Blood Falls: The Antarctic Glacier That Bleeds, and the Century It Took to Explain
Stand at the foot of Taylor Glacier, in the frozen desert of Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys — one of the driest places on the planet — and you seem to be looking at a crime scene. From a fissure in the wall of ancient ice, a stream the colour of dried blood spills down the white face and pools on the frozen surface of Lake Bonney. There is no wound and there is no blood. And yet, for more than a hundred years, nobody could say with any confidence what there actually was.
The falls were found in 1911 by the Australian geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor, mapping the valley that now bears his name during Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova expedition. Taylor guessed the colour came from red algae growing in the ice. It was a sensible first thought and it was wrong, yet it held for decades — partly because the real source lay where no one could reach it, and partly because the truth turned out to be stranger than a living stain.
Sign up and get your first month completely free — unlimited access to the entire archive, ad-free for subscribers. Cancel anytime.
Subscribe — first month free