IT\u2019S NOT THE<\/span><\/strong> endless daylight that prevents sleep, but the stillness. There is no breeze, no rustling leaves, no buzzing insects or hooting owls. Instead, the emptiness amplifies everything. A small avalanche of rock and snowmelt cascades from nearby cliffs into the sea\u2014not a danger, but loud enough to make you jump. Glaciers groan as they settle. Humpbacks spout in the channel all night long.<\/p>\n My sisters and I are curled in bivvy sacks on a frozen beach on the Antarctic Peninsula, surrounded by some 30 other tourists and a couple fat Weddell seals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Besides us and the guides, few of our companions have ever camped before. It\u2019s an odd introduction, in part because leave-no-trace practices don\u2019t cut it in Antarctica. In the morning all footprints must be scuffed out with our boots. Neither food nor drink except water is allowed ashore, along with any gear that hasn\u2019t undergone biosecurity checks. The latrine lecture is similarly strict and involves a good deal of giggling from the uninitiated.<\/p>\n Everyone follows the rules, except the massive cruise ship that lumbers into view and kills its engines across from our campsite. Eventually it groans to life again and disappears behind an island. An elegant three-mast barque in a nearby cove weighs anchor and follows suit. They haven\u2019t left; they\u2019re just hiding at our group\u2019s request.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are 20 ships along the Peninsula right now,\u201d a guide confided when I\u2019d asked about fellow tourists. \u201cYou feel alone because they make you feel alone.\u201d<\/p>\n All this babysitting and sleight of hand is the catch-22 of Antarctica, a continent that is at once a fragile ecosystem and a ruthless force of nature. Without scrutinizing tourists and their negative impacts (both of which are on the rise), humans will inevitably ruin what makes this place extraordinary. <\/p>\n Yet micromanaging wilderness defeats its purpose. There are still opportunities for true exploration in Antarctica today, but they\u2019re highly supervised and subject to restrictions. This is a far cry from the freedom enjoyed by the Antarctic explorers of even a century ago, whose feats of endurance in these frozen badlands gave rise to some of the world\u2019s greatest survival stories. Today, with the inherent risk of polar exploration stripped away, we\u2019re also robbed of its full rewards.<\/p>\n The prospect of being trapped in a floating hotel with a literal boatload of people is not my family\u2019s idea of vacation. (Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wasn\u2019t talking about cruises when he wrote that \u201chell is other people,\u201d but he might as well have been.) You can fly to Antarctica, but the traditional way to experience it is by boat. So we booked the smallest ship we could manage and sailed south from Argentina with some 90 other passengers. It\u2019s a 330-foot 1A ice-class ship that\u2019s nearly 50 years old and, like most Antarctic cruises, marketed as an \u201cexpedition\u201d vessel. During a mandatory safety briefing on our first day at sea, a middle-aged woman raised her hand.<\/p>\n \u201cIf someone falls overboard and they\u2019re panicking, do you knock them out first before you pull them back on board?\u201d Our expedition leader just stared, momentarily speechless. \u201cBecause,\u201d she added, \u201cI don\u2019t want to be knocked out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0Later, our guides share other gems. A German told us about one tourist who, upon clambering out of a Zodiac onto the beach, wanted to know their altitude.<\/p>\n \u201cSo how high are we right now?\u201d he had wondered, the ocean lapping at his feet.<\/p>\n The winner, everyone agreed, was the man who waved skyward and asked, \u201cIs this the same moon we have in Texas?\u201d<\/p>\n ANTARCTICA IS BIGGER<\/span><\/strong> than Europe and shaped like a hurricane, with the lone arm of the Antarctic Peninsula and its islands stretching north toward the tip of South America. It takes an average of two days to sail between the continents. Ships must navigate the notorious Drake Passage, a turbulent convergence of oceans where the waves, whipped into frenzy by furious winds, can reach 40 feet<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the winter, the Southern Ocean freezes in a halo around the continent. The ice retreats come summer, allowing ships to maneuver close to shore\u2014usually along the Antarctic Peninsula\u2014and disgorge tourists. More than a few have arrived eager to see polar bears, only to discover they don\u2019t live in the Southern Hemisphere. <\/p>\n Instead, the rocky shores are teeming with seabirds like petrels and albatrosses, the latter of which can spend years at sea without returning to land. Good-natured Weddell seals and humpbacks are most common along the coast, though a dozen other seal and whale species can be spotted, too. But the main attraction are the six subspecies of penguins native to the continent. You can identify penguin colonies long before you hear or smell them by the muddy game trails through the snow.