Antarctic Ice

Think we were done with Antarctica pictures??? Oh no no, no no no. Lots more to come.

These are some pictures of the different forms of ice we came across. I've already included icebergs in their own post, this is land-based ice of various forms.

The first several pictures are from one of our first stops, a visit to Deception Bay, an island formed from the rim of a volcano. One that is still active, as we saw when we hiked up to the top of a new vent. Most of the island is ash covering ice, so the dark color is just a top layer, not rock. That becomes clear in the second picture, where a chunk of ice near the vent has broken off showing the layers. The final shot in this sequence is a view above the new vent, showing more ice stratigraphy.


These two shots show different types of ice - the first is 'pancake ice' forming after a day of snow, and the second is a cool cross section of rock and ice, like icing on a (very cold) cake:


The next group of pictures are from the LeMaire Channel, where the dark areas are actual rock. The ice flows like a slow river towards the sea, you can make out the glaciers pretty readily in most of these shots:


And finally, to give a sense of scale to all of this, the first picture shows our group climbing to the top of a glacier field -- the tiny dots you can see along the ridge are people. In the second shot, you can see two walls of blue ice, and in about the center you'll find a large bird flying along. You might have to click on these pictures to see the people/bird in the larger view.