Pressure Ridges at Scott Base
So my adventure for December was going out to the Pressure Ridges that are on the border of the McMurdo Ice Shelf and the Sea Ice. It is the point where the ice shelf moves one way, and the sea ice moves another. Basically, they push together and make some beautiful and strange ridges in the ice. They can be fairly dangerous if you don’t stick to a flagged route, because the movement of the ice makes them change a little every day. I went through training to become a guide for the trips, which we held for a few weeks in early December.
I’ll let the pictures do the talking.
Here’s a picture from the ridges, looking back toward the Kiwi’s Scott Base. Scott is much, much smaller than McMurdo (I think only 50 people or so) and very homey. All the buildings are interconnected by passageways, so you can get where you need to go entirely indoors. Everyone has cute accents, but their ketchup is way too sweet for my tastes. The stony knob in the background, almost at the center of the picture, is Castle Rock, which is one of the few red colored rocks I’ve seen here. (Dave, explain please!)
The pictures turned out strangely dark - it was a cloudy day, so that probably had something to do with it. If I come back I’m DEFINITELY GETTING A BETTER CAMERA! These were some awesome ridges that had been weathered by wind and melting.
My friend Lou with a Poke Stick. There are cracks in the ice all along the path, some of them quite large and deep. Poke Sticks are good to have if you are walking along a place with lots of snow. The green flags mark the route we walk.
We also saw seals because they come up through the thin parts of the ice and hang out on sunny days. Unfortunately my camera battery died before I could get a good picture. But picture a massive brown slug with an amazingly cute face, and there you’ve got it.
The ridges are only open to Americans for a short time out of the year, so it was great to be able to go out a couple times and check out this dynamic Antarctic landscape.
About time you got back to posting!
Without actually seeing Castle Rock, I can’t give you a specific explanation, just that it has to be something a little different from the others you’ve been seeing composition-wise. I’m doing a quick bit o’ Googling and the first comment I saw was something to the effect of “If I were a geologist, I’d tell you that Castle Rock is really a fascinating geological formation, but I’m not, so I won’t.” Apparently there are a bunch of cinder cones in the area, so I’m gonna go with something igneous - scoria, a gas-rich basalt associated with cinder cones, is often very red. But without actually seeing it, heck if I know. I can’t find anything that actually wants to tell me a book-answer either.
Story has it that we get pressure ridges in the ice out on Lake Ontario later in the winter when the nearshore freezes up. I’ll have to see if I can get some pictures for comparison!
— Dave
Dave, Dave, Dave-
Don’t you remember the old Kiwi past time of getting drunk and painting rocks red? The’re a strange bunch.
Nonsense. If the kiwis are going to paint their rocks anything, they’re going to go bright green. I mean, look at the base!
— Dave