As a result of the "freeze-thaw dogma," the polar scientific community has, for a long time, emphasized the importance of physical properties of rocks (porosity, jointing, etc) as a primary control on rock weathering. More recently, due to growing interest in chemically driven processes operating in cold areas, attention has been drawn to the chemical rock properties. Surprisingly, the optical properties of rocks have either been ignored or only alluded to in most rock weathering studies.