Freezing water, blowing sand and decomposing organic matter create some wonderful and beautiful phenomena which I had the good fortune to come across during some of my hikes this February.

Along the foredunes you can get a thin layer of ice form atop the sand due to fog and wind driven spray from the lake waves crashing on the beach.  In the low temps the water freezes quickly enough that it does not penetrate too deeply into the sand and the result is a crispy crust of ice.  Wind blown sand from the beach then scours this icy crust, etching delicate grooves and carving out hollow spaces from beneath the ice.  The result is an almost lacy lattice of ice and snow crystal structures, often times suspended in mid air.

This photograph somewhat resembles a satellite image of snow capped mountains. But it is actually a closeup view of an area where interesting ridges and grooves have been carved into the thin ice crust.

If you click on this image and view it full size you will be able to see how the sand particles and ice crystals interlock to form a brittle surface.

Blowing sand has carved out a hole under the icy crust. On the right hand side of the image you can see an almost perfectly flat face of frozen sand and ice.

An absolutely beautiful lattice of ice and sand, only one crystal thick. Extremely delicate and yet remarkably strong to hang suspended in the air.

The other interesting phenomena I came across were these “air” bubbles frozen in the ice.  The bubbles are actually methane gas which is given off by the decaying organic matter resting on the lake bed.  They form when the bubbles of methane rising from the bottom get trapped against a surface layer of ice.  If the water is freezing quickly enough it will freeze around the methane (which is a gas that does not liquify at these temperatures and pressures).  On a bright sunny day the light passing through these bubbles creates beautiful effects.

Bubbles of methane which were encapsulated in the ice above and around the edges of a freshly fallen leaf.

This patch of ice looks similar to a pot of furiously boiling water. If you look closely by clicking on the image to bring up the full size version, you can see some of the bubbles connect one atop another down into the ice. Others look almost like diamonds with how the reflect and refract the light.

The bigger bubbles in this image show bubbles within bubbles. Very cool, so to speak.