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International Locations: Ice and Glaciers
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It doesn’t take too much insider knowledge to figure out that you can trust Scandinavia to fulfil any of your Arctic requirements, but the rest of the world also boasts frigid conditions aplenty. Try travelling a little further afield and you might find the whiteout conditions you’re looking for only a hike away from subtropical rainforest. There’s ice in surprising places.
Antarctica
Of course, if it’s ice you need, then Antarctica is surely the grandaddy of them all. Officially the Earth’s coldest place, 98% of it is covered by a sheet of ice so immense that it would raise the level of the ocean by a staggering 65 metres, should that hole in the ozone right above it get any bigger. That same hole ensures that Antarctica gets more solar radiation than the equator during the summer, so make sure you bring the sunblock - for the bits that aren’t covered by your goose-down survival suit.
Sadly location services are a bit thin on the ground: Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and South Africa, to name just a few, all maintain territorial claims (which are not actually internationally recognised) and their scientific bases are what passes for hospitality in these parts. The best advice will probably come from the contractors which service these bases such as Raytheon Polar Services Company (http://rpsc.raytheon.com) which supports the US Antarctic Program or the British Antarctic Survey (www.antarctica.ac.uk).
Africa
In the quest for icy locations with a difference, even Africa rates a mention. At just under 6,000 metres, Mount Kilimanjaro is Africa’s highest point and virtually the only place you will find ice and snow at this latitude. Climb through equatorial jungle to reach the breathtaking ice fields and glaciers which have crowned the mountain since the last Ice Age.
The warmest months and clearest days here are from mid to late December, January, February and then September and October. Rains often come in April, May and November which, at this elevation, means greater possibility of snow. June, July and August provide better conditions but with evening temperatures tending to be colder.
Way over in the north east of Africa, the Moroccan cities of Ouarzazate and Marrakech are the stepping-off points for the Atlas Mountains, whose snowy peaks have played host to Ridley Scott’s shivering Gladiators within view of Saharan sands. Ilfrane, a picturesque village created by the French in 1929, has alpine slopes that are completely unexpected in the North African desert. Even South Africa boasts the Ceres Mountains, a little way out from the Cape. May to September provide the best time to catch the mountains at their snow-capped best.
The Americas
If you want glaciers and ice fields set against the vivid hues of South American landscape, Patagonia is the kind of destination that it’s worth writing a script for, just for the chance to go. The Chilean portion extends over the southern part of the region of Los Lagos, as well as the regions of Aysen and Magallanes. East of the Andes the Argentine portion includes Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego, as well as the southern tip of the Buenos Aires Province.
Los Glaciares National Park is located in the area known as the Austral Andes in Argentina, in the south west of Santa Cruz, by the Chilean border. A place of astounding natural beauty, the park was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1981. Between June and September Chile is arguably the number one location for skiing and snowboarding in the southern hemisphere. Just an hour or two from Santiago are the Portillo and Valle Nevado snow resorts. Further south, in Termas de Chillan, Pucon or Antillanca you’ll also find snow below the tree line.
On the other side of the world, most of the choices in North America will have the obvious advantage to British producers of being English speaking. That is unless you’re off to somewhere like Nunavut, geographically the largest of Canada’s territories, which is almost entirely covered by arctic tundra. Ellesmere and Baffin islands are home to several glaciers in this bleakly beautiful and sparsely populated land.
Likewise Yukon territory, which borders Alaska, has the largest non-polar ice fields in the world and keeps its icy backdrop at the ready all year round. As early as September you’ll start to see snow build up on the roadsides and perfect white rooftops just begging to be filmed from the third week in October. Then from November, right up until May, lakes are frozen enough to skate on, and you might just find them solid enough to drive over if you’re game.
In a country as geographically diverse as the USA, it can be no surprise to find that there’s ice and snowfields in pretty much any direction you might want to head. Try the Wind River Range in Wyoming or the Cascade Range, Washington as alternatives to more obvious choices such as the Beartooth Mountains in Montana or pretty much anywhere in Colorado.
But if it’s wilderness of pristine white that you want, with perhaps a trail of snow-covered islands that point west through the Bering Sea, Alaska provides some of the most magical scenes you could ever imagine. Here the Bering Strait connects the Chukchi Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean) in the north with the Bering Sea (part of the Pacific Ocean) in the south. This dramatic stretch of water is usually completely frozen over from October to June, but when it’s not the narrowness of the strait makes it possible for small boats to cross from the Chukchi Peninsula, in North-East Russia, to the Seward Peninsula in Alaska.
