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Have been taking a bit of time out to enjoy the Poor Knights Islands – off Tutukaka, Northern New Zealand.
I hired some Ikelite underwater flashes, and took them to a place rated as one of the Top 10 Dive sites in the world by the late Jacques Cousteau. It’s somewhere I’ve been wanting to come to for a long while, having not managed to get here 10 years ago when I first qualified as a diver. The base village (with a campsite, village store, cafe, 1 posh hotel, angling clubhouse and a pizza place that’s only open Thurs-Sat) is Tutukaka, just 2-3 hours up the road from Auckland and roughly 1-2 hrs south of the Bay of Islands.
There’s a number of different dive operators working out of Tutukaka. However, something to be aware of is that many of the charter boats in Tutukaka operating live-aboards on the Poor Knights are “whole boat” charters only – ie no use to the individual diver! The only other way to get out on a live-aboard is that some of these whole-boat charters are occasionally booked out by Auckland-based dive shops, and individuals can book through the dive shop… assuming they know which dive shop has booked which boat, when!!
The main exception is Ocean Blue Diving, they are hard to find out about, but run live-aboard trips open to individual divers. Poor Knights divers are usually the cheapest and sounded a good option – sometimes they have a special offer of $150NZ for 2 dives including all gear! Dive Tutukaka is the main operator though, with a good base in the marina, several boats, and more well-trained staff than I can count! Their 2-dive offering will set you back $225NZ including all gear.
In 5 days, with 2 different boats, 5 different skippers, nearly always a different crew on the boat each day, and different buddies/groups each day, I’ve managed to get to 12 different sites (sometimes we covered two in a dive – they can be that close together!) – and not a single one repeated! That’s quite impressive, and each one has had its own special attraction.
And after that amount of time diving in the location, I now realise why folks say the Poor Knights deserves its top 10 world dive site ranking. It’s not that any one site is so gob-smackingly awesome that it makes it on it’s own merits (though some are pretty awesome – Northern Arch was one of those for me!) – it’s the sheer quantity of dive sites that are all good, spread across such a small area. There’s more than 60 sites to dive, and not one of the 12 dive sites I saw were uninspiring.
Crinoid Cliffs (locally known as Paranoid Cliffs due to the closeness of the anchor point to the island cliffs) was close enough to the Blue Mao Mao arch that it would have been rude not to have dropped in on that one while we were there! It was quite tough getting into the arch – there was a significant current running through it – but the rewards of a stingray and a school of trevally were worth the struggle. And I pretty much flew back out of the arch on the return – current surfing can be very cool!
Northern Arch was another site that had a significant current running when we visited. That one was a little more dangerous – the current was running away from the boat, and proved very hard to swim back against. Another issue with Northern Arch to be aware of – it’s very easy to get far deeper than you intended! I had roughly 4 mins left before the dive went into deco time… not exactly what I intended – but neither was the 30.1m depth logged either! That said, as long as you are aware of the potential issues on this site, it was one of the more awesome locations in its own right – and the schools of fish and a couple of stingrays hanging round the arch definitely made up for any diving-related issues!
Trevor’s Pinnacles, Landing Bay Pinnacle and Mary’s Wall had lots of morays (yellow, grey, stripey, mosaic etc) and scorpion fish. Gardens was good for having a fantastic cave with a large school of blue maomao and just one stripey fish in between them all! And diving in Rico Rico cave was an experience like no other – and good for wide-angle pix of divers silhouetted against the cave entrance!
The sites were all good for photography – some were better for macro, some better for wide-angle, and some had too many damselfish getting in the way of shots of more exotic creatures like scorpionfish (a relative of the Australian stonefish, but much less dangerous!) and lobster.
When I reached Waitomo, I was really looking forward to taking photos of glow-worms in the world-famous caves there. But it nearly wasn’t to be… It seems the main caves have decided that in the rush to get as many (ticket-buying) folks through the system as possible, taking of pix is no longer allowed in the glow-worm caves themselves  (But you are allowed to purchase your mugshot from them afterwards!)
 A cynical view? Mebbe, but fortunately there is an answer. Paul from Greenglow adventures runs the antidote to the mass-market get as many folks through an expensive tour as fast as possible approach. He only takes one group a day, even if that group is one solitary photographer! (although the solitary photographer does have to pay his minimum 2person charge) And most importantly, photography is not only allowed, but actively encouraged!