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are no land-based predators in Antarctica, and there is no wildlife or vegetation in interior Antarctica\u2014only snow, ice, crevasses, and rugged mountain ranges. The continent itself is covered in the largest piece of ice<\/a> on Earth and contains more than half<\/a> of the planet\u2019s freshwater. The ice is so heavy that it\u2019s actually causing the land beneath it to sink into the sea.<\/p>\n No single country governs Antarctica. Instead, the Antarctic Treaty of 1959<\/a> laid the foundation for global cooperation around scientific research and, later, preservation. Hunting and fishing are strictly forbidden in a place that\u2019s designated as \u201ca natural reserve, devoted to peace and science.\u201d<\/p>\n During the 2022 to 2023 tourism season, an estimated 106,000 passengers navigated the Drake to cruise along the continent. Nearly 64,000 of those went ashore (ships carrying more than 500 passengers are not allowed to make landings). Although this number represents just 2 percent of Yellowstone\u2019s 2021 visitations, it\u2019s a staggering 1,225 percent increase from the early 1990s, when 8,000 tourists visited Antarctica each year. With them come invasive species, vandalism to historical artifacts, and disruption to wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n Before the daily Zodiac cruises, our guides scout. Every morning and afternoon they scatter in all directions before collecting tourists and trolling past the critters they glassed up earlier, as if stumbling upon them for the first time.<\/p>\n The discretion is deliberate. They don\u2019t tell us we\u2019re headed to see a rare penguin in case it vanishes before we get a good look. They use code when radioing each other for the same reason. It\u2019s a simple system\u2014L.S. for leopard seal, E.P. for emperor penguin\u2014but many people don\u2019t pay enough attention to crack it.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got an H.B. at 10 o\u2019clock,\u201d our guide radios after a humpback surfaces off our bow. She\u2019s a friendly Brit with one Antarctic season under her belt, and she\u2019s a touch nervous. I ask how she likes the work.<\/p>\n \u201cSome guides carry a plastic cup so they can scoop krill out of the water and show them to guests,\u201d she says at one point, hesitating before adding, \u201cI\u2019m not sure how I feel about that.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that the idea of displacing a handful of krill, even for a moment, troubles her. Then she twists the throttle and the motor rumbles to life.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyone have an iPhone?\u201d she asks, brightening. \u201cWant to take a time-lapse of an iceberg?\u201d<\/p>\n BEFORE SHE SKIED<\/span><\/strong> to the South Pole, Anja Blacha was just another tourist.<\/p>\n In 2013 the German entrepreneur and her sister traveled to Peru, where they joined a \u201cstandard tourist trek\u201d to Machu Picchu. That multiday hike was her first time in a sleeping bag or tent, and she had never spent so much time outdoors.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ten years later Blacha<\/a> can\u2019t begrudge tourists their chaperoned fun. Without it, she wouldn\u2019t have gone on to become the youngest German woman to summit the tallest peak on every continent. That includes Mt. Everest, of course, but also Vinson Massif, the 16,050-foot peak at the base<\/a> of the Antarctic Peninsula. In 2020 Blacha completed an 858 mile ski trek to the South Pole to achieve what was, at the time, the longest solo, unsupported polar expedition by any woman in history. (Her record has since been broken<\/a> by Preet Chandi.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Although Blacha, now 32, has journeyed to the Arctic (\u201cthere\u2019s a risk of polar bears there so I had to learn to shoot\u201d), she says Antarctica is unique. \u201cThe sheer expanse of the continent is mind-blowing. I remember being in high camp at Vinson and just looking out around me and it looked like I was above the clouds. But everything was land mass and snow and ice. It\u2019s so, so beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n Because of that vastness, Blacha sometimes lost a feel for judging distance on her ski trek. Snowcapped mountain ranges look like they could be 10 miles away or 100. Without referencing her GPS, it was disorienting. After just four days of skiing, conditions deteriorated into a brutal storm with gusts building to over 60 mph.