Sitting above the Arctic Circle, Alaska’s Far North region is accessible from Fairbanks or Anchorage by air. The town of Nome offers access to nearly 500 square kilometres of untouched wilderness through which passes the trail of the gruelling 1,700 kilometre-long Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race which commemorates efforts to deliver life saving serum to Nome during a diphtheria epidemic in 1925.
Located in the South-West region of Alaska, beautiful Glacier Bay is nearly 100 kilometre-long and contains 16 active glaciers that creak down from the St Elias Mountains to the east and the Fairweather Range to the west. The Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve protects an almost unending 3.3 million acres of wilderness and boasts snow-capped mountain ranges as well as coastline with beaches and protected coves, deep fjords and tidewater glaciers.
Australasia
The weather in Australia is generally temperate, despite its extremes, so you might be surprised to hear that there is any snow here at all. But there is, though only in the New South Welsh and Victorian mountains. Mount Kosciuszko is the highest point at around 2,300 metres and just about manages to hang on to its snow cap all year round. Even Papua New Guinea has a glacier or two and the highlands of Mount Hagen offer strangely chilly jungle scenes to confuse the senses.
Neighbouring New Zealand, on the other hand is, well, the polar opposite, with the Southern Alps thrusting dramatically up from the lush rainforest and beaches below, a textbook example of plate-tectonics at work for those that need to see it for themselves. The Southern Alps run the length of the South Island and house some 360 glaciers, the most famous of which are the Fox and Franz Josef on the West Coast, the only two of this fast-moving kind of non-polar glacier that you’ll find this close to the sea.
There are far too many Lord Of The Rings references relevant here but Strider himself would probably single out the (ever-so aptly named) Remarkables. These overlook the snowboarder’s paradise that is Queenstown - itself home to the Minus 5 bar (www.minus5.co.nz), an ice location of a very different kind.
Europe
The great mountain range of the Alps dominates the diverse geography of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east, through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west. Europe’s highest mountain is Mont Blanc and, at 4,810 metres, it stands guard over the picture-perfect alpine town of Chamonix on the French-Italian border.
Chamonix is a popular winter sports resort and serves as an ideal base for a wide variety of sports such as ice and rock climbing, skiing, paragliding, rafting, canyoning and mountain biking. This breathtaking valley is considered to be the birthplace of ice climbing and offers access to hundreds of ice fields and glaciers including perhaps the most famous of them all, La Mer de Glas, as well as the seemingly endless Valleé Blanche.
Chamonix is also famous for its spectacular cable car which climbs precariously up to the Aiguille du Midi (3,842 metres). Constructed in six years and completed in 1955, it’s not unbelievable to find that it is the result of a wager taken by Dino Lora Totino, Count of Cerivinia, to connect Chamonix to the peak in only two stages, one of which is still the longest in the world. Once at the top you can continue over the Valleé Blanche to Helbronner in Italy, flying over glaciers for more than 5 kilometres.
Further north, there’s practically nowhere in Scandinavia which doesn’t offer excellent locations and services to anyone looking for ice, snow, glaciers or anything else to do with cold weather in general. In southern Norway there’s the Jostedal Glacier, in Sogn og Fjordane, the biggest glacier in continental Europe; the Folgefonna at Hardanger, in the county of Hordaland; and Spsial on Svalbard/Spitsbergen, an island in the Arctic Sea, north of Norway. Although Denmark’s undulating plains are covered in snow during the winter months, the terrain is mostly low so there are no glaciers on offer. But when it comes to glaciers Denmark has an ace up its sleeve – the areas of wilderness in Greenland.
Permafrost covers the northern two-thirds of Greenland, the world’s largest island, whilst 85% is permanently iced over. In some places, like Melville-Bugten, the ice cap reaches the sea, while in others, such as Ittoqqortoormiit, an ice-free belt of hundreds of kilometres lies in the coastal areas. Everywhere along the coast glaciers reach the sea and leave icebergs to float merrily away in the arctic waters. The most enthusiastic glacier is Sermeq Kujalleq (Jakobshavn Glacier) near Ilulissat, which alone produces something like 10% of all the icebergs originating from Greenland.
Iceland sits just a whisker south of the Arctic Circle and this frozen island is becoming increasingly popular as a weekend destination as well as a sought-after location for filming. James Bond chased scoundrels about on the ice here and then spent the night in something not unlike the now-famous Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland, where the River Torne is covered with a metre-thick ice layer in the winter. The pure water and the steady movement of the river result in ice that freezes with extraordinarily clarity.
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