April 19 - Calving; Antarctica Style

It was looking like another uneventful day - all I had till about 10 AM was a gorgeous sunrise over the mountains with a layer of clouds covering the peaks.

But then magic happened and I just happened to have my camera to capture it. (I made it a rule that I would never go out without my camera with me).

So these glaciers that are in our backyard (and glaciers everywhere) are constantly breaking at their leading edges (a process called "calving") and falling into the water.  While this process happens constantly (probably once a day) for the glacier in our backyard, one has to be lucky to be there to see it, because it lasts all of 5 minutes. Well, I got lucky and here is what I saw:

It started with an "icefall" - a stream of ice and snow starting to trickle down the edge of the glacier. I knew that something was going to happen after that.

The next shots show shots of the calving.

The ice debris field after the calving event was over.