Word: sastrugi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Ross Ice Shelf, a mesmerizing expanse of white that stretches to the horizon and beyond. Wreathed in ice fog, the ice shelf takes on the haziness of a mirage. Yet it is all too substantial. Its surface ripples with undulating pressure ridges and solid, wind-hewn waves called sastrugi that move with the ice as it flows inexorably toward...
...Sastrugi. Doggedly sticking to its scientific schedule, but far behind its timetable, the Fuchs expedition crawled up the domed icecap from South Ice. It painfully threaded through a line of nunataks (mountain peaks almost submerged in ice), and reached ice with fewer crevasses on the high plateau behind. Here were great fields of sastrugi-wind-formed ridges of hard-packed snow sometimes 4 ft. high. The Sno-Cats crossed them all right, but with dangerous pitching and crashing. Progress slowed to a crawl; the weather grew worse; but the scientists kept to their schedule as if they were making their...
...underside of the earth is a massive, high-domed shield of rock and ice. This is the Antarctic Continent, a frozen and almost lifeless wasteland studded with glistening mountains that stand like icy tombstones over a cosmos-sized graveyard. In its skies, angry clouds drift over seas of corrugated sastrugi and sparkling glacial spillways. To the explorer this continent of 5,000,000 square miles-three-fourths as big as the U.S. and Canada combined-is a geologic throwback to the Ice Age. It is the world's most hostile environment of earth and air, a land of near...
| 1 |