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L
climber
Tiger Tiger burning bright...
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jul 11, 2008 - 02:09am PT
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I've never seen anything like these beautiful icebergs. Living in Alaska, I saw plenty of blue ice...before Portege and the other glaciers receded so drastically...but nothing as visually spectacular as these photos from the seas of Antarctica. Hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I did.
Icebergs in the Antarctic area sometimes have stripes, formed by layers of snow that react to different conditions. Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with meltwater and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form. When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe. Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the ocean.
Frozen Waves in Antarctica
In the following photos, the water froze the instant the wave broke through the ice and came in contact with the air. The temperature of the water is already some degrees below freezing...imagine how cold that air is.
Paranoid Snopes Disclaimer: I did not check to see if that almighty web site watchdog calls these photos a work of fiction, a work of PhotoShop, a work of Great Spirit, a work of Gaia, or a work of Penguins. I really don't care...I just found them amazing and beautiful. ;-)
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Standing Strong
Trad climber
monsoon time
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Jul 11, 2008 - 02:11am PT
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a work of penguins!
in my next life, i want to be an iceberg-painting penguin...
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Mtnmun
Trad climber
Top of the Mountain Mun
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Jul 11, 2008 - 02:11am PT
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Way cool L, especially the first one, I have never seen anything like that.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jul 11, 2008 - 02:30am PT
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Home igloo/mesa for the elusive Tuolumne Penguin...
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Jul 11, 2008 - 02:57am PT
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They're all really cool, but the last two are weird....blue ice!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Jul 11, 2008 - 02:57am PT
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Whoooot.. Way cool L.
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Jul 11, 2008 - 05:51am PT
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The statement: "...the water froze the instant the wave broke through the ice..." is in error. The features were formed much differently.
And another email said those ice photos were on Lake Michigan.
But I really like them.
All that vertical ice. No one with ice tools. Pity.
Doug
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KaK
Mountain climber
Montana
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Jul 11, 2008 - 07:00am PT
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absolutly amzing,
so if the wave looking ice didnt from from a wave how did it?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 11, 2008 - 08:31am PT
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Camille Seaman's fantastic iceberg photos were on display at the National Academy of Sciences when I was there recently. The exhibit's title added to its moody, evocative tone:
"The Last Iceberg"
Camille Seaman is a Native American photographer who captures the essence of awe and beauty of indigenous cultures and environments. In this series, her goal is to depict the “individuality” of icebergs which she describes as “stoic, glowing masses of time and experience.” Inspired by her first sighting of an iceberg in 2005, Seaman journeyed to Antarctica and the Arctic regions of Svalbard and Greenland to make these pictures. They are part of a larger project entitled Melting Away in which she documents the polar regions of our planet, focusing on their environments, life forms, and inhabitants. With this work, Seaman has created a stunning visual record of the Earth’s polar regions as they undergo rapid changes due to global warming.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 11, 2008 - 08:39am PT
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Icebergs are kind of like sedimentary rocks -- originally formed in glaciers with more or less horizontal layers that record seasonal or longer cycles of weather and climate, then sometimes cut by fractures and water/ice intrusions. The layered records can go back thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of years, which is why ice core research is such a hot topic. Each glacier has ancient stories to tell.
Those rounded forms among the photos L posted have been under water, until the iceberg rolled to put them topside. Ice that hasn't spent as much time submerged yet has a craggier appearance, like the sharply pointed one with onlookers in a Zodiac, above.
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Shingle
climber
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Jul 11, 2008 - 09:39am PT
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"imagine how cold that air is"
Imagine being there when the berg flips back over again . . .
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Jul 11, 2008 - 09:41am PT
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Awesome pics, L.
Makes me want to get out the ice gear!!!
Edit
Especially with the 95+ degree temps and no rain for weeks!!!
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the kid
Trad climber
fayetteville, wv
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Jul 11, 2008 - 10:09am PT
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really nice pictures.. hard to believe this may all go away some day!
ks
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Gunkie
climber
East Coast US
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Jul 11, 2008 - 11:18am PT
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If you look closely, thorugh the curtain, you can make out the image of an ancient surfer getting shacked.
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L
climber
Tiger Tiger burning bright...
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 11, 2008 - 12:51pm PT
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Hahaha! Gunkie--I saw that too!!! It was a guy with a mini sabre-tooth on his board, wasn't it?
Cliffhanger--COOL PHOTO!!!OMG...and with penguins!
Chiloe--Thanks for the backstory (you are so darn good at that sort of thing!) and that wonderful woman's site...I can see hours of my day now spent in simple mezmerizing surfin'.
Doug--You're correct--those are not insta-freeze waves--and thanks for pointing that out. Another lovely person sent me a humorous email about my refusal to Snope-ify my post...but truthfully, I like leaving those things to the fine investigative reporters of the Taco. It gives one something better to do than just gawk at photos. However, I take umbrage at the suggestion that any of those big ones could be floating around in Lake Michigan. Unless there are great ice fields I'm unaware of....? (And that could very well be!)
SteveW--My first choice as a title for this thread was going to be The Ulimate Ice Climbers' Porn, but I deplore sensationalism as a method to hook people into your thread...it's been overdone so much recently, I figured best to just tell it like it is...a gift of beauty from the cold waters of our lovely planet. ;-)
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Jul 11, 2008 - 01:17pm PT
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L,
Great pics. We drove by Portage on the way to Whittier on Saturday. There were quite a few little bergs in the lake, and I just love that intense blue color. It's almost like they glow. I shoulda oughta took some pics.
One of these days I'll have to take the boat out just for a glacier cruise/photo shoot.
Not sure if I'm not right in the head (don't answer) or have just learned to embrace the cold stuff, as we have it on the ground nearly 1/2 the year, but I never tire of those amazing snow and ice formations.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Jul 11, 2008 - 01:41pm PT
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More Pictures... Hurray.
Man that blue ice is amazing. I want to see that up close and personal some day.
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Jul 11, 2008 - 01:57pm PT
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A bit far away to make out the blue, but heres some more frozen stuff.
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