In Antarctica: December 23rd Part 2

Roald Amundsen and his men arrived at the South Pole on December 14^th by “dead reckoning” which means they were going by the distance indicated on their sledge meters. After they arrived, they spent several days taking observations to make sure that they were, in fact, at the Pole. In 1911, it was not so easy to make such observations. In December, the sun stays at what appears to be a constant height above the horizon. The South Pole is one of only two places on the planet where there is no longitude, only latitude, and many of the traditional ways we think about navigation simply disappear. There is no “east” no “west”; there are no time zones. What is a “day” when the sun is always at noon?

By December 23^rd, he was on the plateau, five days into his homeward journey. They were well-provisioned but there was worry about the dogs. Three had succumbed to exhaustion already on the homeward journey and now there were thirteen left of the original fifty-two dogs that had started for the Pole. I try to imagine the happiness of the men when Amundsen decides they have the supplies to increase their pemmican ration from 350 to 400 grams per day. They felt it was luxury.

I'm on the deck of the ship, warm in my merino wool long underwear and Antarctic overgear, full of cauliflower soup and fresh bread. No hardship here. We're heading into the Lemaire channel, one of the most picturesque passages on the Antarctic Penninsula. At the entrance to the channel, the cliffs of Booth Island rise almost a thousand meters straight out of the sea and extend down into the water for another four hundred meters. The water is black and mirror-calm, the sky is grey and I am astonished by the volume of colour around me. There is a Home-Hardware chart worth of different shades of blue. The ship maneuvers around icebergs, through brash ice, and straight through wider floes which make black lightening bolts of space in front of the bow when they crack open. All afternoon we make our way slowly along. All fifty-four passengers are on the deck, taking photos, and there is a reverent silence as we are rendered speechless by beauty of the place. What is there to say?

Amundsen himself was in these waters on February 12^th, 1898. As second mate on the Belgica expedition, the ship's crew were the first people ever to pass through this channel (named by Belgica's captain). Amundsen’s journal entry for that day is only a few sentences long, but he has time to marvel that “No one has ever seen this channel before.”

As we near the narrow end of the Lemaire, there are more and more icebergs. The passage through looks like the hallway in a daycare where twenty children have piled blocks. The bergs have drifted into the passage since we started along and the captain decides that proceeding is too risky. The ship is brought about and we head back where we've come from. This is not a disappointment for me. A few more hours in the Lemaire channel is more of a gift than anything.

By evening, we stop at the entrance to the channel and have dinner in the galley. The veil of cloud is lifting and because it will be light until late, there is an opportunity to take the kayaks out again. At 8:30 I'm in my dry-suit and at the stern of the ship. There is a certain military precision to unloading zodiacs and manning kayaks. Often when we stop the crew needs to keep the propeller going. It can be just as dangerous to be hit by an iceberg as it is to hit one so the ship needs to be able to maneuver whenever there is ice around. But getting twelve people off a ship and into kayaks while keeping us from capsizing, getting squashed by ice, or drifting into the propeller requires that everyone be alert and efficient.

As I float in the rear of a two man kayak, stretching my spray skirt around the cockpit, I do not know that the next three hours will be among the great moments of my life.

