Descending into crevasse
038/366
Halley Station is located on the Brunt Ice Shelf, which is a 350m thick layer of ice floating on the surface of the Southern Ocean and which is attached to the Ice Sheet (the layer of ice on land) in what's called the Hinge Zone. When the Ice Sheet flows off the land and onto the water, it breaks into smaller ice bergs which freeze together and are pushed further out to the sea. The gaps between icebergs are filled over time with snow and by the time the ice drifts a few kilometers away from the coast line, the surface of the Ice Shelf becomes mostly uniform. Some features, hoever, do exist in the form of wind scoops, small peaks, or chasms (large and wide depressions in the ice similar to canyons). One of those chasms has recently shown some activity just South East of the Station - it's tip started moving North and it's width is increasing about 10-11 cm a day. Last Sunday we went for a trip to see the Chasm and took the opportunity to abseil into and then jumar out of it. The wall of the crevasse in the picture is about 30m high and some frozen sea water could be seen at the bottom of the crack.