Pressure ridges

Close to Scott Base, the New Zealand Antarctic station, there are pressure ridges. The occur because the ice floes collide with each other and with the shore there. Wikipedia says that "pressure ridges are made up of angular ice blocks of various sizes that pile up on the floes".

When I was getting a ride from the airfield to McMurdo the first time, I saw these interesting ice blocks and desperately wanted to go there to check them out. But on my way to the Pole there was no time. Later I also learned that it is not allowed to go to there all by yourself anyway. Firstly it is dangerous (it is sea ice after all and it sometimes is hard to tell if the ice is strong enough to support the weight of people), and secondly that area "belongs" to Scott Base and therefore everybody from McMurdo has to get permission to go there.

Since I was stuck in McMurdo for two days on the way back to NZ, I tried hard to somehow find a way to go to the pressure ridges during that time. Luckily, I found a recreational tour you could sign up for, and double luckily there was still space left on the tour. So me and one of my colleagues from the Pole decided to join the tour.

We walked in the pressure ridges for about two hours, and it was absolutely incredible. Especially since there were many Weddell seals around which we had to pass really close. That gave us ample opportunity to take close-up seal portraits...  :)

 

Lazy seal.

  

 One more lazy seal.

 "What the hell are you looking at?"