Antarctic Peninsula and Polar Circle 2020 Feb 10 2020 -13

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Ice is Nice – Glacier Fun Facts Gaby Pilson, Hiking Master & Expedition Guide Glaciers have, quite literally, shaped our world. Without glaciers, the rolling hills and wide valleys we know today would look very different, but it turns out that these icy giants have a much longer and more storied history than many of us would initially suspect. Here are some of the best fun facts about glaciers: 11 1 Not just anything can be a glacier. In fact, there’s a size requirement that a piece of ice has to meet to become a glacier. Anything considered a glacier must be at least 0.1 km 2 (nearly 25 acres) in area to be worthy of the name. Although there’s a minimum size requirement to be considered a glacier, there’s no upper limit to glacierhood. The longest glacier on earth is the Lambert Glacier of Antarctica, which measures out to some 434 km (270 mi) long. The world’s largest non-polar glacier is the Fedchenko Glacier of Tajikistan, which measures a respectable 77km (48mi) long. © Renato Granieri © Renato Granieri 2 Glaciers are formed by snowflakes. Although it’s crazy to think that a tiny snowflake can create something as large as a glacier, without snow, glaciers would never exist in the first place. To form a glacier, massive amounts of snow must accumulate and persist in a single location all year long for hundreds, if not thousands of years. During this time, the individual snowflakes found in the snowpack change in a process known as snowflake metamorphosis, where individual ice grains fuse together and get bigger and air bubbles get smaller. Once the icepack builds up enough mass to start flowing downhill, then, voila! We have a glacier. 3 Glaciers are found all over the world, not just in the polar regions. While the majority of glaciers and glacial ice is concentrated in high northern and southern latitudes, glaciers are found even near the equator, such as on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and in the mountains of Ecuador. That being said, about half of the world’s 200,000 glaciers are found in one place: Alaska. There, glaciers cover a whopping 72,500 km 2 (28,000 mi 2 ) of the US state’s total area. That’s a lot of ice. © Werner Kruse 4 Glaciers are basically really, really, really slow-moving rivers. To be considered a glacier, a large mass of ice must be physically moving downhill. This movement downhill is driven by gravity and is the main reason why glaciers also act as major agents of erosion. Since glaciers move downhill, they often remove and transport large boulders and chunks of rock, depositing them much further downhill then where they started. 10-22 FEB 2020 Volume 2, Issue 13
Drake Passage Drake Passage © Sandra Petrowitz © Sandra Petrowitz Elephant seal Barrientos Is Gentoo chic © Sandra Petrowitz © Sandra Petrowitz Drake Passage 10-22, FEB 2020 All photos © Sandra Petrowitz Volume 2, Issue 13
Page 1 and 2: 10-22, FEB 2020 Volume 2, Issue 13
Page 3 and 4: TABLE OF CONTENTS The Voyage Meet t
Page 5 and 6: Meet the Team 4 Rashidah Lim Assist
Page 7 and 8: The Seven Sisters of Szczecin David
Page 9 and 10: Day 2 - Rolling Our Way South Febru
Page 11: Day 3 - Our First Steps in Antarcti
Page 15 and 16: Day 4 - Landing on the Continent An
Page 17 and 18: Day 5 - The White Continent 14 Febr
Page 19 and 20: When and How the Earth Got Cold Dav
Page 21 and 22: Port Charcot Gentoo Chics Crabeater
Page 23 and 24: South of the Circle 16 Februrary 20
Page 25 and 26: Detaille Provisions Base ¨W¨ Zodi
Page 27 and 28: Argentine Islands Gentoo & Adelie B
Page 29 and 30: Departing the Peninsula 18 Februrar
Page 31 and 32: Argentine Whalers Bay Islands Gento
Page 33 and 34: Northward Bound 20 February 2020 -
Page 35 and 36: Base ¨W¨ © Sandra Petrowitz © S
Page 37 and 38: Home Again 22 February 2020 - Ushua
Page 39: A Final Note… 38 As any good expe

Antarctic Peninsula and Polar Circle 2020 Feb 10 2020 -13

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