by Arthur Clark
Page 1 : Jan/Feb 2004 - South for the Winter
Go south for the winter. Keep going far enough and you find summer again—even in the Antarctic. My fascination with the polar regions goes back to my Arctic indoctrination during the Korean war. Though I have enjoyed a number of visits to the Arctic and Antarctica, including both poles, this trip offered an opportunity to introduce my son John to the to the coldest, windiest, highest and driest continent.
Fathom Expeditions, experts in polar explorations, chartered the icebreaker Polar Star for this “Spirit of Shackleton” voyage to the Falkland Islands, next to South Georgia, where Shackleton and his five companions landed in their twenty-two foot boat after more than two tempestuous weeks sailing from Elephant Island. We were to proceed from South Georgia to Elephant Island, visiting the South Orkneys on the way, then on to Antarctic and its spectacular peninsula that reaches northward toward the tip of South America and Ushuaia in Argentina, our port of embarkation.
Our group of some ninety passengers included eighteen from the North Carolina Zoological Society, another from Chapel Hill, NC and a scattering of other Americans. The Royal Geographic Society of Scotland contributed another large group, and there were a number of Irish and Canadians. Sisters from Australia were granddaughters of one of the early Antarctic explorers. Members of the expedition staff were from the US, Canada, England, Scotland and Norway. One of them, David Hahn, I first met in 1995 at a camp on the Antarctic continent on my way to the South Pole. Since then he has guided three groups to the summit of Mt. Everest and has executed several rescues of climbers in critical condition on the mountain.
Our first landing was at West Point Island in the Falklands. Zodiacs, the inflatable outboard powered boats developed by Jaques Cousteau, took us to this island with its incredible rookery of rockhopper penguins and black-browed albatrosses and their chicks.
Next Page : Wildlife, and Shackleton's Grave
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