We paddle away from the ship toward Booth Island which looms dramatically. Judd, the kayak guru, likes to paddle through ice rather than go around it because, well, because for the most part we can in these small vessels. He goes first and when he gets stuck he wiggles his hips back and forth until his boat shifts enough of the ice away to get him through. In a few minutes we are around a bend and away from the ship again. The sun is still relatively high on the horizon but because it is getting late, it has more warmth to it, more yellow which lights the ice around us like candles. We are in the Antarctic, utterly alone, paddling kayaks around the base of a kilometer-high cliff. We are surrounded by ice floes and icebergs that do fibre-optic things with light. As we round another bend along the shore, the cliff opens and is replaced by a glacier that pours out of a small valley which moments ago I wouldn't have believed could be behind the peak I'm staring up at. Again there is reverent silence as we move through the water. The only sounds are small chunks of ice that ping like Buddhist bells against the kayak rudders. Ahead, Judd holds up his paddle to signal a stop. We drift up to a floe that is about seven meters around. On it, a leopard seal is resting after a meal. All that is left of the penguin are some of the brushtail feathers, conspicuous by the seal's tail. He lifts his head to see who is in his turf and yawns which shows his mouth full of sharp teeth. His head is reptilian and it is easy to imagine how ancient mariners would have seen this creature as a sea monster. In 2003 a marine scientist was dragged under and killed by a leopard seal. We paddle around the floe and as I get to the landward side, I realize that I haven't been paying enough attention to the three meter high iceberg that is drifting in an opposite direction to the floe and moving quickly (icebergs generally follow the currents whereas ice floes are blown by wind). The iceberg is a house bearing down on me and forcing me toward the floe upon which the leopard seal is now raising his head higher. My brother is in the front of our kayak and we're both having a hard time paddling in the brash ice. I'm in trouble and I know it. I don't want to dig too deeply with the paddle for fear of capsizing us but I know that we need to get out of here right now. We hit a chunk of ice the size of a dog house and it pushes our nose toward the leopard seal. I don't want to look at it because I don't want to know if it is coming toward us. I'm completely focused on paddling and moving the boat forward. And then we're through and out the other side and quickly away from the floe and into more open water. But there is another boat behind us. Daniel, who has come out in a solo kayak this evening, is still back there. Only now the chunk of ice is directly in his way and the passage we made it through has disappeared. He's there because he had to wait for us. The iceberg is bearing down on him and I can see that if he doesn't manage to move, its bulk will crush him against the ice floe. Icebergs are dense structures, their mass is about one tonne per square meter so there is an unforgiving weight coming Daniel's way. This is where his composure and Judd's expertise become crucial. Judd paddles his way and begins giving him instructions: “Hold your paddle vertical and put it in behind your right side. Now, paddle backwards three hard strokes. One more. Now the other side.” And in this way, Daniel is released from ice and leopard seal, and we can carry on. I don't know how much of a sense of jeopardy either of them felt just then, but as I'm paddling, I am again aware of just how easy it would be to die here.

On the way back to the ship, we paddle through the fairytale of light that is even more brilliant at 11pm. Ahead there is a beautiful blue-green castellated iceberg as large as our ship. Icebergs are at least as unpredictable as leopard seals. You can not know when they are going to roll over or crack apart or otherwise rattle the sky with an explosion, but Judd must feel fairly confident that this one is stable because he paddles through its column arches and into the iceberg. We follow. I am surrounded by green light and ribs of ice that curl around and over my head. The exit is several meters away and completely arched over with ice. Beneath is a foot of water and then ice. I am in the belly of a whale and I am happy. 

In Antarctica: December 23rd Part 1

I am now in Antarctica – shrouded in it, enveloped by it, covered over completely by the beauty of it. It is easy to love the planet from here. I go back and forth with loving people. Sometimes I have empathy for us as a species. We're so busy and sad. We fight over parking spots. We stand in lines impatiently. We treat one another poorly and feel hard done by. I think of humanity collectively as T.S. Eliot's “infinitely gentle / infinitely suffering thing.” In my less generous moments I'm a misanthrope. I enjoy being away from people at least as much as I enjoy being with them. Perhaps that's part of the happiness I feel here. This entire continent is devoid of people. Not completely, of course. There are just over a thousand researchers who inhabit Antarctica year round, but they're spread pretty thin over Antarctica's 14,000,000 square kilometers (more like 28,000,000 in the winter when sea ice doubles the continent's size). No planes fly overhead on their way to somewhere else. No wires connect one thing to another. It is still quite possible to step ashore in Antarctica and to be the first person ever to have landed on that particular spot.

