This is the final post in our 5-part guest blog series by Ambassador Huebner about his exciting trip to Antarctica! Check out the first, second, third and fourth posts. The blog below was originally posted here.

My visits to the explorers’ huts, the Adélie penguin rookery, and certain other wildlife sites were part of an exhilarating day of barnstorming the shores and ice of McMurdo Sound by helicopter. I have already written about the various stops. Missing from my prior narratives, though, is a sense of the terrain we traversed between landings.

I wish that I could adequately convey to you a sense of the vast scale and stark beauty of the mountains, sea, and ice that passed beneath, above, and around us as we flew. Words, however, are wholly inadequate. Even photos disappoint.

None of the hundreds of pictures I took comes even close to capturing the breathtaking enormity, thundering silence, kinetic emptiness, and 360° grandeur of the landscape. Nonetheless, I’d like to share a few of my favorite aerial scenes from that very special day.

Approaching the research vessels.

Approaching the iceberg off Cape Evans.

Interesting ice formations.

Together with the images in my prior posts, I hope that these photos give you some small sense of the glory of the Antarctic landscape.

Although this item is not likely to appear on my blog until I am already back in New Zealand, I’m still here on the Ice as I write this paragraph. I’m going to sign off now, take a long midnight hike up Observation Hill, and then turn to the sad task of packing my bags for tomorrow’s flight out.