ANTarctica Fourmilab South Pole Expedition January, 2013

Charles Peak Windscoop

Charles Peak is on the edge of Union Glacier. This was our first excursion from the camp, and our first experience of the weird Antarctic interface between blue ice glaciers, snow pack, melt ponds, moraines, and mountain slopes.

Fog can appear and disappear in just moments. About a minute after this picture was taken the fog was completely gone.

The Drake Icefall flows between the Edson Hills and Soholt Peaks, joining the flow of Union Glacier.

This is the blue ice portion of Union Glacier, looking toward the Sun.

The blue ice glacier has a complex texture. Frost crystals form on edges of the ice.

When there's no fog or clouds, the sky in the Antarctic interior is breathtakingly clear: there is no source of dust or other particulate matter and it is one the driest places on Earth. So clear is it that if you occult the Sun with your finger, the sky remains absolutely blue right up to the limb of the Sun. Try this in your back yard, and you'll see a blazing white patch of diffuse light around your hand. I had previously seen a stunningly clear sky in central Australia in 1986, but it wasn't remotely like this.

The patterns of ice and frost on the glacier are endlessly fascinating.

Some of the structures of ice crystals are almost organic in their complexity.

There had been a warm spell before our visit, and in some areas sheltered from cold winds, melt ponds. Melting of snow on dark rocks of moraines heated by the Sun resulted in this fairy-castle structure of snow towers.

Note the climber on the snow pack of Charles Peak. Everything in Antarctica is on such a Brobdingnagian scale that without a reference, it's difficult to know its size or distance.

by John Walker February 22nd, 2013

This document is in the public domain.