Leones Glacier

Los Leones Lake is located 30 km south of Puerto Río Tranquilo and 28 km west of the Carretera Austral. It’s reached by traveling along a country road suitable for 4×4 vehicles and walking 9.5 km along the edge of the Los Leones River up to the confluence with the Fiero River, where a little further on is the eastern edge of the lake.

With its turquoise waters and surrounded by an imposing frame of mountains over 2,000 m high, it offers one of the greatest scenic spectacles of this section. Three glaciers hang from the Campo de Hielo Norte [Northern Ice Field] between the mountains at more than 1,500 m high to form the spectacular Los Leones glacier. On its eastern flank rises another Patagonia’s giant, the Hyades hill at 3,000 m high, a magnificent and complex mountain of rock and ice easily visible from the lake, as well as the Siniolchu hill (at 2,470 m high). On the north, there is a valley of the Fiero lake, which at the bottom can be seen the eternal ice of the Fiero hill, and on the south side, there are the San Valentín and Cuerno de Plata hills.

The Los Leones glacier is part of the great Laguna San Rafael National Park, declared a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO. It has 1,742,000 ha of extension, making it one of the largest parks in the country, of which about 400,000 ha correspond to the Campo de Hielo [Ice field].

From this photo taken from a lateral point of view, you can see part of the main tongue of the glacier, which descends to the lake.