I woke this day still glowing from the stunning imagery I saw during my flight yesterday to the South Pole. After canceling several times due to conflicts and weather, the pieces finally aligned and off I went. I would love to take some quiet time to analyze its mental, emotional, and photographic results; I worked for years to make it happen and it was everything I anticipated. (Editor's note: Apparently, Gabriel took that time. His Pole entry has yet to arrive.)

More photos Click to enlarge

I head to my office in the Crary Lab, and two or three hours later plans are completed. I will again meet Eric, my guide for the afternoon, and I will be shown a large crevasse. This is personally very important: These features are to no small extent the reason for my being in Antarctica this time. Yesterday I saw some of their patterns and organization from 26,000 to 30,000 feet in the air. Today I hope to actually descend into the engine room of The Ice.

It seems a reasonable question to ask: Why go clear around the planet to look at a bunch of ice?

To me ice is not static, cold and dead, but is a living tissue, an inherent and necessary part of the fragile skin of this planet that includes all life: the biosphere. The poles are the planet's thermostats, and without the The Ice there would be no life.

Beyond that, the records of earlier climate shifts readable from ice can help us predict shifts to come, and help us cope with them. And come they will -- climate is never stable. The ice is teaching us that it is a lot more prone to abrupt and large changes than we thought just a few years ago. We will need all the assistance we can get. And ice is always stunningly beautiful.

Eric and I gear up in the usual way: pack, ropes, crampons, harnesses, carabiners, the works. The van again drives us the two or three miles over the dusty hogback to the New Zealand presence here -- Scott Base -- and down onto the ice shelf. We get out at the row of waiting snowmachines (snowmobiles), load the two assigned to us for the day and head out to the northeast, paralleling Hut Point on the shelf ice.

The miles fly by. Although the top speed of my "sled" is about 30 mph, its speedometer goes up to 100. We are following a trail marked every 100 yards or so by 8-foot flagged bamboo stakes, thousands of them. They are not really needed in these conditions, but that can change very quickly, even in summer. It is not uncommon here for visibility to be near zero, so those stakes could save your life.

Mt Erebus has been standing clear for the entire day, but as we approach its feet, after 40 minutes or so, its summit mysteriously begins to withdraw into a vapor shroud. This doesn’t affect us though, since we are still in sun as we climb a pair of gentle ridges, drop down a bit to the south, and shut down our noisy engines at the end of the bamboo markers. The ride was fun in its own way, but it was getting a touch tedious since with a single steering ski forward these older models are somewhat unstable, and the concentration required to operate them precludes much sightseeing. A deep silence envelops us, so profound it feels like being underwater. The silence allows for a new mood, a bit more relaxed and also a bit more humble. Vast, empty spaces are always affecting in this way.

We alter our clothing a bit for new endeavors, fit our harnesses, load our packs and other gear and set off down the foot trail to the south, towards the McMurdo Ice Shelf. After a few hundred yards it hooks right to the west, and suddenly we are paralleling an ice cliff about 50 feet high. The disturbed contours at its feet tell me that the cliff is the up-slope wall of a largely filled-in crevasse, which becomes evident as we enter the random ice rubble and move back back to the east, close to the wall and dipping slightly below the surface. A hole no larger than six feet around appears, and Eric enters. I wait outside, keeping slight tension on the rope linking us. I move as he does, even though I can’t see him in the darkness. Eventually, he is far enough inside that I too enter.

We pick our way down a long slope of ice and snow blocks from two to ten yards in size. Above us, the roof appears to consist of more such blocks. I profoundly hope they do not decide to join their fallen fellows while I am between them. But it is the walls that I find especially captivating. They are striated with the layering of ancient seasons and weather events, and the millenia have smoothed to gleaming any roughnesses from the great fracturing that split these masses asunder. This surface reminds me of nothing so much as a skin, perhaps the skin of the underside of certain whales. This thought only reinforces my sense of ice as alive.

Eventually, we descend to where the rubble from the ‘ceiling’ tapers off, and we are standing on a floor about two feet wall to wall. As they rise, the walls spread apart until they are about 20 feet apart, and then close again about a hundred feet above our heads. It is quite dark, but some blue light filters from behind, and some more from ahead from some opening unseen due to a gentle curvature of the ‘tunnel’.

A small chunk of snow or frost -- perhaps a cubic foot or so -- falls from the roof onto the blocks we have just traversed. It is a reminder that indeed this is not static, but all of this enormity is in fact in motion, ever so slowly. It is hard to credit that all this is created of nothing but water, cold, light and time.

Appropriately cautious, Eric moves forward, planting ice screws at 100-foot intervals in the wall, which hold the rope connecting us. We would have some hope of survival if the bottom should prove to be a false floor and drop out from under us. We would be on our own, though: we have no illusions that portable radios would transmit or receive this far under. After several hundred feet, the walls converge until we have to walk sideways, and lean against one, since they are not vertical. As I proceed behind, I remove the screws for reuse further on. It is a slow process, and I have plenty of time to think, to admire, to wonder, to attempt to soak this in, and simply to awe.

This is what I have come so far to see and to feel.

Tomorrow: McMurdo Alternative Arts Gathering