Antarctic Polar Regions | The world of Antarctic Ice | The Ice Caps

The ice caps : the western and eastern inlandsis

There are two types of ice cap (continental inlandsis) in Antarctica

• the ice cap (inlandsis) of Eastern Antarctica and
• the ice cap (inlandsis) of Western Antarctica

The first covers an area of about 10,350,000 km² and culminates in three places, the Argus Dome, the Titan Dome (close to the South Pole) and the Circe Dome. It is under the Argus Dome that the ice is at its thickest (4,776 metres), but there are numerous regions in this part of the Antarctic that culminate, like the South Pole, at more than 3,000 metres of altitude.

The eastern inlandsis is the largest and also the most mysterious part of the Antarctic; apart from a few scientific missions and a handful of sporting and exploratory endeavours, few men have ventured there. Its on this side of the continent that the coldest temperatures in the world have been recorded, -89,6°C; and it is in this same eastern part of the Antarctic that the point known as "The Pole of Inaccessibility" is to be found.

Separated from the eastern continental glacier by the Trans-Antarctic Chain, the western continental glacier (1,970,000 km²) has as its natural frontiers the Ross Sea, the Weddell Sea and the Antarctic Peninsula. Unlike its neighbour, even if the climatic conditions are practically as frightening in the East as in the West, this part of Antarctica appears to be a more accessible territory; it is in these particular regions and along their coasts that the majority of the great adventures of continental conquest have taken place.

It is from there that professional mountaineers began their assault on the Antarctic mountains, in particular by attempting to climb Mount Vinson (4,897 metres) in the Ellsworth Mountains chain (1).

It was to the south of the Ross Ice Shelf that the large American and New Zealand scientific bases were constructed. The Antarctic Peninsula, which is pointing its finger at South America and which, according to some authors, is considered to be the third continental glacier, is the land that is the most accessible from the inhabited regions of Chile or Argentina: it is therefore in these regions that a certain form of tourism is beginning to develop.

(1) The Belgian mountaineer, Rudy Van Snick, was the first Belgian to conquer Everest; he was also the first Belgian to succeed in climbing Mount Vinson in the Antarctic, in December 1995.