High winds and ice blocking the port had kept us back from landing at Wiencke Island earlier on this day, but after a long wait, the winds shifted, allowing access to the landing site, and as we began our landing as mists began to clear across the channel, in wonderful yet gentle golds and pinks.
Beyond the Parish-like (Parishish?) light, the sudden appearance of these mountain spires blew me away. I hadn't realized there were mountains in that direction at all (the weather had been that bad), and I was filled with a sense of awe and wonder from their scale.
Because part of the joy of this image is in communicating that scale, I'm very much looking forward to making a huge print of this, the sense of size is not going to come through well on a computer monitor. But to give you a sense of it... the crop of a tiny area (about 2% of the image) at right provides a hint.
Despite the enormous difficulties in getting to Antarctica and the setbacks I've had on this project, it's moments like these, and images like these, that leave me deeply committed to expanding my body of polar work.