On Day 8, we woke up in our new home, the Refugia Carihuairazo camp. It was 5°C and there was no sign of any heating system! Before we knew it, we were setting off on our first expedition in the area. The destination of the day was the Abras Glacier.
As we made our way upwards, we passed a lagoon in the fallow mountain landscape. And it really was just as still as it looks in the photo. Complete silence surrounded us, broken up only by the whistling of the wind and the whispering of the water.
As we had found with the other glaciers, the Abras Glacier had retreated quite considerably, as confirmed by a map we brought with us and studied with our local chaperone, Ferrán Cabrero, from the Universidad Estatal Amazónica.
There was no way for us to climb the glacier and we had to deploy a drone to view the other side of a tall rock face. But we managed to pull together as a team to take a core from a bit of glacier debris that had been left behind. Pleased with this success, we made our way back to the camp with several kilograms of ice in our bags!
