Pressure Ridge Tour

I went on a tour of the pressure ridges today. For those of you who came late to this party (or just forgot and don't want to search back through all my posts to remember), pressure ridges are chunks of ice forced upwards due to the pressure between the permanent ice shelf (basically the glacier that is over water) and the annual sea ice. The movement of the glacier outwards, and the movement inwards of the sea ice from tides forces the ice together and the pressure is relieved by the huge chunks being pushed upwards.

I can't begin to tell you how amazing it was to walk around in there and see how powerful a little bit of water can be. It's truly incredible to see, and the pictures don't do it nearly enough justice. Due to the dangers of straying off the beaten path (crevasses and soft spots and such can be around, and the beaten path is repeatedly tested to make sure it's ok), I couldn't get close enough to the bigger ridges to truly show the scale of just how huge these things are. But these should be enough.

I also transferred a couple of the shots to black and white. Those look awesome. I've put them on my Picasa website as well (I linked to that yesterday), so you can check them out there too.