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just miserable and painful. My tent was taken up at night and I could barely walk up against the wind. I was crawling on my knees when I was trying to get to my sled,\u201d Blacha says. \u201cThe fact that the storm hit me at the beginning was good because it really made me conscious of how important it is to use the moments when conditions are good.\u201d<\/p>\n Moments of discovery\u2014a wind-carved valley of blue ice, the thunder of untrodden snow settling beneath her skis\u2014punctuated the exhausting tedium of long-distance sledging. If Blacha\u2019s most dramatic challenge was the storm, the most insidious was simply staying her course.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the small moments,\u201d Blacha says. \u201cThe transition times are the hardest. Like when you have to force yourself to get up and pack down your tent.\u2026 Those days where there\u2019s no big hurdle, there\u2019s no fighting against a big storm, just stretches that are not significant enough to give you that hero story, that boost of self-confidence. But they are enough to wear you out and slow you down significantly. You have this grinding obstacle, constantly.\u201d<\/p>\n To cope, Blacha stuck to a schedule dictated by strict mileage and, to a degree, her provisions. A harness around her waist allowed her to drag camp, food, and fuel in a sled that initially weighed some 220 pounds.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to remind myself that I wanted to do this because<\/em> it would be hard. If it was easy, I wouldn\u2019t have wanted to do it, so I shouldn\u2019t complain and give up because it actually was<\/em> hard.\u201d<\/p>\n During her two-month expedition, Blacha was required to make a daily phone call to report her GPS location. It\u2019s not enough to simply drop GPS waypoints. Regulators wanted to hear her voice so they could monitor her condition. This protocol was tightened after British explorer Henry Worsley died in 2016<\/a>. (Thirty miles short of becoming the first person to cross Antarctica on foot, unassisted and unsupported, he called for help, writing: \u201cMy journey is at an end. I have run out of time, physical endurance and a simple sheer inability [sic] to slide one ski in front of the other to travel the distance required to reach my goal.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n Now there\u2019s an elaborate personnel rotation to ensure a single operator doesn\u2019t become acclimated to \u201ca small deterioration in your voice day after day,\u201d says Blacha. \u201cThis takes away from the feeling of being out there on your own and doing something self-sufficient. You feel very much remote monitored, in a way. I think that\u2019s the one thing I don\u2019t like. I feel like it\u2019s micromanagement. It should be my responsibility as an expeditioner to determine what safety margins I\u2019m willing to take.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the daily intrusion, she says the benefits of strict governance \u201cof Antarctica\u2014in terms of keeping it pristine and prioritizing scientific research and nature protection\u2014outweigh the downsides.\u201d<\/p>\n Blacha had chosen her route specifically because it had barely been traveled. After departing the coast, she didn\u2019t see signs of life until reaching the final miles of her nearly 58-day trip. A century ago she would have reached what was arguably the loneliest part of the planet. In 2020, her journey ended in something like civilization.<\/p>\n \u201cThe area around the South Pole is [one of] the busiest, so that\u2019s where you immediately start seeing human signs,\u201d Blacha says, noting the U.S. research station there. About 30 countries operate some 80 bases in Antarctica. \u201cI had to navigate around the Clean Air Sector<\/a> to not pollute the air with my breath and my sweat and my body. And then the last 30 to 35 kilometers I would see ski tracks\u2014and actually somebody\u2019s trail mix\u2014on the way. Which was not quite what it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n The shock of the saltwater is blinding, and I involuntarily gulp a mouthful as I push to the surface. I try to swim back to the Zodiac, but the guide just drags me there with a rope tethered to the harness around my waist.