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Out
and about on the ice ..
(part 2 of 3)
Wednesday 8th March 2000
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continued
| Continuing
from the seal, Colin & I reached Welch Island then climbed up
the top to be greeted with the mind blowing vista. I took quite
a lot of photos - including 360 degree panoramas. I have learned
very quickly not to think that "it'll still be here and I'll
be able to photograph it next time".. because most of the time
it won't be and the weather will never be as good as it is.
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Looking
back from Welch Island back towards the
station (at the base of the plateau ice) |
The
view from Welch Island is excellent because it enables you to see
the the condition of the ice, and how it begins to melt. In the
following photo you can see the dark blue spots in between the islands
where the water is appearing.
A
view of the the sea ice looking east. Note the dark blue patches
of water.
| There
are other indicators of the melting ice, and they are the tide
cracks that appear and become wider as the summer progresses.
Tide cracks are where the ice sheets continually split and re-freeze.
The ice that reforms is usually extremely thin and is not safe
to walk on, so if you come across a tide crack you have to jump
over it (if you can) or walk long it until you find a point
where you can cross. As Colin and I were walking back from Welch
Island we came across two tide cracks. |
Thin
tide cracks are quite easy
to cross |
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The
first was quite thin, and I was able to walk across - the
next was up to 3 metres wide in places and meant that we had
to take a long detour along the crack until we reached and
island and then walk around it.
It
is a very eerie experience to stand beside a fresh crack that
has not re-frozen and look down into the water and to think
that there is nothing below with a long way down to the bottom,
sometimes up to 400 metres!
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While
3m wide ones are not!
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Email continues in part 3
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