Pictures from the flight down

Me on the flight down to McMurdo Station.



View out the plane window. Transantarctic mountains with alpine glaciers visible. 

 As we neared the Antarctic continent we began to see patches of broken ice that slowly evolved to mountains with glaciers. In Antarctica there are two main types of glaciers, alpine glaciers and ice sheets. Alpine glaciers are glaciers that flow down valleys between mountain peaks. Snow accumulates near the top of the valley and eventually with enough snow the glacier is able to flow down slope. Alpine glaciers can be found all over the world, even near the equator at high enough altitudes. Ice sheets are huge expanses of ice that form broad relatively flat deposits. Snow accumulates at a central location and then once enough material accumulates it flows outward from that location. Think (East) Antarctica and Greenland.