Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Crossing the Scotia Sea

by Jon Bowermaster on


When we left Elephant Island midday yesterday we formally left Antarctica behind. I’ve been to Antarctica many times since 1989 and every time I leave it in my trail, whether by C-130 cargo plane, small sailing boat or expedition ship it is with no small regret. It is a spectacular corner of the world that gets in your blood like no other I’ve experienced. Remote and foreboding it can also be intimate and fragile. The only good thing about leaving is that I am already looking forward to my next return.

We have endured a remarkable stretch of good weather these past six weeks, and the luck continues. Strong winds were expected during the night, which never arrived. As a result, the Scotia Sea – lying just east of the Drake Passage, sharing a similar reputation for wind and storm – is rolling but not rough.

We are now following directly in the traces of Shackleton’s sail for freedom in the twenty-three-and-a-half foot long “James Caird” and I stand on the aft deck for a long time this morning trying to imagine being out here in such a small craft. The eight hundred miles took the six men in the wooden lifeboat cum sailboat sixteen days; we’ll do it in about two. They had no idea what they’d find when they arrived, though they knew there was an active whaling station at Stromness and that the prevailing winds would (hopefully) be at their back. We know pretty much where we are headed and what we’ll find.

They had sailed due north from Elephant Island in hopes of quickly finding warmer temperatures, which did not work so well, though the winds out of the southwest did push them at a sixty to seventy mile a day pace. But the cold continued. “The sprays froze upon the boat and gave bows, sides, and decking a heavy coat of mail,” Shackleton wrote about what he described as “the boat journey.” “This accumulation of ice reduced the buoyancy of the boat, and to that extent was an added peril … we could not allow the load of ice to grow beyond a certain point and in turns we crawled about the decking forward, chipping and picking at it with the available tools … the weight of the ice that had formed in her and upon her was having its effect and she was becoming more like a log than a boat.”

Fifteen days after leaving Elephant Island, they sighted South Georgia. Reduced to straining the last of their fresh water through gauze to clear it of hair from their caribou sleeping bags, they spent one last night just offshore, unable to land due to giant seas. When they finally did land, in a cove that ultimately did not give them access to the rest of the island, they crawled into a cave and slept … though Shackleton stayed awake as long as he could that first night to watch over the “James Caird,” still their lifeline, as it bobbed in the surf just off the rocks.

Just as Elephant Island lives large in history due Shackleton link, South Georgia – for all its magical allure of big animals and grand landscape – is part and parcel of “the Boss’s” myth. I’m sure while we are here these next five or six days we’ll catch sight of his ghost on several occasions.

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Elephant Island, South Shetland Islands

by Jon Bowermaster on

Six a.m. and the sea is clouded by a morning mist, making the always mysterious-looking Elephant Island appear evermore … mysterious. Its sharp rocky peaks climb out of the Southern Ocean in inverted Vs; the tide is high, washing out the few shallow beaches that ring it. Just off Point Wild – named for Frank Wild, Ernest Shackleton’s right hand man – penguins feed near the surface of the gray sea and a solitary Weddell seal curls up in the rocks. Just around the point we watch a leopard seal rip a penguin to bits for breakfast, flopping it around on the surface like a rag doll.

I wonder how Elephant Island would have fared historically if this weren’t the very beach where Shackleton and the twenty two men from his crushed “Endurance” had pulled and sailed to back in 1916. It is impossible to land on the beach this morning, due to the high tide, but I have been here before. Even when the seas are calm and the tide low it is a narrow, rocky, inhospitable place. That they managed to sail their trio of tiny lifeboats here, to the far eastern end of the South Shetland Islands at all is a miracle. That they survived for many months on this thin sliver of rock is testament to … well … I’m not sure what exactly. Fortitude? Patience? Belief in myriad higher powers?

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Minus the Shackleton quotient, I doubt many around the world would have ever heard of this rocky lump. But today it holds a historical context far larger than its minute circumference. Bobbing in the rough seas just offshore, I can make out the monument built by the Chileans who sailed to the rescue aboard the “Yelcho” to rescue Shackleton’s men.

As we rock in the morning mist I try to imagine the scene as Shackleton and his crew prepared the small, twenty-three foot, six-inch lifeboat “James Caird” for its last-gasp, 800 mile sail to South Georgia. I envision them chasing down seals as they slid up onto the rocks, both for the sustenance they would give and the warmth their just-slit bellies held for the men’s long-frozen hands. I can imagine the men gathering in small groups to discuss among themselves the wisdom in the choices made by “the Boss” of who would go … and who would stay behind.

