I like ice

There is water in Antarctica, lots of it, but most of it is in solid form. I have a fondness for the ice, whether it's snow, glacial ice, sea ice, icicles hanging off the buildings, ice cores for research, or in this case, frozen lake water. The lakes in the dry valleys have a perennial ice cover and the ice surface has very strange looking ablation features. Around the perimeter of the lake, the ice melts during the summer from solar heating along the shore forming a moat. The moat is still frozen solid now, but in a few weeks it will start to warm and melt. It will refreeze again at the end of the summer. The moat ice looks different from the center ice on the lake. I have a few pictures of the ice on the moat near the shore of Lake Hoare. The color of the ice varies quite a bit depending on the light, the ice thickness, the water depth, the gas bubbles, trapped debris, etc. One of these photos shows some brown blobs which are chunks of algae that grow on the lake bottom and some of them get trapped in the ice. The gas bubbles sometimes look like fireworks stopped in time. The "blue" picture is thicker ice. It feels a little unnatural to walk on the ice when it is very clear and you can see to the bottom of the lake.

Our internet connection is pretty SLOW down here, so I have had a bit of trouble getting my pictures onto the blog. More to come later, I hope.