Early in the morning I spend an hour alone on the bow watching penguins feed on krill and see a humpback also having breakfast as we move through the Bismark Strait and along the Neumayer Channel. We've come north a degree of latitude overnight to find a way in through the ice that clogs the passages to the south. We go ashore in Zodiacs to Port Lockroy on Goudier Island and make land for the first time. There were whalers here in the early 20^th century and a British military base was built during WW 2 which became a research station until the sixties. The station was restored in 1996 and now is part museum and part penguin lab. The three residents of this base are studying the impacts of human tourism on gentoo penguin breeding. The old base hut has been made to look as it did in 1962 when it was abandoned. The caretakers also stamp passports (a passport stamp from Antarctica is a rare commodity), run a post office (cards and letters are transferred from here to the British Postal system so “snail mail” puts it mildly), and they even have a shop which raises funds for the Antarctic Hertiage Trust. You can run from consumerism but you can't hide.

I'm more interested in the penguins. IAATO (International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators) has rules about interacting with Antarctic wildlife – a kind of Star Trekian prime directive which aims, as much as possible, to let the wildlife be wild and undisturbed. The rule is to stay five meters away from penguins (and further away from other species that might hurt you) but it is not possible to keep a distance from them at Port Lockroy. There is a gentoo penguin colony here and they are nesting everywhere, including under the hut and directly beside the walkway between the hut and the rocks the zodiacs landed on. But the penguins are unfazed by our presence anyhow. I stand for ten minutes or so looking at a group of them. This is my first penguin encounter and already I think that it would be very hard to dislike a penguin. More on that later. As I'm watching, one of the penguins that has been lying on a pebble nest stands up and beneath it I see a penguin chick that is no more than a day old (the adult could have been the male or female since they take turns feeding and protecting the chicks). On cue mom (or dad) leans over and vomits a little digested krill into the chick's beak and somehow even that seems endearing.

I spend two hours wandering around the colony. There are some old pieces of equipment from earlier days, including a dog sledge. There is also an entire humpback whale skeleton partly covered by snow. Nesting amongst the gentoos are a number of blue-eyed cormorants. They have similar black and white colouring so I have to look carefully to pick them out among the penguins and I find the way the two species of birds tolerate one another surprising. Is there a lesson here somewhere? I wander around with my camera, patient for another parent to lift up off its chick (or chicks--many have two or even three) or egg. I also put the camera away for long stretches wanting to see things without the filter of a lens. Just me and my penguin against the world.

On the way back to the ship, Robyn steers the zodiac around a few especially impressive icebergs, including one that serves as a king-sized bed for a Weddell seal. I'm onboard again by 11am so that was just the morning. There is so much happening right now that I can't cover a whole day in one blog post. 

More later.  

Antarctica Reached

I imagine Columbus after five weeks crossing the Atlantic. He would have been scanning the horizon to no avail for days, if not for the honour of it, then for the lifetime remittance that Queen Isabella promised as reward to the first European to see the new world. And then the horizon shifted and a mirage of green became defined and someone on the Pinta fired a canon and then everyone saw it.

I open my eyes at 5 am, dress, and step out the door on the deck of Polar Pioneer. I think already I will see the continent. I think I missed the moment of seeing Antarctica appear out of the mist. But as I look out off the bow, I see only sea and sky. The ship trudges stubbornly on through the Southern Ocean.

There is always hot water in the urn in the galley and I make some English breakfast tea and head to the bridge. I'm told we passed an iceberg at 4 am and that we're close to land. There are three members of the crew on the bridge including the captain and I take it as a sign that there may be more to look out for today. I don't know who sees it first, but there is a quick conversation in Russian and then I hear the word in English: iceberg.

It would be unlikely for Antarctica to be the first thing any sailor would see heading south. Before land, there will always be icebergs. They've been known to migrate as far north in the sea as 26^o30' latitude (reported by the iron sailing ship Dochra in 1894) which is between Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro but most of them stay closer to home – white wannabe islands doomed like the grey hair on my head to recede into nothingness one day.

The one ahead is a distant white spot on the horizon. It is a tabular iceberg and it likely calved off the continent and could already have travelled for miles and years. As we draw nearer, it becomes more defined. It's a huge fragment of a broken Greek column lying tilted in the black sea. Off the port side of the ship, another outline comes into focus. It's the edge of the Antarctic peninsula—Lavoisier Island. We have arrived.

