Spectacular photography by George Steinmetz in the recent Washington Post interactive presentation, as well as photographic reports by Kevin Humphreys reveal this stark but beautiful terrain like never before - in some places weirdly similar to a Martian landscape...
This dried skeleton of a penguin looks like something out of Lovecraft's ("Mountains of Madness") imagination:
Strange colors of the Dry Valleys are revealed in the morning light:
Lake Vanda in Wright Valley features extremely salty water underneath thick layer of incredibly clear ice. The patterns of clear ice are uniformly fascinating throughout the Dry Valleys, for example around the edge of Lake Hoare:
Powerful "katabatic" winds erode the rocks on the bottom of the Taylor Valley into marvelous shapes. Such wind-sculpted rocks are called "ventifacts":
Compare them with the Easter Island Statues:
Canada Glacier on the edge of Lake Fryxell:
Volcanic Fumaroles of Mount Erebus
Mount Erebus (3,794 meters), Ross Island, is the most active volcano in Antarctica, which also contains "persistent" lava lake, one of a very few long-lived lava lakes in the world - clearly visible from space:
Steaming ice "fumaroles" (volcanic gas vents) surround the crater, in time turning into surreal ice towers:
Blue light inside a fumarole turns it into a work of art:
Mount Erebus ice caves merit their own exploration:
Beautiful light and shades of color illuminate the valley, turning the already epic landscape into something even more worthy of exploration:
Lake Chad at base of the Suess Glacier, overlooked by the craggy Asgard Range:
Another fossilized skeleton making this place strangely sinister and fascinating at the same time:
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