Antarctica East 2026

Jan 15: Ross Ice Shelf

Today our position is roughly 73 deg S and 179 deg W – that’s getting pretty close to the South Pole at 90 deg S

Today we had our first zodiac outing, to experience the enormity of the Ross Ice shelf.

Ross Ice Shelf is the world’s largest body of floating ice, lying at the head of Ross sea . The current estimate of its area is about 182,000 square miles (472,000 square km), making it roughly the size of the Yukon territory in Canada.

The great white barrier wall of the shelf’s front, first seen in 1841 by the British polar explorer James Clark Ross, rises in places to 160 or 200 feet (50 or 60 meters) high and stretches about 500 miles (800 km) between fixed “anchor points” on Ross Island  to the west and the jutting Edward VII Peninsula on the east. 

With its immense, gently undulating surface reaching back nearly 600 miles (950 km) southward into the heart of Antarctica, the Ross Ice Shelf provides the best surface approach into the continental interior. Hence, the shelf has served as an important gateway for explorations of the Antarctic interior, including those carried out by many of the most famous expeditions. 

For example, the McMurdo Sound region on the shelf’s western edge became the headquarters for Robert Scott’s 1911–12 epic sledging trip to the South Pole. The eastern barrier regions of the ice shelf were headquarters for the Norwegian Roald Amundsen’s first attainment of the South Pole on December 14, 1911

Next to Mt Terror on the Ross Ice shelf is Mt Erebus (do you remember the Mt Erebus disaster in 1979 when Air New Zealand Flight 901 flew into Mt Erebus killing all 237 passengers and 20 crew on board.) Mt Erebus is an active volcano and you can see the smoke at the top. And look at the cute Adelie penguins in front of the mountain

We then sailed around to Lewis Bay where the water was like glass, there was no wind and the sun was out…so we went out on the zodiacs again. We saw lovely icebergs, more penguins, and Orca whales.

And here’s some more cute penguins showing how well they dive….