We are heading for the top edge of Adelaide Island and the Antarctic Circle and because the inside passages are still clogged with pack ice, we keep to the west edge where the sea is open. Anyone who travels these waters regularly knows that the fastest way through ice is around it. More icebergs appear as we motor south and they awe me with their mass and with the intricacy of the patterns on their surfaces. And here is what I think of as a kind of idiot moment – icebergs are ice. I have always thought of icebergs as, well, kinda snowy. In my my mind and in photos they're often white so I've been thinking of them as big floating igloos. But icebergs are more like supertankers carrying a hold full of cast iron wrapped in cast iron. They're not igloos, they're blue steel battering-rams and even the smallest iceberg would knock a hole in an aircraft carrier and sink it.

Gary explains the idea of “ice blink” and “sea sky”. There is often low cloud in Antarctica and experienced mariners learned that the cloud ceiling appears white above vast stretches of ice because the light reflects off the surface, whereas a dark sky indicates open water where the light is swallowed by the sea.

We are still fifteen nautical miles from the Circle when the pack ice wraps its arms around us and because we are determined to get at least that far south, the ship plunges into it. At first, we move into brash ice which thickens as we press on. And then the ship is pushing aside larger floes until we're deeper in and the surface ahead becomes solid and then lines burst out from our bow like cracks in the plaster from Sylvester's head while Tweety-bird flutters unharmed.

For three hours, a gaggle of passengers stands on the bow, swooning over the way the ship pushes through, and cheering when the Polar Pioneer shoves aside a knucklehead of ice like a bouncer making way through a crowd.

And then the engines stop and we drift just a little further as champagne glasses are passed around. The ship's whistle is reluctant at first, but the crew knocks it back to function and there is a collective cheer to celebrate the arrival at 66^o34' south – we are over the Antarctic Circle.

We've been in Antarctica a few hours and a few weeks worth of life has happened.

Polar Pioneer is the first ship this season to get over the Antarctic Circle and there's a reason for that: the pack ice won't let us much further. That's not quite true. We could wrestle our way through and into Crystal Sound (which had been our hope) but in this ice, we travel at two or three knots so the question becomes whether it is worth it in terms of time and fuel to storm on, or whether it is better to head back North awhile and get inland there.

We turn around and motor back where we've come from. To make up for Crystal Sound, the ship stops when we get back to open water. We're going to get into zodiacs and kayaks and explore the ice floes. In twenty minutes, I'm geared up in my dry suit and life jacket. So my first experience in the kayak in Antarctica will be in the open ocean. The unloading happens quickly and I have little time to be nervous. One minute, I'm on the stern deck and the next I'm paddling away from the ship and through chunks of ice taller than me. I feel like a mosquito in a margarita as I coax the kayak along. My brother is in the cockpit in front of me and he is as speechless as I am. We're following the line of boats ahead and when I look over my shoulder, I can no longer see the ship. It would be so easy to get lost out here and there are so many opportunities to die. There are no waves, but there is a long swell that floats us up and down—the kind of roll you only get far out at sea. And yet it is also deeply peaceful. The zodiacs are somewhere else and all I hear is the mash of paddle dipping into the brash and the crunch of ice off the kayak bow. Around a small iceberg and the group stops. There are several Adélie penguins on an ice flow. They're resting from a feed and seem largely unconcerned about psychedelic kayaks—blue, orange, red. We're so far out of place we can't possibly be threatening. We paddle further and find two more Adélies on a piece of ice that is about four meters square and this time we're treated to a little show as a crabeater seal decides to climb aboard. Crabeaters don't eat penguins, but they don't seem to know that. They squawk and toddle toward the edge of the flow but stop when they see kayaks (wait a minute, were these here before??) then turn around and squawk some more. Judd, our kayak guide, gets a message on his radio. The zodiacs have spotted a humpback whale so we take off after it. It is only when I am back in my cabin hours later that I have a chance to wonder whether it makes sense to chase down a humpback whale in a kayak.