If you want to spend all your time underground setting up fantastic shots (he even provides a couple of flashguns and good knowledge of their use in caving photography), that’s not a problem – it’s your (small) group, so you set the pace and he enables a fantastic experience. Want to spend all your time abseiling without waiting for the rest of a large group – I get the impression that wouldn’t be a problem either.
I feel very fortunate to have been told about his business from the B&B I ended up staying in (Waitomo Caves Lodge – also a really nice place, though more expensive than I’d normally want to pay – there wasn’t a lot of options when I arrived in the evening in Waitomo, but it worked out well in the end).
Despite only phoning Paul first thing in the morning (I’ve a feeling I woke him up – I really must have been up early!) he managed to fit my trip in that day with an afternoon-evening special.
So after a quick visit to the Natural Arch in Waitomo to fill-in time in the morning (FREE and well worth a visit – glow-worms can also be seen here for free in the evening!), the afternoon started with putting up my tent in the free campsite Paul can offer to his customers (near, but not next to his house!).
Then, after sorting out some thermals of the right size, wellies and harness for me, a brief bit of hedgehog medicine as we discover that Prickles, a baby hedgehog that’s kind of adopted Paul’s family over the last couple of weeks, has suffered at the hands(?) of egg-laying Australian green flies. He’s got covered in their eggs, and will be eaten alive if we can’t get rid of them before they hatch:( We’re not sure what we can do to help him, but try bathing him in some diluted Dettol in the hope that will kill the eggs, but not harm Prickles. (NB DON’T try this – we now realise that that hedgehog’s and even very diluted Dettol appear to be a bad combination )
Then we drive all of 5 mins to a nearby farmers field – very convenient! The trip starts with a 40m or so abseil – it feels very strange using the cavers version of the descender – quite a different bit of kit, but looks as if it could be a lot more flexible. I get very sidetracked by some amazing green-coloured water drops on some vegetation over the stream, before realising that it’s an impossible pic I’m trying to take – freezing a water drop on vegetation with flowing water in the background! Not possible without serious flash set-up and we’re supposed to be doing cave photography not getting side-tracked this early!
The entrances to caves seem to provide the best opportunities for photography – especially as it gets towards dusk. The lower light levels allow the green glow (where Paul’s co name comes from, not from the glowing cave-worms that everyone assumes it’s from!) of the vegetation to expose well against the silhouettes of the cave entrances, and painting with flash-gun lights allows us to pick out interesting stalactites, rocks, or even ourselves in the foreground.
We carry on to take pix of glow-worms forming a milky-way effect overhead, stalactites and have a second abseil. Abseiling in caves seems much easier than on sea-cliffs – it’s much harder to see the bottom, so seems less scary! We’d hoped to get some pix of the glow-worms “fishing” for insects, but sadly they’re not playing well for photos tonight. Then we crawled through a narrow passage to get to a lake with amazing reflections. Rather muddy, but quite fun!
Finally we finish off with a cave-full of stalactites, including one that looks like a carrot on steroids, and a few minutes sitting in silence under the glow-worms. It was midnight by the time we returned, fairly muddy but with some great images in the bag, and having had a lot of fun exploring. Sadly we learned on our return that Prickles (the baby hedgehog) had died. That was a sad end to the day, but the memories (and photos!) of so many glow-worms in the caves will remain with me for a long while to come.
Skipping a week or so in the adventures just to try and catch up a bit (net time is being very elusive at the moment – just too many good things happening a little too quickly, and limited opportunities for getting online in between!)
Just back from being a very drowned rat on Tongariro N Circuit. It was a fantastic walk (tramp to any kiwi’s out there reading this!), but school groups should be banned!!! (Well, at least from just randomly turning up in huge groups and not booking into the hut system in advance!) It’s a long story – but involved doing most of the circuit in 2 days rather than 3 as I moved on to the Otuere Hut rather than staying the first night in the usual Ketatahi Hut. Now that’s not a clever move with lightweight boots and a heavy pack, but it was necessary if I wanted anywhere to sleep that night!, And of course that put me just the wrong distance from the Waihohonu hut – arriving there at lunch time gives the dilemma – to stop very early, or to carry on late…
The first day is also the Tongariro Alpine Crossing – rated as the best one day walk in the world, perhaps justifiably. But the downside of this is a lot of traffic – even on a day of relatively poor visibility. Taking a side trip to either of the two summits does get you away from the crowds for a bit, but being there after 2pm is best for a level of peacefulness, as that’s when the day-trippers need to be at the Ketati Hut by – or risk missing their transport out!
