More Light and More Snow

The wind storm from the last couple days has finally blown over. It dropped to -101 F yesterday with minimal wind.

The wind brought new drifts of snow (I like to call them pillows) over the entire area. They are just lumps of soft ice crystals that gather together and get really annoying when they happen to settle across the path you have been walking and packing down the whole year. Your nice hard packed path becomes a myriad of knee deep pillows (at least for me) you have to wade through. But they are quite pretty.

 The wind storm brought new sastrugi as well. 

 Now that I can see what I'm walking on again and it doesn't have to compete with the beauty of the sky I find myself looking down a lot more. I forgot how intricate and beautiful the snow could be.

 And how the time of day changes the angle of the light on the snow making it look slightly different every hour or so.

 A huge crevasse opened up!! Just kidding, it's about 6 inches across and maybe an inch deep.

 The low lighting and angle gives the snow a nice softer look then the harsh blue and sparking landscape I remember from summer.

 On the left side of the picture above you can see the remnants of some foot steps from before/during the storm. They might be mine.

With the stars gone the power plant exhaust has acquired more attention. Who knew burning fossil fuels could look so pretty sometimes? It does keep life at the pole fairly comfortable so that's a big plus.