Our Antarctic journey begins on the sea ice covered waters of the Southern Ocean. The dark lines (A) are leads or cracks in the ice.

As we approach the coast, we can see icebergs (A).

More icebergs (A) are visible here. These originate from glaciers (B) falling into the sea ice. The glaciers seen here are on the Pennell Coast of Victoria Land.

We encounter the vast Transantarctic mountains which are dissected by sinuous glaciers, such as Tucker Glacier (A).

Here we see Mariner Glacier (A), spilling out onto the sea to form kilometer long ice tongues (B). The darker spots (C) in the sea are more recent ice sheets, or water.

This ice tongue (A) is found at the terminus of Aviator Glacier.

Highly fractured sea ice still covers the Ross Sea. The lines on this image indicate shear cracks in the ice.

Here the sea is interrupted only the occasional tabular iceberg (A) formed from the ice tongues, and Franklin Island (B).

Other small islands (A) signal our approach to the Ross Ice Shelf, the first great barrier to the early explorers.

We reach Ross Island and its active volcano, Mount Erebus (A). We can also see the Erebus Ice Tongue (B), as well as the McMurdo Ice Shelf (C).

At the foot of Hut Point Peninsula, we see McMurdo station (A), the largest scientific base in the Antarctic. Its skiways can support C141 jet aircraft and ski equipped C130 aircraft. We can also see Black (B), and White (C) islands, obstacles to the flow of the McMurdo Ice shelf.

Here we see Minna Bluff (A), as we pass onto the vast Ross Ice shelf, draining the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The textured surface of the ice (B) is caused by the outflow of Byrd Glacier.

Continuing South we pass Nimrod Glacier (A), an important east Antarctic Outlet Glacier whose streaming flow is diverted by the ice disgorged by other outlet glaciers upstream...

...such as the Lennox-King Glacier (A)...

...and the enormous Beardmore Glacier, where well preserved beech leaves only 2 million years old, have been recently discovered.

Climbing towards the head of the Beardmore Glacier, we reach the High Polar Plateau (A).

We now begin our race to the pole. On this image and the next three, the different shades indicate variations in the topography.

We are now passing over ice sheets almost 3 000 m high and almost 3 000 m thick.

In the heart of Antarctica we come upon the Amundsen Scott Station (A), site of international scientific research year round. The lines that we see are skiways, between which the South Pole is located.