Madison Chock and Evan Bates, of the United States, compete in the ice dance's rhythm dance segment at the ISU Grand Prix Finals of Figure Skating, Friday, December 6, 2024, in Grenoble, France. (Photo by Laurent Cipriani/AP Photo)

A man bathes in an ice hole in the Neva River St. Petersburg, Russia, Wednesday, February 10, 2021. The temperature in St. Petersburg is –15C ( 5 °F). (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

People wearing loin cloths pray after they bathe in ice-cold water outside the Teppozu Inari shrine in Tokyo, Japan, January 8, 2017. (Photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters)

American nature and wildlife photographer Paul Souders is very well-travelled around the globe. In one of his exploits, we have his series of images shot in the ice capped shores of Churchill, Canada. Souders took his Zodiac boat to Hudson Bay in midsummer and waited there for three days before he finally saw a bear, a young female while on sea ice around 30 miles offshore.

Welsh actress and television personality Amber Davies poses on a motorbike in the last decade of September 2023 – as she prepares to go full throttle for next year’s Dancing on Ice title. (Photo by Mark Hayman – Fabulous)

Houseboats and charter boats are docked in the ice in the harbor at Fischerhof Eldenburg in the Mecklenburg Lake District, northern Germany, Wednesday, February 19, 2025. (Photo by Jens Büttner/dpa)

A surfer rides a wave at the snowy beach of Unstad, in Lofoten Island, Arctic Circle, on March 9, 2016. Surfers from all over the world comes to Lofoten island to surf in extrem conditions. Ocean temperature is 6-7 °C, air temperature around 0°C in spite of a weather very unstable. (Photo by Olivier Morin/AFP Photo)

Penitentes, or nieves penitentes (Spanish for “penitent-shaped snows”), are a snow formation found at high altitudes. They take the form of tall thin blades of hardened snow or ice, closely spaced with the blades oriented towards the general direction of the sun.