El Chaltén
Place in Santa Cruz, Argentina
El Chaltén is a small mountain village in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. It is located on the riverside of Rio de las Vueltas, within the Los Glaciares National Park (section Reserva Nacional Zona Viedma) near the base of Cerro Torre and Cerro Fitz Roy spires, both popular for climbing. It is 220 kilometres (140 mi) north of El Calafate. It is also a popular base for hiking numerous trails, such as those to the base of surrounding peaks and glacial lakes, such as Laguna Torre and Laguna de los Tres (near the base of Fitz Roy).
For those reasons, El Chaltén was named Argentina's Trekking Capital or Capital Nacional del Trekking. In 1985, Argentina and Chile had a border dispute over El Chaltén. There was no war, and El Chaltén was awarded to Argentina. Homes, government buildings, and flags of Argentina went up to mark the city settlement.
The town is located at the edge of the 12,363 km2 (4,773 mi2) Southern Patagonian Ice Field and about 3000 inhabitants live there throughout all the seasons of the year. Snow and ice mostly fence the town, and the homes are low structured with roads mostly made of rocks and dirt.
01Etymology
"Chaltén" is a Tehuelche word meaning "smoking mountain".
In 1877, Argentine explorer Francisco Moreno named mount Chaltén as mount Fitz Roy, in honour of Robert FitzRoy, captain during the Second voyage of HMS Beagle in the 1830s. It has its own flag and coat of arms.
02Tourism
The village has commercial camping grounds, mostly for backpackers.
03Climate
El Chaltén has an unpredictable subpolar oceanic climate (Köppen Cfc) with subantarctic continental (Dfc) influences, with precipitation distributed on a large number of days despite not being nearly as heavy as in Chilean Patagonia; bad weather is exceedingly common. Summers experience long daylight hours, very windy weather, and cool temperatures, mostly below 18 °C (64.4 °F) during the day and below 5 °C (41 °F) during the night. Frost can and does occur in the summer too. Winters bring snow in moderate quantities, and average temperatures around 3 °C (37.4 °F) during the day and −4 °C (24.8 °F) during the night; however, the coldest nights are much colder than this. Spring and fall are variable, but generally cold as well.
| Climate data for El Chaltén (1941-1950) | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °C (°F) | 30.3 (86.5) |
28.4 (83.1) |
25.6 (78.1) |
23.8 (74.8) |
20.4 (68.7) |
19.9 (67.8) |
17.5 (63.5) |
17.6 (63.7) |
19.5 (67.1) |
22.5 (72.5) |
25.2 (77.4) |
26.5 (79.7) |
30.3 (86.5) |
| Mean daily maximum °C (°F) | 18.0 (64.4) |
17.0 (62.6) |
14.7 (58.5) |
11.7 (53.1) |
6.6 (43.9) |
4.4 (39.9) |
4.3 (39.7) |
5.0 (41.0) |
7.9 (46.2) |
11.8 (53.2) |
13.9 (57.0) |
16.2 (61.2) |
11.0 (51.8) |
| Daily mean °C (°F) | 12.2 (54.0) |
11.4 (52.5) |
9.1 (48.4) |
6.4 (43.5) |
2.0 (35.6) |
0.0 (32.0) |
−0.1 (31.8) |
0.3 (32.5) |
2.5 (36.5) |
6.3 (43.3) |
8.4 (47.1) |
11.0 (51.8) |
5.8 (42.4) |
| Mean daily minimum °C (°F) | 7.8 (46.0) |
7.3 (45.1) |
4.6 (40.3) |
2.1 (35.8) |
−1.9 (28.6) |
−3.9 (25.0) |
−4.0 (24.8) |
−4.2 (24.4) |
−0.8 (30.6) |
2.6 (36.7) |
4.4 (39.9) |
7.1 (44.8) |
1.8 (35.2) |
| Record low °C (°F) | −1.5 (29.3) |
−2.5 (27.5) |
−3.3 (26.1) |
−13.0 (8.6) |
−14.5 (5.9) |
−20.2 (−4.4) |
−16.3 (2.7) |
−14.8 (5.4) |
−11.3 (11.7) |
−3.3 (26.1) |
−4.4 (24.1) |
−2.0 (28.4) |
−20.2 (−4.4) |
| Average precipitation mm (inches) | 58 (2.3) |
62 (2.4) |
67 (2.6) |
92 (3.6) |
92 (3.6) |
90 (3.5) |
73 (2.9) |
67 (2.6) |
49 (1.9) |
63 (2.5) |
45 (1.8) |
50 (2.0) |
808 (31.8) |
| Source: Sistema de Clasificación Bioclimática Mundial | |||||||||||||
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “El Chaltén”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- El Chaltén.jpg by David, CC BY 2.0
- El Chaltén (5469499485).jpg by Liam Quinn from Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Las Vueltas River.jpg by Lachlanjbennett, CC BY-SA 4.0
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