We left the ridge top around 5:30 and were out of the valley just minutes later. However, my excitement really began to build as I noticed the pilot was heading more and more in the direction of the ocean and less and less in that of McMurdo. Sure enough, we started passing icebergs and seals and I found myself squirming like a 5 year old in a car seat looking from window to window to try and take it all in.

The pilot did a little maneuver he liked to call, "threading the needle" in which he flew right between two icebergs at a pretty quick speed just a few hundred feet off the deck. The faces of the bergs were probably several hundred feet high, but we were so low all I could see was ice!

After swinging up out of that little move, he headed straight for the ice edge where we spotted and circled a large group of emperor penguins. And if that wasn't enough, he even landed on a berg and claimed it as "carp shop B-15" (since it, along with all the others are pieces of the B-15 berg that broke up last year.)

Wow, what a ride! Sorry, for the ill-framed photos, it probably serves as an indication of just how excited I was to be zipping around the big ice and the deep blue.

~G