Odds are, if you’ve ever caught even a glimpse of a documentary on Antarctica, there’s a non-zero chance you’ve taken a gander at McMurdo station. McMurdo station is the largest permanent base in Antarctica, and is practically a small town in its own right. It’s a fascinating place in and of itself, and it certainly warrants its own post. But I’m not here to talk about McMurdo Station: I’m here to talk about what lay right next to it.
One would think that the regions right next to our settlements are the ones we would understand the best. After all, proximity may breed contempt, but it also breeds familiarity. We’re an inquisitive species, and it’s hard to keep things from us if it’s right under our nose.
And yet, no one seems to understand the McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Looking more like a series of crevices on Mars then anything earthly, the Dry Valleys hold the dubious distinction of being one of only a few Antarctic “oasises”, rare places that are relatively free of the ice and snow that dominate the rest of the frozen continent. But I can’t help but feel that whoever named these valleys an oasis had a rather sick sense of humor, as they constitute some of the driest deserts on planet earth. In fact, it’s so dry that the animals that die here are quickly mummified, all the water sucked out of them.
A mummified seal. It is not entirely clear how it got so deep into the valley.
The valleys were discovered in 1902 by Sir Robert Scott, an esteemed Antarctic explorer, who had been all across that continent, which is most assuredly one of the deadest, most desolate on planet earth. And yet, he still saw fit to remark upon this specific valley, terming it as “A valley of death”. And he wasn’t far off.
There are only three sources of water in the Dry Valleys: Lake Vida, a hypersaline lake, and the ominously named Onyx river.
The third is perhaps one of the most bizarre and frightening things on planet earth, located in the midst of a bizarre, alien landscape, it takes the weirdness to a whole new level. A think you may need to sit down for this, because this is really fucking weird.
The third source of water in the Valleys is the “Blood Falls”. It’s a glacier that bleeds.
Well, not bleed per se. Really, the water trapped inside of it just has a whole heck of a lot of iron oxide in it, making the water appear blood red. But if you just happened across that thing I don’t know that you’d be making the distinction.
Perhaps the most enduring mystery of the Dry Valleys is why they exist, and how they’ve managed to stay so dry despite being penned in on all sides by towering glaciers. Some have suggested that IT’s because of the furious winds known to the region, but even this is uncertain. No one is quite sure why the winds happen to be so strong here, and it’s been suggested that attributing the strange valley to the winds is putting the chicken before the egg: that is to say, the only reason the winds are so strong here is because of the unique shape of the valley. Leaving the origins still unknown.
Whatever the cause, the Dry Valleys are a bizarre place, and one that I will not be taking a vacation to any time soon.
Antarctica is a really, really cool place. There is nowhere else on earth that is so untouched and special. I have a family friend I hike and ski with who took a ski/hiking trip last year to Antarctica, but he lived on a boat just off of the continent south of Chile, so the pictures he showed me did not quite include the dry valleys and such. I hadn’t even known these valleys existed until jsut now, to be honest, but it seems incredible. I definitely want to go to antarctica just to take in its untouched beauty at some point.
I actually have a friend that wants to go see Antarctica. Somewhere along the line, we were in a conversation and I asked the perhaps rather cliché question, “If you could go anywhere in the world for a vacation, where would you go?” His response made me question his sanity, honestly, but after seeing some of the places you describe, I can now understand the fascination behind it. The Blood Falls would be incredible to see in person, and it’s hard to believe that something surrounded by ice and snow and ocean could have a dessert so dry. Your blog made me want to do some research, and just as I suspected, Lake Vida’s waters never completely freeze, even in the dead of winter, because of the high saline levels. In fact, the temperature of the water is basically 9 degrees all the time, but never freezes. I still wonder how that seal got there… but we’ll never know, will we?