Ice Age

With autumn just starting I thought some seasonal pictures of woodland scenes and leaves changing colour would be quite nice.  But not today.  Today I have picked out two pictures of ice crystals.

The first image was taken on the slopes of Snowdon after a night camping out in January 2012 with Adam and some friends.  We had hiked up to a suitable site in driving rain and snow, pitching our tents in the dark.  Waking up early to a beautiful sunrise I was able to get some stunning pictures.  Walking a little way up the slope above our camping ground I found this icicle growing upwards in a small pool in an indentation in a rock.  I had never seen anything quite like it before but it is real, there is no trickery.  Apparently these formations can occur in distilled water and only below -7C which shows just how cold it was on the mountainside for the intrepid campers.

The second picture was taken in December that same year, again I was with Adam and another friend hiking, this time near Malham Tarn in Yorkshire on part of the Pennine Way. It was our last walk before Adam set off for Colombia. It was really cold and I remember on the road back to the car I slipped on some black ice and landed quite heavily, fortunately nothing was broken and my main concern was to protect my camera gear.  Anyway in this picture I have used my macro lens to pick out the individual ice crystals which were growing in a cluster on a dry stone wall.

Snowdon Jan 2012, Canon EOS 450D 18 - 55mm @ 49mm f5.6 ISO 100

Ice Crystal,
Canon EOS 450D Canon 100mm f2.8 macro @f5.6 ISO 800