Ross Ice Shelf – Febru­ary 28th, 2017

Tue
28 Feb
2017

We went around Ross Island during the night to arri­ve ear­ly mor­ning at Cape Cro­zier, whe­re Ross Island and the Ross Ice Shelf meet. The­se steep vol­ca­nic slo­pes are the place whe­re Aps­ley Cher­ry-Gar­rards famous „Worst jour­ney in the world“ took place, that adven­tur­ous and dra­ma­tic search for Emper­or pen­gu­in eggs that were then igno­red by sci­en­tists for a who­le cen­tu­ry.

The ice shelf beg­ins at the very same place just ahead of us to dis­ap­pear behind the hori­zon to the east. You could fol­low it for quite some time to always see the same pic­tu­re, with „the gre­at bar­ri­er“ get­ting lost in infi­ni­ty. A very impres­si­ve image! But hard to pho­to­graph.

Gal­lery – Ross Ice Shelf – Febru­ary 28th, 2017

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

And even har­der to get near to. Our plan to land by heli­c­op­ter on the ice shelf or at least to make a flight along the ice cliff does not mate­ria­li­ze. We are faced with 35 knot (force 8) wind, which is far too much. Icy cold it is inde­ed out­side, com­bi­ned with an air tem­pe­ra­tu­re of -10°C!