Sastrugi

And I still always feel that little bit breathless as I go there.

But then there's a lot of Sastrugi, which are those wind-shaped ridges.

And they can be really big as well at times where you're like, you know, clambering over a little bit.

You fall way more times than you think.

Beyond the battlefield, snow has been the defining condition of polar exploration, and the men and women who went to the ends of the earth spent most of their time not on ice at all, but on snow lying over it.

The surface of Antarctica away from the coast is not slick and glassy, but a firm, wind-packed snow called Sastrugi, where the wind has carved it into ridges, some of them knee-high and hard as plaster.

Sledges bumped over these ridges for hundreds of kilometres, and diaries from the early expeditions return again and again to the state of the surface.

whether it was sticky or fast, whether the runners glided or dragged, whether the dogs or the men could find purchase.

You could walk for days and nothing would change.

The surface would remain the same, the same Sastrugi ridges, the same white uniformity, the same featureless horizon in every direction.

Early polar explorers hauling sledges across this landscape reported a form of sensory deprivation that is unique to the Antarctic interior.

Without landmarks, without variation, without any visual cue to anchor the sense of motion or progress, The mind turns inward.

The Antarctic interior at night is a place of extraordinary stillness.

The wind, if there is any, is light.

A gentle, persistent breath of cold air moving from the high interior toward the coast, producing a whisper of sound across the Sastrugi ridges, but nothing louder.

The temperature is far below freezing.