When we arrive at the spot the whale was last seen, it has sounded and we begin to paddle back toward the ship. There is a rush of air as if someone just punctured a bagpipe, and I see mist from the whale's blowhole behind a raft of ice. It sounds again and I paddle the rest of the way to the ship, but half an hour later, after I've shucked all my kayak gear, I venture out on deck and the whale surfaces. It is feeding off the bow and I watch it until it dips below the pack ice and swims away.

Everyone is animated at dinner. We're sailing north now, away from the sunset. And anyway, the sun will not set but will feint toward the horizon before arching up again. I am so visually overstimulated that I think I will never be able to look at a tv screen again. My nose and cheeks are burnt by wind and cold and by reflected light off the ice. I need some sleep and I know my dreams are going to shimmer.

The Drake Passage Part 2

It is a few minutes before midnight on December 21^st – the solstice. I've just come in to my cabin from the deck and the last thing I saw was a humpback whale breaching off the starboard side of the Polar Pioneer. I'm trying to decide if I will sleep during this voyage. I am so stuffed with visual stimulation that I don't want to close my eyes. I know I'll be in for crazy dreams as my mind tries to process some of what it has taken in.

In the afternoon, after reports that many of the passages on the peninsula are still choked with ice, Gary Miller, our seasoned expedition leader, decided we should march down through the Bellinghausen Sea

toward Adelaide Island and the Antarctic Circle. If we can get through, we will be the first ship this season to cross the circle and one of our goals is to get at least that far south.

The horrors of the Drake didn't materialize. Once or twice a year, the passage sleeps and the water calms to glass. “Drake Lake” sailors call it, although there are those who have experienced its ravages who think this condition is a myth or, at best, exaggerated. I was on the bow just after lunch, the sun high in the sky and I was leaning against the bowstem like some passenger on the lido deck. All I needed was a rum drink in a coconut shell with an umbrella poking the top. But as I reclined facing sunward, I realized that, though we're headed due south, the sun was arching to the north—behind me in the sky. Right now, the sun is making a short dip down beneath the southern horizon. I want a globe and a flashlight so I can make a model of it. At this time of year in the north, the sun is always to the south and makes a low curve across the sky from about eight am to four pm.

There was another lecture, this time about brushtail penguins, and we had a kayak drill—getting into drysuits and making our way to the stern where we'll launch when we go out on the water.

There is a competition going on board to pinpoint the time and location of the sighting of the first iceberg. No one ever sees the Antarctic continent before they see icebergs. It will be a moment I have imagined since I was a child.  The instant of seeing something after the vast passage we've come across.  It won't be my imagination anymore.  It won't be what I've read about.  It won't be a picture of Antarctica or a dream or a mirage. We have crossed the Antarctic convergence, the spot where the cold water of the southern ocean sinks below the seas coming from the north. By the time I open my eyes in the morning, we'll be in Antarctica.   

The Drake Passage Part 1

The Drake Passage has taken its share of sailors and sentenced them to death.  Upwards of 100 ships sank here in the eighteenth century.  Until the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, the route around Cape Horn through the Drake was a major trade passage for the world.  Even though the passage between the tip of South America and Antarctica is 1000km wide, it is the shortest distance between the rest of the world and the White Continent and so water in the  Antarctic circumpolar current funnels through this stretch at a fantastic rate.  If the Southern Ocean were a jacuzzi (at between -1 and 4 degrees C it most certainly is NOT a jacuzzi) the Drake would be the jets.  The Pacific, Atlantic, and Southern oceans meet in the Drake and shake hands and, as an added bonus, there is really very little land on either side of the Drake so wind has a good long while to work itself up and to build waves which have been reported to reach beyond 30 meters high.

As a result, even the most hardy sailors can sometimes barf their way across this particular stretch of water.  It is a kind of River Styx between Antarctica and the rest of the world (with this metaphor, the rest of the world represents, for me, the underworld).  Or it is a portal to Antarctica – you can not enter the pristine world without passing this trial.

