Understanding the ice
Upsala and Spegazzini, explained: why the northern arm has the big fronts
One glacier is enormous and retreating fast; the other is smaller but taller than anything else in the park. Here is what actually separates them.
See Glaciers Gourmet cruise tickets on GetYourGuide ↗Two glaciers, compared
| Upsala | Spegazzini | |
|---|---|---|
| Known for | Sheer size — largest in the park by area | Height — the tallest ice front in the park |
| Area | ~765 km² | Smaller than Upsala |
| Ice front height | ~40m | ~135m |
| Length | ~54km | Not the point — it's the wall that counts |
| Named for | Uppsala University, Sweden | Naturalist Carlos Spegazzini |
Upsala: the giant that's shrinking fast
Upsala is the largest glacier in Los Glaciares National Park by surface area — roughly 765 square kilometres, stretching back around 54km into the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, with tributary glaciers feeding into it. It has been retreating since it was first surveyed in 1810, but the pace changed sharply after 2008, when the retreat accelerated to roughly ten times what it had been over the previous eight years. By 2018 that retreat was severe enough that Upsala no longer holds back one of its own tributary glaciers the way it used to. What you see from the boat today is a genuinely different glacier from the one in older photographs.
Where the name comes from
Upsala is named after Uppsala University in Sweden, which sponsored early glaciological survey expeditions to the area — one of several Patagonian features named for the scientific institutions and individuals who first mapped this part of the ice field, rather than for any local or Spanish-language description of the ice itself.
Spegazzini: smaller glacier, taller wall
Spegazzini's ice front rises to roughly 135 metres at its highest point — the tallest ice front anywhere in Los Glaciares National Park, well above Upsala's own front. The difference comes down to geometry as much as glacier size: Spegazzini's channel is narrower and deeper, which lets the ice hold a taller, steeper face rather than spreading and thinning the way Upsala's much larger front does across its wider channel.
Named after a Patagonian naturalist
The glacier is named for Carlos Luis Spegazzini, an Italian-born naturalist who settled in Argentina in the late 19th century and was among the first botanists to systematically study southern Patagonian flora, taking part in early-20th-century scientific expeditions to the area that later became Los Glaciares National Park.
Why the boat visits both
Size and height are different kinds of spectacle, and the cruise is built to show both in one day: Upsala's scale and its scattered berg field mid-route, then Spegazzini's sheer wall as the day's final anchorage. Neither substitutes for the other, which is the reason this route bothers with five separate stops instead of parking in front of one glacier for the whole afternoon.
The ice field behind both of them
Both glaciers are outlet arms of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the third-largest ice mass in the world, after the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, which straddles the Argentina–Chile border and feeds dozens of named glaciers on both sides. Upsala and Spegazzini are two of the ice field's eastern outlets that happen to be reachable by a single day's boat trip from El Calafate — most of the ice field itself is far more remote.
Other glaciers along the route
The northern-arm route also passes within view of smaller named glaciers — Seco and Heim among them — visible from the outer decks between the main anchorages. These are usually a backdrop rather than a stop in their own right, but they add to the sense that the northern arm is a genuinely glacier-dense stretch of coastline, not just two isolated ice fronts.
Reading the retreat, without overstating it
Glacier retreat in this park is not uniform — Perito Moreno, further south on the lake, is unusual for holding roughly steady for long stretches, while Upsala's retreat has been well documented and accelerating since 2008. Seeing both in the same trip (this cruise for Upsala, a separate day for Perito Moreno) gives a genuinely more accurate picture of how differently glaciers in the same park can behave than either visit alone.
What the difference actually looks like from the deck
In practice, the two glaciers read very differently from a boat. Spegazzini presents as a single dramatic wall you sail directly toward, filling more and more of the view as the boat closes in. Upsala reads as a wider scene — a glacier so large it recedes into the mountains behind its own berg field, so that what you are actually looking at closely, most of the time, is the ice it has already shed into the channel rather than the glacier's main body itself.