Under Pressure

In the past week I have gone on TWO tours of the Pressure Ridges.

You may be asking yourself, "What are the Pressure Ridges?" Never fear, I am here to answer all!

When a glacier flows onto the ocean it is called an "ice shelf." There are two ice shelves here, the Ross ice shelf and the McMurdo ice shelf. These two meet near the Kiwi station (Scott Base), and where they collide is almost like a frozen earthquake on the ice. Think of how two plates under the Earth's crust collide and form moutain ranges, just on a much smaller scale. These little mountains are called the Pressure Ridges.

They are very beautiful and often intricate ice sculptures. Some of them even look like they must have been crafted by humans. Others look like frozen waves. We hiked out over the sea to get to them and, once there, the trail weaved in and out of the Ridges, almost like a silly maze out of a Dr. Seuss book. There were places where the ice was mostly melted called "melt pools" and also many crevasses in the ice. All of these ultimately lead to the ocean below, but the ice is so thick it didn't feel like there was actually water beneath us.

And now for the cool part. On the first tour, towards the end, we saw a baby seal and its momma across one of the melt pools! It was adorable. The mom was lying there, clearly just trying to bask in the sun, and the baby was flopping all around, slapping it's mom with his little flippers and being the cutest thing on earth. Then, on the second tour, there was this huge seal lying about fifteen feet away from the path! We got so close, it was amazing. And then we continued hiking and that same baby seal with it's momma were there again, but this time they weren't across a melt pool, they were literally two feet from the path! We didn't want to bother them (if you get too close/make the animals upset here its grounds to ban you from the Ice forever) but it was the coolest thing to walk by and see their faces up close. They were just looking at us, curious, and then the baby started flopping around and burying its nose under it's mom's flipper. It was so cool, seeing something so wild and so untouched, so close up.

My friend is sitting next to me, trying to get me to walk down the sea ice in an attempt to see more seals and maybe some penguins. I may just have to take him up on that offer :)

But first, a little treat. One photo (that I did not upload, but stole from a friend) of me at the Ice Caves. Enjoy!