Glacier surface and cliffsWright Lower Glacier is cold, and a tunnel cut into the basal zone by Professor Sean Fitzsimons of the University of Otago, New Zealand, indicates temperatures well below zero degrees Celsius, and no clear boundary between glacier ice and the underlying sediment. | |||
 Field camp in front of Wright Lower Glacier with ice-marginal lake in background. |  Aerial view of the southern side of Wright Lower Glacier with snow-bridged crevasses. Ross Island with Mt Erebus in upper left background. |  The 2m-high rectangular slot is the mouth of the artificial tunnel into the basal debris zone of Wright Lower Glacier. |  Wright Lower Glacier cliff and ice-contact lake, northern margin. An ice-coring sampling programme is underway on the lake-ice surface. |
 Low light emphasises the texture in the northern cliffs of Wright Lower Glacier. |  Terraces and cliffs of Wright Lower Glacier on a cloudy evening, looking east. Fallen blocks of glacier ice lie on the lake-ice surface. |  Layering emphasised by aeolian sand at the northern margin of Wright Lower Glacier. These structures are interpreted as thrust-faults. |  Ice towers at the snout of Wright Lower Glacier. |
 Close-up of fracture planes in the ice towers of Wright Lower Glacier. |  Shafts of sunlight catch the ice wall of Wright Lower Glacier’s northern margin. |  Moat at the contact between the ice cliff and the ramp of ice and sand. The water has mostly drained through the gully on the right. |  Ice ramp with an irregular veneer of sand close to Lake Brownworth. |
 Pinnacles at the margin of Wright Lower Glacier where it abuts Lake Brownworth. Aeolian sand lies between the pinnacles. |  Towers and pinnacles with sheets of aeolian sand between. |  Sun-etched serrated ice amongst the pinnacles of Wright Lower Glacier. |  Complex group of pinnacles projecting above a sheet of sand. |
 Drained moat at the interface between the sand/ice ramp and cliffs of Wright Lower Glacier. |  Transition from sand/ice ramp to alluvial plain, with towers and pinnacles of Wright Lower Glacier in the background. People for scale in the distance. | ||
| Photos Michael Hambrey, 2001. | |||