So back to the dilemma – speaking to the Waihohonu hut warden she reckons most folks do that section out to Whakepapa vilage in less than the 5.5hrs posted, and there was bad weather forecasted for Thurs am, so it made sense to carry on. Especially as the first sandflies of the tramp then found me!! But it ended up being 28km of walking that day, and the compromise I made on the walking boots (approach boots rather than proper walking boots, which would have probably been fine over three days) wasn’t so good over that distance in that time with that heavy a pack, and the blisters that developed as a result ended up making me arrive too late to get transport out of Whakepapa that evening.
But the Skotel (literally at the end of the track – on the Upper Taranaki Falls route) provided a very welcome backpackers bed (proper bed too – not a bunk!), a much needed beer, and the chef (Raj) was fantastic and rustled up a huge plate of garlic bread despite my having missed last orders!
The next morning dawned very wet and a bit windy, and the blisters seemed to be saying that’s it for walking. But then I got talking to some folks who had also finished the walk the previous day. All the info I’d had up til then was that folks don’t usually do the section between Whakapapa and Mangepopo Hut, but that now seemed a little misplaced. This group had done it, and said it had it’s own special character (they were right!) and it now seemed a little incomplete to leave the walk without doing this section. Despite the blisters and severe weather warning out there, it had to be given a go!
But the weather actually wasn’t half as bad as forecast, very little wind, albeit rather wet, and a sneaky move in leaving the heavy rucksack behind at the hotel to collect later made the blisters bearable. And that section was worth it – in many ways it felt a little wilder than the rest – although that was probably more down to the poor track maintenance on that section, rough weather, and the beauty of having the track entirely to myself without having to leave late enough that most other folks have already gone through!
Drowned rat at the end – mebbe, but certainly not an unhappy one! And many thanks to Annie of Adventure HQ whose shuttle service from Mangetepopo Roadhead at the far end made that last section possible – especially on a day when most of the shuttle services didn’t want to play, and had shut up shop due to bad weather!
Yes, I know there is a distinct lack of images in the posts at the mo.
Apologies about that – I’m having trouble keeping up with a) a month’s backlog of email from being out in Antarctica with no access and b) limited options for net access with my laptop. It seems net is slow, expensive and rarely laptop enabled so far in south island of NZ. Hopefully things will improve as I head north, if not, the pix will appear in due course – at worst that will be when I return back to base in February. Now just 1000km to go to catch that ferry!
Questions about weather on Stewart Island are a little bit different to most places. It’s not so much a question of “what will the weather do?” so much as “Will there be a break in the rain today?” or if by rare chance it’s not actually raining yet, “When do you think the rain will come!”
But don’t let that put you off. Yes it does rain a lot – but actually overall it has no more days of rain than Auckland – just that there is usually some amount of light rain each day. I was unlucky in that it had been unseasonably wet before and while I was walking the Rakiura Track – but with the right gear it is still a wonderful experience.
But do make sure you have good waterproofs (jacket and trousers – my Paramo outers were fantastic protection on this walk), good enough walking boots or even wellies!! (I saw a few other trampers wearing these and given the mud on Day 3 they actually were quite a sensible choice!), gaiters and a waterproof outer rucksack cover. I’d also say that walking poles would be very useful for balance with a heavy sack and for probing mud depths in places!
The track itself is fairly easy going – other than unusually muddy conditions due to exceptional rainfall this “summer” – it’s mostly boardwalk covered, and the DOC time estimates are very conservative. In fact when I booked my Great Walks Hut Pass, they actually asked me if I was doing it in two days rather than the normally quoted 3 days – many folks miss out Port William Hut and go straight through to North Arm Hut.
