Pressure Ridges

Just off shore in front of Scott Base is a sinuous line of tumbled ice blocks the size of cars and houses. The line follows the curve of the shore, running parallel to it as it goes. These are pressure ridges – where the dynamic, or moving, ice of the sea runs up against the static, or unmoving, ice glued to the shore. As the two solid surfaces of ice are pushed together by wave and tidal action they become plastic and deform into the dramatic shapes seen out our windows here.

There is a flagged route that leads you through the maze of sculpted figures, taking you past one that looks like a horse rearing up, around another the size of a house, and between two that resemble waves about the crash together over top of you. On the other side of the major thrust you can see new ones just beginning to form. Low rolls in the ice that appear to grow in size as they approach the line of crashing ice. The small ones look almost like seals buried in the snow, while the big ones could be the backs of whales as they come up to breach. In the really big ones you also start to see cracks running along the length of their spines, splitting them in two and allowing them to be thrown up against each other to make new shapes for the wind to sculpt.

Commonly found on the other side of the pressure ridges are seals. Because of the ongoing action with the ice, there are often cracks and holes open to the sea below. This allows the seals to come up. On our walk we came across one mum and her pup resting by a hole. The Weddell Seal is the most commonly seen seal in these parts and proves to be rather unafraid of humans. However the New Zealand Antarctic programme has rules about how people are supposed to act around seals (and all wildlife) to make sure we don’t bother them too much or cause them stress. We can get no closer than 10 metres and cannot try to make them move out of our way. Since they were sunning themselves right in the middle of the pathway, we had to move our way around them, being careful not to disturb them and trying not to fall in any holes ourselves. Once we were around the mama seal huffed at us with her nose and went back to sleep. We wandered back into the stunning landscape of wind sculpted ice.