Ice Cave

A day of three halves today.  We were up early to leave at 5am to try and chase the aurora.  Last night was clear but the aurora forecast was zero.  This morning it was up at a six, but we unfortunately couldn't escape from the cloud cover.  We did, however, stop off at the ice beach on the way back to do sunrise.

This is a stunning place with lumps of sea washed ice on the beach, which all came off the glacier.  We had fun playing with the ice lumps and watching the waves wash over them.  After that, we came back to the hotel for breakfast and a shower.

Next up we left at 11am for a visit to an ice cave.  We visited Crystal Cave  which was inside the glacier.  We got there by driving down the road in a monster truck, which let down his tires to 11psi so that we could travel off road to the glacier.  Once there we had a couple of hours in a very busy cave, mostly taking arts shots of the patterns in the ice.  We did at one point get the cave to ourselves and found time to take a group photo.  We had a packed lunch in a very bumpy ride back from the cave and we then returned back to the hotel to warm up.

We were out again at 4.30pm for a return to the ice beach.  It really is an amazing place - you find random lumps of ice on the black sand and they look so photogenic!  We also walked over to the ice lagoon itself and listed to the sounds of the ice lumps smashing into each other.  We didn't spent long here - it was raining, so we came back to the hotel to pick our ten favourite photos from the trip and to have dinner.