Today the pack ice is far from Elephant Island, but in April 1916 it was threatening to return any day, trapping the entire crew for another winter. They’d already been “lost” for fifteen months and were nearing the end of … everything … food, health, sanity. Which meant as they pounded nails straight, gathered provisions (matches, paraffin, extra socks) and filled the bow of the small boat with rocks for ballast there was an urgency that we cannot imagine from this vantage point. They all knew the risks of trying to sail a gerry-rigged lifeboat across the stormiest seas in the world with the scantest of navigational tools and a tiny, homemade sail. In the quiet of this morning I can almost hear their last conversations as they readied to push the “James Caird” off into the rising seas.

Click HERE for more dispatches from Antarctica!

Gadling Take FIVE: Week of January 31-February 6

by Jamie Rhein on

Despite all the noise of drunk pilots, celebrities, and credit card scams that can pepper the travel scene, there are gems of places not to be missed and stories worth hearing again. Perhaps you’ve read that our dear Matthew Firestone who has graced us with his Big in Japan series for more than a year is off to Africa. No new entries for Big In Japan, but you can keep reading previous posts.

If you haven’t checked out Gadling’s current series, Bowermaster’s Antarctica,do. The photos of the penguins in the gallery are stunning. Each time I read Jon’s work, I’m reminded of the Danish novel, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow. The setting is not the same–the novel is set in Greenland, but both are versions of a journey into a world of snow, ice, and mystery.

This month, we’re also continuing with our theme of budget travel. Each day at 11:30 am, there will be a new post on how or where to travel without spending a lot of money.

Here are five other offerings to give you some travel inspiration.

  • Kraig offered up the Guangxi Autonomous Region in Southeast China as a travel destination. As he describes in China’s Hidden Outdoor Wonderland, this is a place to head to for an off the beaten track experience that will not disappoint.
  • In his post Destination on the Edge: Seal training , Tom gives the run-down on how you can get a military training experience without joining the military. For anyone thinking about joining the military, this might not be a bad idea. From his description, being in shape sounds like a must.
  • With movie award season here, check out Jeremy’s post Undiscovered New York: A movie lover’s guide to New York. There are tips for how to find out where films were shot, as well as, the hot spots for movie-watching. The guy knows what he’s talking about.
  • Mike’s post The most disappointing tourist attractions has gathered many hits this week. Read the comment section to find out which places others have loved or hated. I agree with Mike’s take on the Taj Mahal. Simply glorious. Another you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it attraction, for me, is the Grand Canyon.
  • When I read Grant’s post Smithsonian opens Forensic Files of the 17th Century, I thought, that’s an exhibit to see. As he points out the exhibit will be on display for two years, but time has a way of passing fast, so put this one on your things to do list.

And because it’s Bob Marley’s birthday, and I really want you to go into this weekend feeling swell, check out this post. The video will make your heart sing. At least it did mine and Karen’s. Karen, by the way has wowed me each week with photography tips that make me think I ought to carry my camera around more.

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Marguerite Bay

by Jon Bowermaster on

I spent the afternoon walking on a piece of fast ice the size of a small town – floating on the surface, about six feet thick, still attached to the continent – in a fjord known as Beaujoix. Many of the landmarks in the area bear French names, like the big island of Pourquoi Pas, for example, thanks to the early exploits this far south by Frenchman Jean Charcot.

Surrounded on three sides by breathtaking tall mountains and glaciers and on the other by the black Southern Ocean, this is as far south as I’ve ever been. Further south than all but a few ever get along the Peninsula. The reward was a long walk on new snow-covered ice. A dozen leopard seals play along the ice edge and small squadrons of Adelie penguins walk and scoot on their bellies alongside.

We tried to get here last year by sea kayak, but our attempt to sneak through the Gullet just north – a narrow sliver of sometimes-open water – was for naught, and we only got as far as the bottom of Crystal Sound. Our goal last year was to get exactly to this point, to Blailock Island where, on the northeast corner, an old friend, Giles Kershaw, is buried. I think we may have spotted the sight today, marked by a stone cairn, as we trekked.

