Blood Falls, as this macabre vision is called,  is not  a frozen cascade of hemoglobin.

The scarlet tint derives from a community of sulfur-eating bacteria that dwell deep beneath the glacier in underground lakes—their crimson iron-oxide excretions that dye the ice scarlet red.

But death does lurk in the vicinity: so arid are the McMurdo Dry Valleys that when lost seals and penguins wander irreversibly inland, they never decompose.

Their mummified remains are strewn about, completing the ghoulish picture.