows) and on the other side, across a wide field of marshes, was the enormous and majestic Glacier San Quintin, some ten times bigger than San Rafael, its neighbor to the north.

 

We first viewed this glacier from afar as our route took us across the beach, through jungles, down rivers, and across old moraines to Glacier Benito and the two unnamed glaciers before turning back to cross in front of Glacier San Quintin.

 

Visiting HPN1 and HPN2 was a high point of Expedition Explorers II – partly because of the beauty of their surroundings, and also because we believe we are likely the first people to have ever visited these remote glaciers due to their difficult access.

 

Finally getting a chance to get close to the monster glacier, San Quintin was another highlight.

 

We enjoyed a long paddle around this huge glacier’s lake and camping on the shores of its Northern Arm (itself almost as big as San Rafael) before descending the Rio Blanco (White River) and making our way back across Playa San Quintin and the Ofqui Isthmus to Laguna San Rafael where we would await our boat ride back to civilization after 35 days in the wilderness without seeing another soul.

 

During our adventures we marveled over many things: the fearlessness of wildlife; the silence and solitude we found one minute, the ferocious chaos of weather that met us the next; our heightened sense of taste for our meager food rations; our own endurance and tenacity; the satisfaction of self-reliance; and, above all, the indescribable beauty that surrounded us.

 

I have visited many beautiful places in the world but have experienced none as awe-inspiring or invigorating as Patagonia. Though roads slowly connect her remote inhabitants and industry threatens many of her rivers, Patagonia remains today one of the wildest, most pristine and untouched lands on the planet.

 

We were honored to have the opportunity to spend time among some of her most beautiful treasures.

 

 

 

Rianna Riegelman is a restless Colorado native who loves exploring new places and sharing what she finds and what finds her. Recent homes have included a 4th floor walk-up on a sweet tree-lined block in Brooklyn, a shipping container at the base of a sand dune in the Atacama Desert, and a very practical Swiss-designed one-man tent inhabited by two people in Patagonia.

 

Photos by Jarek Wieczorek and Rianna Riegelman.