Back in the Valley

Ventifact on the Nussbaum Reigel, Taylor Valley, Antarctica

A rock whittled by the wind to climb into.

Wild places.  Blogging to share. It has been 9 years since my last visited to Taylor Valley, Antarctica.  The lakes are rising in response to climate change. Our footsteps along the lake shores erased. The granite still whittling away, the seal bodies still mummifying, the sky still parching rock and skin. My legs can still keep moving miles & miles until the water from glaciers fills my bottles. Their surfaces so strangely beautiful and other-worldly that I wonder if I've gathered Martian tears. And in 24 hours of daylight all things are possible, even a traverse of the Suess Glacier that ends at 10 p.m., or a sneaked peak outside of your tent in the middle of the searingly bright night. Some places stick inside of your memory- always  vivid. Endurance is not just motion.

On the Suess Glacier sampling trace elements from cryoconite holes & streams.  This part of  glacier is gently sloping & matches the the texture of the ice-covered lakes below.