Let me begin with a disclaimer! I wrote these posts during the trip as I said, today when I tried to post Day 6 -- well, technology won! My blog app showed that it posted successfully, but it doeesn't appear on my blog. And it is gone from my iPad....lost in cyberspace forever! No great harm done, of course, but I sure don't remember exactly what I wrote. So, here are a few pics....
So, we travelled back up to the north overnight. Thus, our first zodiac outing today was a cruise, not shore landing. I kept trying to convince my guide to let me get out of the zodiac to test the ice, but she insisted that was unwise. Anyway, here we are in the zodiac, landed on the edge of the ice pack. It looked like we landed on the moon - not that I've ever been to the moon, but I bet it would look as wild!
We went beyond 80* North this morning: 81* (when you round up). Still, I couldn't convince anybody to go all the way to the north pole with me. Never mind that it's dangerous (think hungry bears). Never mind that from this point forward lies nothing but ice! There are no open routes right now. I guess I will have to be satisfied knowing that we are the first people to get this far this season & that it is highly unlikely that another person is present between our location & the North Pole.
An interesting fact about all this ice & snow is that you are only looking at sea ice - not glacial. We were told this is all from the winter just past with the creative hands of wind & currents. That knowledge makes it all the more incredible!
Our ship on the open side of the pack ice. We were lucky to find a small channel for the zodiac, so we could really explore the pack ice. We got stuck a time or two, but never seriously. The guides know their stuff!
I'm tempted to say this was our only zodiac outing today & the rest of the day we explored the ice pack & cruised in the ship. If I'm wrong I'll post the missing zodiac trip another day...
This is what people do when: (1) they are stuck on the ship all day and (2) the cold finally numbs all common sense!
This one is just for fun because I like the low cloud.
There is some color effect that happens at the poles sometimes after midnight, but I cannot remember the name for it....anybody?? The pic below was the only night (it's between 12:30-1am) we experienced it - and it slowly stretched over to the next glacier too.
It gets very cold and windy sometimes, but I love it up here!
No comments:
Post a Comment