The road walk across to Lee Bay is more interesting than you would expect – one unusual item to look out for is a very old “public phone” on a tree beside the road! The track itself is unlike most long distance treks I’ve done previously, being low-level rainforest (max altitude 300m – no risk of altitude sickness here!) rather than high alpine mountain ridges, but is well worth while despite that. It is possible to see the elusive kiwi on the track here – especially if travelling solo. Other birds frequently seen (and heard!) are the tui, bellbird, wood pigeon, tomtit. A possum is also often found near North Arm Hut – hopefully doing his bit to keep the rodent population (often mentioned in the hut book, though none seen on my visit!) down to a minimum!
The long walk out from Sawdust Cove through Kaipipi to Oban can get a bit tedious – especially if it has been raining all three days! (The muddiest part of the track is Sawdust Cove Campsite to Whalers Bay and the final 7km from Kaipipi Bay is the least interesting of all the track). The ideal solution would be to pre-arrange for a water taxi to meet you at Sawdust Cove (being the end of the National Park itself) but this is rarely possible as the inlet is very shallow here. Doc advises that North Arm or Kaipipi Bay would be rather more likely places that a water taxi could get into.
For more info on the track the doc website has a useful description.
All too soon we’ve left the lack ice and are heading back to New Zealand, at the end of the Antarctic trip.
The southern ocean is being unusually calm but it’s still enough to upset those suffering from sea-sickness.
We make two brief stops en-route back to New Zealand.
Campbell island was great for seeing several Royal Albatross nesting. They seemed very calm and completely unfazed by the horde of yellow jackets passing them by! On the boat we had a group of Chinese photographers – they learned a new word today! Unfortunately something seems to have got a bit “Lost in Translation” – they appear to think “Hush!” is something you shout at the poor albatross to make it move! Fortunately the albatross were far more interested in sitting on their egg, preening and even sleeping than paying the slightest bit of attention to any misguided attempts to make them more active.
Enderby was very wet – it seems Bob (Quark’s historical expert) had ordered the weather as he later admitted the thunderclap had been rather expensive! – but was again fantastic for wildlife. We saw lots of yellow-eyed penguins, more than Nigel (Quark’s ornithological expert) has seen in 8 previous trips together. Perhaps the heavy rain was fooling them into thinking the shore was approaching sea-level amounts of wetness! And far from being the shy retiring creatures we were expecting, they also seemed remarkably unfazed by our presence.
Dodging the “beach-master” Hookers sea lions present on the coastal path we were allowed to walk also caused great entertainment – some of them were distinctly aggressive – and capable of chasing groups up 4foot high embankments!
Although it was a very short time we spent on both islands, it was a great privilige to be able to land at all – I’m told permits are hard to get and very limited – the wildlife after all doesn’t want too many enthusiastic tourists passing by if it is to breed successfully!
Christmas and Boxing Day pass in a bit of a blur. We get our first chance to walk on water (oh, ok, it’s fast sea ice – that mean’s it’s stuck to the land rather than floating freely in the ocean – but it’s still water, even if it is frozen!) at Cape Washington, where we have an awesome day with Emperor Penguins and their chicks. I’m very lucky to get pole position for penguin watching both on our morning excursion near the icebreaker, and also in the afternoon visit to the colony area, where we get a short helicopter flight across difficult ice conditions to just within a mile of the colony itself. (It’s actually not entirely luck – I was trying to predict where the penguins would move to and where I wouldn’t be with too many other folks, but got lucky that penguins came so close to me!). The chicks are quite large now, they’re definitely moulting well in preparation for their forthcoming first swim in the sea, and their voices are a mix of squeaky whistly chicks and youthfull deeper trumpets. Fortunately it’s still early enough in the season that perhaps those which are still very downy and squeaky may mature enough to enjoy their first dip in the ocean before winter reasserts its icy grip once more.
