'Chaotic' snow and ice scenery

The image depicts a detail from the upper icefall of Fox Glacier on the western slope of New Zealand's Southern Alps. Due to the fast flow of the glacier in the upper part of its tongue, the glacier surface is extremely crevassed and segmented into numerous individual séracs. This makes individual snow layers clearly visible. Some of these layers are coated by brownish fine dust originating from bush fires in Australia. In years with massive fires related fine particles can undergo a long-distance transport from across the Tasman Sea to be deposited on glacier surfaces in the Southern Alps in excess of 2000 km from their original source.