Our remote field camp on the sea ice of Erebus Bay is now in place, and the view is spectacular! This season we're located near the Erebus Ice Tongue just off the route to Cape Evans. Erebus Ice Tongue is a fascinating glacial formation that is very distinctive in satellite imaging of the Ross Island area where we're located. The tongue is actually a long narrow sheet of ice formed where the end of the Erebus Glacier projects out into McMurdo Sound.
Perhaps the most dominating feature of the entire area here is Mount Erebus (12,448 ft.//3794 m), the southernmost active volcano on Earth, named by polar explorer James Clark Ross after one of his ships. Mount Erebus was first climbed by members of Ernest Shackleton's party in 1908.
From our field camp's large kitchen hut window, we have a great view of Mount Erebus, Mount Terror (another smaller inactive volcano named for Ross's other ship), and Hutton Cliffs where one of the larger Weddell seal pupping colonies is located.
Below is a view of our field camp in place as the sun dipped near the horizon, with Mt. Erebus in the background.
The field team is now in full gear and the Weddell seal pupping season is getting underway. We'll have more on our field team and their work in future posts, so please stay tuned!
- Mary Lynn Price
You can be sure that I will stay tuned. The images and videos are awesome, just great. When I imagine my son belongs to the team, wouah!
Special greetings from Montpellier France.
A proud mum !
Posted by: Margaret | 18 October 2011 at 04:00 AM