Wednesday 4 May 2016

The chasm cutting an Antarctic base adrift

chasm in the iceThirty-six years after he first went there as a young meteorologist, BBC Weather's Peter Gibbs returned to the current, sixth incarnation of the British Antarctic Survey's Halley Research Station. There, on "a day with no horizon", he explored the chasm threatening to cast it adrift.
The Brunt Ice Shelf feels like another planet even on the sunniest of days, but when the cloud closes in it turns downright eerie as sky, snow and ice blend into one diffuse white light.
Approaching the chasm, the only hint of this 100m-wide gash is a neon glint of blue from the depths of a crevasse in its far wall.