<\/p>\n It\u2019s New Year\u2019s Day and nearly every passenger is lined up for a polar plunge in the Southern Ocean. Shivering, I accept a warming vodka shot from a Swede in a party hat and watch more people fling themselves into the sea. Most likely the tethers are to prevent weak swimmers from drowning, or to retrieve the occasional tourist who goes into cardiac arrest once submerged in 30-degree water.<\/p>\n Maybe, <\/em>I tell myself hopefully, it\u2019s for when the leopard seals attack.<\/em><\/p>\n SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON<\/span><\/strong> was one of history\u2019s greatest leaders. He was also something of a failure.<\/p>\n The British explorer\u2019s fourth expedition to Antarctica collapsed at its outset. Ahead of his voyage to circumnavigate the continent, he suffered a fatal heart attack aboard his ship. Shackleton\u2019s death in 1922 ended what historians call the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and ushered in the Mechanical Age.<\/p>\n A few years before, on his third expedition to the continent, Shackleton intended to cross Antarctica. Instead his ship, Endurance<\/em>, was imprisoned in pack ice after just one month. Shackleton, his crew of 27 men, one stowaway, and some 70 sled dogs drifted across the frozen Weddell Sea and through the Antarctic winter for 11 months. In the fall of 1912, the ice crushed and eventually sank the ship. For five months the men sledged across the ice floes, dragging lifeboats with them and subsisting on rations. During warmer months, they shot seals and bludgeoned penguins for meat.<\/p>\n \u201cReturning from a hunting trip, [one man] traveling on skis across the rotting surface of the ice had just about reached camp when an evil, knoblike head burst out of the water just in front of him,\u201d wrote Alfred Lansing in Endurance<\/a><\/em>, arguably the best survival book ever written. \u201cHe turned and fled, pushing as hard as he could with his ski poles and shouting for Wild to bring his rifle. The animal\u2014a sea leopard\u2014sprang out of the water and came after him, bounding across the ice with the peculiar rocking horse gait of a seal on land. The beast looked like a small dinosaur, with a long serpentine neck \u2026 [and] an enormous array of sawlike teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n The leopard seal dove and tracked the man\u2019s shadow from beneath the thin ice, then burst through again to cut him off, corralling the man. Shackleton\u2019s second in command, Frank Wild, arrived just in time. \u201cWild dropped to one knee and fired again and again at the onrushing beast. It was less than 30 feet away when it finally dropped. Two dog teams were required to bring the carcass into camp. It measured 12 feet long, and they estimated its weight at about 1,000 pounds.\u201d<\/p>\n In his diary, skipper Frank Worsley described the leopard seal\u2019s effectiveness as a predator. (His descendant is Henry Worsley, the Antarctic explorer who died in 2016.)<\/p>\n \u201cA man on foot in soft, deep snow and unarmed would not have a chance against such an animal as they almost bound along with a rearing, undulating motion at least five miles an hour. They attack without provocation, looking on man as a penguin or seal.\u201d<\/p>\n The crew leveraged this observation, and tried to decoy the next leopard seal.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026When a sea leopard\u2019s head appeared at the edge of the floe [Thomas] McLeod, who was a small but stocky man, went over and stood flapping his arms to imitate a penguin,\u201d wrote Lansing. \u201c\u2026He sprang out of the water at McLeod, who turned and dashed for safety. The sea leopard humped forward once or twice, then stopped, apparently to take stock of the other strange creatures on the floe. The delay was fatal. Wild had reached into his tent for his rifle. He took deliberate aim and fired, and another thousand pounds of meat was added to the larder.\u201d<\/p>\n Once Shackleton\u2019s crew made it to open water, the men managed to sail three lifeboats to an uninhabited island, where they survived on penguins, seals, and their sled dogs. From there, Shackleton took five men and the sturdiest lifeboat and sailed 800 miles across the stormy Drake Passage to South Georgia Island. To reach the whaling station, Shackleton navigated crevasses and glaciers on a journey that wasn\u2019t replicated until 40 years later by a team of expert climbers with appropriate gear. By the time Shackleton reached help and was able to rescue his marooned crew, two years had passed since the Endurance<\/em> set sail. Not a single man died.<\/p>\n The second time Shackleton journeyed to Antarctica, he and his men sledged to within 97 miles to the South Pole before being forced to turn back. At the time it was the farthest south anyone had ever traveled.