I have always been fascinated by ice.  I remember the first time I was able to see a glacier.  I came home with hundreds of pictures.  I love how it’s sometimes clear or white or blue, and every shade of color in between.  But of course, the blue is the best.  How wonderful to float by giant icebergs of so many sizes and textures silently knowing there is even more beneath the surface that you cannot see.  Although seeing thousands of penguins and hundreds of whales might seem like the highlight of going to Antarctica, I’d have to say the icebergs and the winter wonderland scenery was actually the highlight for me.

It was so amazing see glaciers or snow fields so thick that the snow on the island appears thicker than the land mass below it.  To realize that some of that snow and ice has been there for 15 million years and that some of that land mass hasn’t seen the light of day in that long – it’s hard to fathom.  The ice, snow, wind and waves produce an innumerable amount of shapes, sizes and patterns in the snow and ice.  You never tire of looking at the next iceberg or snow field.  Even though we didn’t see any glaciers calving, we could hear them moving.  Any time you sat quiet you could hear the low random rumbles of snow and ice shifting and moving.  You’d look off in the distance and expect to see the side of the mountain drop into the sea, but we didn’t get to see that.  It was still amazing to hear the movement.  You could see evidence of the movement in the avalanche debris on almost every steep slope and the icebergs small and large floating in every bay.