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I met Giles in the mid-1980s, when he already had a reputation as the very best Arctic and Antarctic pilot in the business. He had flown for the British Antarctic Survey from 1974 to 1979 and had around the world, over both poles, and provided air support for many major expeditions. In 1983 alone he landed at the North Pole twenty-three times. In 1980 he was awarded a medal from the Queen of England, after he flew across a thousand miles of trackless Antarctic white to rescue three South African scientists who had been marooned on an iceberg for eight days. Even among his adventuring peers, Giles was considered the most adventuresome, the most curious, and the most visionary.

In 1985, after successfully helping a pair of wealthy American climbers scale the tallest peak on the continent, Mt. Vinson, he and two Canadian partners (Martyn Williams and Pat Morrow) started what is still the only private business operating in Antarctica. Then called Adventure Network International, they set up a seasonal base camp at Patriot Hills, near the Thiel Mountains in Antarctica’s interior, and flew in climbers, expeditioners and South Pole-bound tourists. Along the way they helped out a fair amount of international scientists, which is why the Antarctic Treaty and its membership – which bans private enterprise here – looked the other way and allowed them to operate.

In 1988 Giles helped lay supply caches between the tip of the Peninsula and the South Pole for my friend Will Steger’s Transantarctica Expedition and, on March 5, 1990, he was killed just near where I walked today. His Antarctica season had just ended and he was on a boat anchored just offshore from here, making experimental flights with a homemade gyrocopter. It crashed into a glacier at the edge of the Jones Ice Shelf. Several years later the mountain that anchors the northeast corner of the island across from where I stand is named for him.

That personal history notwithstanding, this spot on the map is one of the most remarkable places I’ve ever put my feet. Remote, stark, and unrelentingly beautiful. Even turning a full 360, twisting my boots in the soft snow, I can’t take it all in, too enormous to describe or articulate. You’ll have to come see it for yourself one day!

Click HERE for more dispatches from Antarctica!

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Port Lockroy

by Jon Bowermaster on



I spent the afternoon at the small island of Pt. Lockroy, where I’ve been many times before. We stopped in a couple times last January, during our sea kayak exploration, and hung out on the beaches and its protected bay. When we left Antarctica late that month, we actually left our kayaks tied down to big rocks on the island; they were picked up in February by the “National Geographic Endeavour” and carried back to Spain; from there they were shipped in a container to the U.S. and now sit happily in my Hudson Valley backyard.

Rick Atkinson, a Scotsman who first came to Antarctica more than thirty years ago as a 21-year-old dog sled driver for the British Antarctic Survey, greeted us on the penguin-crowded stone beach. The black and red refuge hut on the hill behind is surrounded by Gentoos (and an oddly out of place pair of Adelie penguins). An overpowering whiff of guano fills my nostrils … Aaaaah, Antarctica! Like elsewhere along the Peninsula this season, the hut is surrounded by still-deep snow.

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He’s been coming here for thirteen years and has done and overseen the renovations during that period that have turned the hut into a British historical site. Part museum, part souvenir shop, Pt. Lockroy is today a must-stop along the Peninsula both for its recreation of life and work here fifty years ago, and also to stock up on Antarctica books, t-shirts, stickers and stuffed penguins. It’s an admittedly odd thing to stumble upon here in this remote place. But Rick and his three assistants wear their work with a smile, greeting on average one tourist ship a day, often hosting more than three hundred people in and out of their tiny work/living space.

The boom in tourism is evident everywhere along the Peninsula. Last season more than 46,000 visitors arrived by cruise boat. About 32,000 of them put their feet on land (or ice); the rest arrive aboard giant cruise liners too large to offload anyone. Rick’s experience is the frontline in how tourism is impacting the Peninsula and he’s the first to point out that you cannot come here, no matter how careful you are, and not make an impact. Though he cites a scientific study that shows that penguins, rigged with heart monitors, showed absolutely no change in rate as hundreds of red-coat clad tourists stomped by.

It was with Rick last January that we endured one thing we’d never expected in Antarctica: Horrific rains. We sat inside the hut then and watched the rain pour in buckets off the roof, soaking the penguin chicks still-covered in down. “That was the worst I’ve ever seen it,” he remembers. “But given that we’ve just experienced another very warm winter, I won’t be surprised if we see it again this year. Every year, it seems, there’s more and more rain at Lockroy.”

He and his team have been here a month and will stay until early March. Recording tools left on in the hut over-winter suggest the temperatures only dropped to -12, which for Antarctica, even inside the small, unheated cabin, suggests more warming.

We leave Rick some fresh water, baking soda and peppermint tea, assuming we’ll see him again soon.

Click HERE for more dispatches from Antarctica!