My Trips

This is Why We Came  January 31

Mornings on the bridge are the best!  Most of the ship isn’t stirring before 7 a.m., but there’s always activity on the bridge.  Not only is it a great vantage point, but each morning many of the naturalists gather for a little social time.  They share maté.  The birders tell jokes that no one else understands.  Not only can the whalers distinguish a whale’s dorsal fin from the chop of the waves, but they can tell you what kind it is while you’re still trying to figure out where it is.  The officer of the watch or the captain shows you where we are on the charts and what’s on the radar.  The casual conversations make rising early worth it.

Today we woke to sea ice all around us as we made our way to the Fish Islands.  We’d see the occasional penguin or seal on some of the flat bergs as we slipped past.  Most of the time, they ignored us.  Sometimes a seal would raise its head in a half-hearted acknowledgment of our passing.  Once in a while a penguin would decide to scoot on its belly from one side to the other, leaving a sledding trail behind in the snow.

First up this morning was a zodiac ride among the bergs and close to the glaciated island shores.  The sun was bright, the air amazingly still, and the water glassy.  Even though the air temperature barely fluctuates from day to day, conditions like this make it feel 20 degrees warmer.  We glided from one iceberg to the next.  Some were massive, some flat and some were reduced to no more than perfectly clear oversized ice cubes.  The clear ones appear almost black as they float in the water, then the boat bumps against it and you realize it’s simply passing through the darkness from below.  These are all that’s left of ice from deep inside glaciers that can be several kilometers thick.  Extreme pressure and time eventually squeezes out all of the air bubbles, resulting in this dense, almost transparent remnant of early prehistoric times.  What we held in our hands started as snowfall hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of years ago.  Now it was here with us.

We couldn’t have picked a finer day to launch kayaks.  After the zodiac trip, we got a chance for self-propelled exploration.  Once away from the ship and weaving through channels between icebergs we were alone.  The sun glinted off the ice and the water was a dazzling blue.  But more than anything else, it was the silence that was so profound.  The occasional splash from a nearby kayak paddle, or maybe a penguin or seal entering the water was about as intrusive as any noise around.  Nothing else.  Really….nothing else.

It was easy paddling:  A surreal reverie periodically interrupted by the need to take yet another photo.  Without currents or wind, or even the smallest ripple in the water, it was effortless to venture farther and farther.  So, it wasn’t too surprising to look up and see the ship off in the distance, and the safety zodiac chasing us down to tell us it was time to turn back.

We needed to take advantage of the weather, so we soon left our anchorage to again head further south.

As we were heading for Prospect Point the captain explored several bays.  He was searching for a place to beach the ship on fast ice.

I guess there should be a lesson here on different types of ice.  Fast ice is sea ice that freezes and is attached to the land (held fast to the land).  By the nature of how it’s formed, fast ice is flat, sometimes covering thousands of square meters. 

Glaciers occur on land as a result of many years of snowfall.  The snow in glaciers compresses into ice and the whole thing flows over the land, and just as a river flows downhill.  When a glacier meets the sea, chunks will break off – calve – and that’s what becomes icebergs.  They’re irregularly shaped. 

When fast ice breaks off, it becomes a tabular berg.  Because fast ice is flat on top, so are tabular bergs.  They can be enormous.  Recently a portion of fast ice broke off the ice shelf in the Ross Sea in Antarctica and formed a tabular berg roughly the size of Delaware.

As you might expect, there are all kinds other classifications.  Ice less than 1 meter in size are called growlers (for the sound they make when a ship runs over them).  1 – 5 meter ice are called bergy bits, and true ice bergs are larger than 5 meters.  Small pieces of flat ice are called pancake ice.  Large amounts of ice clogging an area is brash ice.  There’s plenty more, but I’m sure that’s enough for now.

So, as I was saying, the captain wanted to find a section of fast ice to run the ship into.  Under the right conditions, the ice is firm enough to allow passengers to get out and walk on the ice, but not so firm that it rips the hull.  We beached three times, but in all cases the late summer ice was too rotten to walk on safely. Regardless, running the ship into the ice and then to sit silently looking out over a flat plain of sheer white, bordered in the distance by mountains was perfectly acceptable entertainment.  It took a few moments to realize the dots we could see scattered around the ice were seals, putting into perspective the size of the ice sheet we were nestled against.  The seals like camping out on the ice .  They’ll rest by a hole giving them access to the water but a long way from the shore.  Killer whales can’t venture that far under the ice, so this provides ideal protection. We watched for a while, then backed the ship off the shelf and moved on.  The ship left behind a neat “V” shaped imprint.

Moving into the afternoon, we reached Prospect Point.  There are at least two significant aspects of this landing.  First, there are no nearby rookeries and therefore no characteristic smells. Secondly, this was our first landing on continent proper.  Up until today, all the landings had been on islands.  Depending on how technical you want to get, you could say this was our first true landing in Antarctica.

With no colonies to look at and no research stations to explore, this stop was about just being in Antarctica.  Up a small incline from our beach landing, the staff had laid out a loop trail.  Our spectacular wind-free weather had stayed with us, so after a bit of walking the best option was to flop down on the snow on top of a promontory and just take it all in.  Our only company was a few shags and skuas and one Weddell Seal parked on a rock.  Mountainous islands dotted the distance and the ship was anchored off to one side.  We overlooked a huge bay littered with bergs of all shapes and sizes.  And there was the light.  The light in Antarctic has its own qualities –  a clarity and crispness you just don’t see anywhere else.  It feels like there is no limit to how far you can see.  I already mentioned the silence in this frozen world.  It felt irreverential to make too much noise.  You really don’t realize how much sound there is always around until it’s not there.

We’ve heard people say after going to Antarctica, when people at home ask you to describe it, it’s hard to find the words.  This is the place where I felt this most acutely.  Any attempt to capture this in words inevitably falls short.

Back on board the ship, people wandered the decks in short sleeves, ate barbecue beef sandwiches that had been grilled on the aft deck, soaked up the glorious sunshine and simply contemplated what was surrounding us.  There are moments in life that are indelible.  Walking into Centre Court to watch a match at Wimbledon.  Climbing the steps from the Metro in Rome to see the Colosseum filling the view.  Seeing a total solar eclipse.  There are many others.  Sitting on the snow today, looking at Antarctic in its glory was another.  This was a day well spent.