by Matt Mitchell, of Iowa State University
Being part of the ‘plant team,’ I arrived two days early to take inventory of plants that we would later encounter. Throughout our travels in Bernardo O’Higgins National Park, it was the plant team’s responsibility to compile information and photographs into a usable plant guide for visitor and scientist reference. The plant guide resources that are currently available for use in this area are by and large lacking information and consistency. Our job was to identify as many plants as possible and record their sizes, distributions, and photos of them. Round River Conservation Studies has been conducting plant research in the Bernardo O’Higgins park region for over five years and the information that has been gathered now finally needed a home.
We left for the Bernardo Glacier from Tortel on Friday, March 22nd on the Agüilaf – a boat operated by CONAF (the Chilean Forestry Service, the organization that administers Chile’s protected areas). Our two guides, Raúl and Felidor, made us feel very at home with multiple rounds of mate to battle the seasickness when it arose. After 6 hours of boat travel, we landed at the cabin house ‘refugio’ next to the Bernardo Glacier where the two CONAF guardaparques live when on the job. They dropped our team off and then made the return 6 hour journey to retrieve the other half of our team for additional research. After settling in and getting our tents set up around the cabin refugio, we were quickly overwhelmed by the stillness of life near in this remote and vast landscape that very few people have visited.
Our tents at the Bernardo Refugio, Bernardo O’Higgins National Park. photo by Matt Mitchell
Our plant guide work began the next day with some necessary Calafate picking. Calafate is a native shrub with juicy blue berries that appeared to us around the refugio in record abundance. I’m pretty sure my mouth is still blue from eating all of those sweet berries. Anyways, our team departed for a walk to survey plant species and capture photos of them when possible. I was somehow appointed the cameraman for the team (due to the quality of my camera, not necessarily my skill, haha). There were definitely some plants that we were unable to identify in our walk due to their absence in other plant guides. These plants were grouped into a category of unknown species at the end of our plant guide. A few of the unknown species were even without a taxonomic name, leading us to believe very few people have ever encountered them.
Sophie doing some serious research into the tastiness of calafate berries! Photo by Matt Mitchell
For a few short days, being in this place oddly reminded me of life on the farm in Iowa, where I am from. With just 7 of us here in this cabin for a couple of days, we were quickly weaved into the silent lifestyle of a Chilean whose home was far from large concentrations of people. This lifestyle depended on working for your resources, something foreign to many. If you wanted heat, you needed to dry out wood from a tree (which proved to be a large task with the copious amounts of rainfall seen here). If you wanted food, you needed to make bread (which also depended on the wood). If you wanted electricity, you had to find a way to start the generator that was without a pull cable or electric key. This last situation really exemplified the ingenuity of the Chilean culture. Even without a starting mechanism, the guardaparques would typically tie a rope around the rotary part of the engine where they would pull with full force until the revolutions generated by the pull were enough to turn over the engine. It was evident that this generator was only used when absolutely needed.
Passing time in the refugio was something to really savor. The common group activities included playing cards, guitar playing, and hair braiding (which I was unfortunately unable to participate in, haha). Making bread and sopapillas was another common activity that yielded a worthwhile result. The most memorable activity, I would say, would be the Calafate jam making and eating, which seemed endless. It was almost as if we were in a fantasy land where nature’s fruit was endlessly provided for us.
Mateo enthralled at the softness of Sphagnum moss. photo by Matt Mitchell
We captured the data that we could find here around the refugio and left some to be collected on our proceeding backpacking trips into the periglacial landscape around the Bernardo and Tempano Glaciers. Our species found there exceeded our expectations as well with 7 more unknown species added to our list. For us to consider a plant well-identified, its information had to include the following information: habitat (both large and small scale); abundance; leaf type, color, texture, size, edge, arrangement; flower type, color, size, season; state of conservation (scale of vulnerable to secure); and finally, the historic or medicinal use of the plant currently or in the past. All of this information, with the photos gathered made up our pant guide that will soon be accessible to many future visitors of Chile’s largest National Park.
Sunrise over the Témpano Glacier. Photo by Matt Mitchell