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shackleton\u2019s first expedition to Antarctica was under the command of Robert Falcon Scott. Scott would later lose the race for the South Pole<\/a> against Norwegian Roald Amundsen, reaching it weeks after Amundsen and dying of starvation and exposure on his return journey.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott,\u201d one of Scott\u2019s men, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, wrote in The Worst Journey in the World<\/em><\/a>. \u201c\u2026For a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen; and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.\u201d<\/p>\n If I don\u2019t give the Southern Ocean my full attention, I might actually flip. My kayak lurches in the rollers as I juggle my paddle and gear for a few tricky minutes, stowing cameras in a dry bag then reattaching the spray skirt. We\u2019re navigating an iceberg field and the surf is plunging and slapping against the bergs, revealing their eroded undersides.<\/p>\n I fall behind as I drift, and two middle-aged women in a tandem kayak wobble by. Despite days of paddling together, their strokes are still comically out of sync. They\u2019re dawdling, clearly hoping we\u2019ll return to calm water.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere the hell is she going?\u201d one woman demands. She\u2019s staring after our guide, who is vanishing and reappearing between each wave.<\/p>\n \u201cOut to open ocean, apparently,\u201d the other grumbles.<\/p>\n This is the first time we\u2019ve approached anything close to real risk all week. I dig my paddle into the chop and glide past the irritable tourists, letting the swell pull me out to sea.<\/p>\n THE NORWEGIAN EXPLORER<\/span> <\/strong>Roald Amundsen was often referred to as \u201cthe last of the Vikings.\u201d Although he later became the first person to reach the South Pole, he initially ventured to Antarctica in 1897 to chart much of the Antarctic Peninsula. (Pack ice also trapped the ship on that expedition, forcing the crew of the Belgica <\/em>to overwinter in 24-hour darkness and temperatures that plunged as low as -45 degrees F. There were cold-weather clothes for just four men aboard. \u201cMentally,\u201d an American crewmate wrote later, \u201cthe outlook was that of a madhouse.\u201d)<\/p>\n To learn to survive in the frozen South, Amundsen looked to the North. While successfully navigating the Northwest Passage\u2014the first man to do so\u2014Amundsen\u2019s ship again became trapped in ice. His crew met Inuit tribes, including the Netsilik, and spent two years learning to build igloos and dress properly. Instead of constricting wool, the Netsilik gifted Amundsen sewn caribou hides, whose hollow hairs trap heat for insulation. Their loose fit also allowed better circulation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI find it excellent,\u201d Amundsen wrote after testing them. \u201cNow I can move as I want to. Am always warm, without sweating.\u201d<\/p>\n He also noted certain tricks that made overland travel infinitely easier, from using and handling dogs to maneuvering sledges through variable snow conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cOne can\u2019t do better in these matters than copy the [Inuit], and let the runners get a fine covering of ice,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThen they slide like butter.\u201d<\/p>\n Amundsen was successful in completing his polar expeditions\u2014the Northwest Passage and the South Pole\u2014because of his thoroughness. He approached all things\u2014his gear, his ship, the selection of his crew\u2014with the rigor of any outdoorsman who wished to be prepared for whatever he might face. He also recognized the importance of calculated risk. All the great Antarctic explorers did\u2014including those who did not achieve their goals, or lost their lives in their pursuit of them.<\/p>\n \u201cGenerally the risks were taken, for, on the whole, it is better to be a little over-bold than a little overcautious,\u201d wrote Cherry-Garrard. \u201cAlways there was something inside urging you to do it just because there was a certain risk, and you hardly liked not to do it. It is so easy to be afraid of being afraid!\u201d<\/p>\n Read more\u00a0OL+<\/a>\u00a0stories.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"kayak](\"https:\/\/www.outdoorlife.com\/uploads\/2023\/06\/21\/03_iceberg.jpg\")
The Seventh Continent<\/h2>\n
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Anja Blacha Skis to the South Pole, 2020<\/h2>\n
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Shackleton\u2019s Endurance<\/em> Expedition, 1914\u20131916<\/h2>\n
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Roald Amundsen\u2019s Belgica <\/em>Expedition, 1897\u20131899<\/h2>\n
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