I wake at 4 am to the ship rolling and I know we are now out on the open ocean.  We're also pitching forward and I pat myself on the back for taking my motion sickness pills earlier.  My bunk is oriented from port to starboard while my brother, Scott, sleeps bow to stern.  So for him the roll of the ship is like being nudged every thirty seconds by someone telling him to roll over and quit snoring, while I'm being rocked like a baby.

I put on some clothes sitting down on my bunk so I don't get knocked around and then make my way up two decks to the bridge.  The ship has an “open bridge” policy which means I'm welcome there twenty-four hours.  As I climb the stairs, I have to hold on to both railings to avoid getting knocked down but when I get to the bridge and look out the window, I'm shocked to see that the water is calm—no whitecaps.  In fact, we're not even facing real waves.  The roll is just the swell of the open ocean on a small ship.  We have it easy.  I go back to sleep for a while to the ocean's lullaby.

After breakfast, I learn that seventeen of our fifty-four passengers are lying low with sea sickness.  The ship's doctor has given some people shots.  It's a routine part of his job and all of the people who are unwell will be better before long.  This crossing isn't bad but I can still feel the blood in my body shifting back and forth in unfamiliar ways and I decide to take another pill.

In the morning, the expedition's ornithologist, Christian, gives a lecture on sea birds and I fall asleep part way through.  I apologize to him after and he says he's used to it – the medication puts most of the passengers to sleep.  But I decide that I want to be as conscious as I can be.  I want to be wide open and awake for all the stimulation Antarctica has for me.  I decide to put the pills away.

The day is quiet.  We trudge forward through the open water.  There are Wandering Albatrosses, Storm Petrels, Cape Petrels and other long distance birds.  Astonishingly, they live most of their lives on the wild, open ocean travelling hundreds or thousands of kilometers to find good feeding patches and resting, when they need to, on the high seas.  They follow the ship because our propeller churns up organic material.  These birds couldn't survive without the constant wind.  They sail on it and let it carry them the huge distances they travel.  Every few weeks, they head back to their breeding grounds  where they'll feed their young with the super concentrated oil their bodies make while they wander.

Very few species live their lives in this wild place.  Above sea level anyway.  Below, the depth reaches beyond three kilometers deep.  Who knows what bides its time way down there?

December 19, 2011 Day 1: Departure for Antarctica

The Polar Pioneer is a 235 foot ice-strengthened research vessel that can cut through one meter thick ice if necessary. Built in Finland in 1985, she worked in the Arctic until 2000 when she was refitted to accommodate fifty-four passengers. The crew is Russian and they are well-seasoned in polar seas. She takes small groups and can manoeuvre into pack ice. The goal of the trip is to make as many landings as possible in Antarctica and to cross the Antarctic Circle. If we make it that far south, we'll be the first this year to cross the line.

She's at the end of the pier in Ushuaia and at first I can't see her because she's dwarfed by the MS Fram and Le Boreal—a cruise ship with staterooms with private balconies, a pool, a spa, and a hairdresser.

I'm not envious of the luxury liners. I came to be in Antarctica, not to watch television in my cabin.  Fram is, of course, the name of the ship Amundsen sailed in to get to the South Pole.  That Fram was a fabulous ship, with her reinforced structure and her egg-shaped hull that allowed closing ice to lift her rather than to crush her sides.  I wonder what he would make of her modern namesake.

Robyn Mundy, the assistant expedition leader, greets us at the gangway and whisks us on board. I'm aware of my feet leaving the solidity of the pier. For the next two days, the ship will sail for Antarctica across the Drake Passage, one of the most notoriously rough stretches of water in the world. I've never been prone to sea sickness, even sailing on a 130 foot tall-ship in a gale, but I admit that the Drake makes me nervous. I have a supply of motion sickness medication with me which I'll take just in case.

For now though, I climb to the top deck to shake hands with the other new arrivals and to watch the longshoremen cast off our lines as we back away from the end of the world.