Yerba Loca Ice

These images of ice were taken at Yerba Loca Nature Sanctuary, which is a national reserve.

About the park

This is a park at about one hour from Santiago, it is on the ski centers rout. On wintertime when I go mostly, you need a 4×4 car, as the road is not paved. Running water or melted snow make the clay road very slippery, however the road is very short. It will take a few kilometers into the valley, and from there on you need to trek. Although the vegetation is at the center of the valley where the small river flows, there is fauna diversity.

On summertime you can organize a trip to the upper part of the valley using horses. The muleteer “Arrieros”, bring horses and mules to the park entrance. This is the best way to go if you have heave photographic equipment and you plan to stay overnight. They also prepare a lamb barbeque, so some of the mules do the heavy lifting, taking all the appliances. They take to a place called “Refugio Aleman” that is close to the “La Paloma” glacier. There are waterfalls high up in the valley that on wintertime are frozen, which is my goal to do.

This is one of the many times I have gone to this place, which almost at the entrance. It was a cold and dry winter, however there was some water. A couple of miles from the entrance there is a small creek where I regularly visit to take photographs.
This time was fortunate that we had a few weeks of cold, so was able to find ice forming.

I took many digital images of Yerba Loca ice, which are RGB, however I liked better the B&W conversion, this color one.

By the way, Yerba Loca translated to English is Crazy Weed.