Blood Falls Taylor Glacier Outflow

Blood Falls is exactly what it sounds like — a rust-red stain bleeding out of the snout of Taylor Glacier into Lake Bonney in the Dry Valleys. The color comes from iron-oxidizing hypersaline brine that’s been trapped beneath the glacier for an estimated two million years. It looks like a wound in the ice. Scientists have used it as an analogue for potential life-supporting systems on Mars. In person it’s deeply strange — this vivid red scar in an otherwise white-and-grey landscape that already feels like another planet.

Located in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, access is by helicopter only from McMurdo Station. There are no roads into the Dry Valleys. This is one of the most scientifically documented sites in Antarctica, so trip reports and research papers are plentiful — but you’re getting here on a science program’s timeline, not your own.

Bloodred brine bleeding from ancient ice.