National Geographic Special - The World\'s Most Beautiful Places

105 STARK & WILD

ice sheets

ANTARCTICA

Snow falls slowly across Antarctica: barely

enough in a year to cover your shoes. But

it collects gradually, flake on flake, year

on year, until it compacts to form the ice

that covers 98 percent of the continent.

Over millennia, gravity pulls some of this

immense ice sheet toward the sea, where

it forms floating ice shelves or calves into

icebergs. Wildlife has a chance—just—on

this icy fringe, and penguins, seals, whales,

and seabirds contrive to live in the coldest,

driest, and windiest place on Earth.

DON’T MISS

Small-boat cruises—generally those with fewer than

100 people—can edge much closer than large cruise

vessels to Antarctica’s penguins, seals, and other

wildlife and to the awe-inspiring, icebound land-

scapes of the “White Continent.”

A leopard seal on the Antarctic pack ice. The leopard

seal is the only seal to prey on other seals.