Mascardi Lake ( es, Lago Mascardi, ) is in the lake region of northern

Patagonia Patagonia () refers to a geographical region that encompasses the southern end of South America, governed by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes Mountains with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and g ...

Río Negro Province Río Negro (, ''Black River'') is a province of Argentina, located in northern Patagonia. Neighboring provinces are from the south clockwise Chubut, Neuquén, Mendoza, La Pampa and Buenos Aires. To the east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Its capi ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. The lake is near the resort city of

Bariloche San Carlos de Bariloche, usually known as Bariloche (), is a city in the province of Río Negro, Argentina, situated in the foothills of the Andes on the southern shores of Nahuel Huapi Lake. It is located within the Nahuel Huapi National Park ...

and is within the

Nahuel Huapi National Park Nahuel Huapi National Park () is the oldest national park in Argentina, established in 1934. It surrounds Nahuel Huapi Lake in the foothills of the Patagonian Andes. The largest of the national parks in the region, it has an area of , or nearly ...

. The lake, of glacial origin, is named after

Nicolás Mascardi Nicolás Mascardi (; Rome, 1625 – † Patagonia, 1673) was a Ligurian Jesuit priest and missionary in South America in the 17th century. He arrived to Chile in 1651. While active in Araucanía he gained notoriety for the exorcisms he practised ...

, a 17th-century Jesuit who was a missionary in the area. Cerro tronador desde lago mascardi 01b

Lagos Mascardi y Llum desde Cerro Latzina (1987) - panoramio

Description

Mascardi Lake is V-shaped with two arms roughly equal in length and width. The eastern arm is called the Catedral (Cathedral) arm and the western arm is called the

Tronador Tronador ( es, Cerro Tronador) is an extinct stratovolcano in the southern Andes, located along the border between Argentina and Chile, near the Argentine city of Bariloche. The mountain was named ''Tronador'' (Spanish for "Thunderer") by locals ...

arm, named after the volcano on the border with Chile which is the highest and most prominent mountain in the area. The lake is surrounded by mountains rising steeply from the lake to elevations of more than . The mountains are snow-capped most of the year. Timberline on the mountains is above . The lake has a maximum depth of and a surface area of The primary inflow into Mascardi Lake is the

Manso River Manso may refer to: Places * Manso, Haute-Corse, France * Manso, Ghana People * Manso (surname) * Manso Indians, an indigenous American people Given name * Manso, Prefect of Amalfi (), Italian noble * Manso I of Amalfi (died 1004), Ital ...

which emerges from a small lake fed by a glacier called the Ventisquero Negro (literally "black snowfield"), on the slopes of Tronador mountain about west of the lake. The Manso emerges from the southwestern corner lake via a short, turbulent passage called "Los Rapidos" (The Rapids) which leads to the Las Moscas Lake, the next in a chain of lakes along the Manso River. A paved highway (National Route 40) extends down the eastern arm of the lake to the southern shore where a small community called Villa Mascardi is located. From there a road (unpaved in 2018) named Route 82 follows the western arm of the lake northward and continues on to Ventisquero Negro.

Recreation

Kayaking and fishing are popular on Mascardi Lake with a number of tourist agencies in Bariloche offering guided tours. Species sought by fishermen are

rainbow A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows c ...

brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model us ...

, and

brook A brook is a small river or natural stream of fresh water. It may also refer to: Computing *Brook, a programming language for GPU programming based on C *Brook+, an explicit data-parallel C compiler *BrookGPU, a framework for GPGPU programming ...

trout, none of them native to Argentina. A number of campgrounds and lodging places are found along the roads that encircle one-half the lake. One of the campgrounds on the northernmost part of the Catedral arm is owned by a community of

Mapuche The Mapuche ( (Mapuche & Spanish: )) are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who s ...

people who were the principal occupants of this area from the 17th until the late 19th century. A hiking trail, a section of the long-distance Huella Andina trail, leads south to Lake Steffen. The trail is rated moderate in difficulty.''Senderos de Argentina'', https://lahuellaandina.com.ar/docs/senderos-de-patagonia-guia-oficial-2015-2016.pdf, accessed 17 Mar 2018

References

{{reflist Lakes of Río Negro Province Glacial lakes of Argentina Nahuel Huapi National Park