VorpalBlade,
Great technical information. I'm not sure yet how I'd get the vertical striations, but it's a good challenge.
As for the water, see the attached pic. In the surface layer, I added just a little luminosity to clarify the water. To get the patches of light blue (implying white ice below the water), I used Perlin Billow in the Power fractal shader and then worked with the various scale settings and color to get large patches of the effect.
SteveS
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