The weather reverts to dull grey Antarctic type on Boxing Day, so we just have a helicopter sight-flight around the icebreaker, while it does icebreaking donuts in the pack ice. Despite an early morning snow-storm, and an abrupt finish to the next morning (at Cape Adare), as the Robinson’s beach shoreline gets closed to our zodiacs by fast-moving ice-floes; we get an expected second chance at Cape Adare – walking 1km over fast ice into Ridley beach. There’s more Adelie penguins than you could ever imagine here. Unexpectedly the Adelies turn out to be quite expert mountaineering penguins – the 250,000 strong colony extends some 350m high up the mountainous slopes of the Cape! We see numerous neighbourly squabbles – some over stone-thievery, some apparently to do with unwanted visits from “outsider” penguins, and some just perhaps from having been too close the neighbours while incubating eggs over the last month or so! There were also loads of very cute fluffy chicks being fed and even the occasional egg being turned, as well as several penguins still building nests (Nigel says they may be juveniles who haven’t yet figured out how to make an egg, or perhaps those who have lost a chick to the ever present skuas trying for a second go late in the season). Despite this being our longest shore-landing, and very unhurried compared to usual, all too soon it’s time to walk back over the pack ice in our last steps across the Antarctic continent.
For now we are off the the peri-Antarctic islands of Campbell and Enderby, where we should see a much greater variety of bird and marine life. Those folks whose ears don’t handle ocean motion too well aren’t looking forward to the Southern Ocean crossing though – mealtimes might be less busy for the next few days!
We get a chance to see round a couple of bases the following day – Mc Murdo and Scott Base – one America and one New Zealand. The contrast in many ways couldn’t be greater – 1200 people spend summer at McMurdo compared to roughly a tenth of that at Scott. Hillary’s hut is a fascinating museum piece which feels very modern compared to Scott’s Discovery Hut at Hut Point by the American McMurdo base. A road connects the two bases -I was amused (but not too surprised!) to find out that it’s the Kiwi’s compromise and drive on the “wrong” side of the road for safety’s sake to avoid mid-way collisions! Again we felt rather rushed, except in the shops.
(I know it helps the bases if the tourist ship’s passengers contribute to the base-shop’s incomes, and that the folks showing us round are doing it on their days off, but a disappointment was the very noticeable level of restrictions on what we could do and the time available for individual stops allowed. For example at McMurdo Base (USA) 5 minutes in the Crary Lab, 2 mins in a crowded corridor (with interesting artefacts in the glass cases), 20 mins in the coffee room and 30 mins in the base shop was a rather odd division of the time available. And at Scott Base “No, you can’t just walk up the road towards Observation Hill, as we haven’t got a spare member of staff to supervise you!” was the reply to querying what I could do with a spare 25mins after we got bounced off our flight in favour of two mechanics who needed to be ferried to the icebreaker first. And all I wanted was a chance to stretch my legs for once! I do think the expedition staff and their land partners sometimes appear to forget that not all their passengers on the icebreaker are geriatric!
But it was fascinating to get the chance to see inside both bases, and meet a few of the staff. One was so keen to get to the Antarctic that he’d volunteered to spend 60 hours a week cleaning loos just to have any available spare time on the Antarctic continent. Now that’s what I call determination to see the place! Another, who we almost literally bumped into outside, looked after the fuel for the station – from the requirements of the vehicles near the base, to sorting out deep field expeditions – which often required mini pre-expeditions to ensure that fuel is in the correct places to enable the scientists to get to their destination. It sounded a fascinating job, and potentially one that could get you out into the field a fair bit – always a useful job requirement for any role in the Antarctic!
We leave McMurdo Sound to the disappointing news that we’re not going to visit the Dry Valleys, as apparently the ship’s captain has been looking at the weather and ice forecasts and now wants an extra day to cross the southern ocean. Though apparently the area of the Dry Valley’s that we are currently allowed to visit is now no more than the size of a rugby pitch (not to mention the helicopter pilots struggling for allowable airtime on a long flight there after the exceptionally long day they had yesterday.) At least that’s what we’re told to try and forestall an element of rising grumbling again! Interestingly other passengers who had been to the Ross Sea huts, bases and Dry Valleys on previous trips said that it was noticeable how the restrictions and regulations are increasing throughout the whole of the Antarctic region – perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that we are still allowed in the huts or bases at all; and despite the awesome scenery, perhaps the Dry Valley’s are not quite the draw they once were.
First of all a Ross Seal decides to interrupt our lunch – it’s such a rare sighting that the captain very kindly and adeptly manoevers the boat for the best position at a really close range (for a 400mm lens that is!). To put the rareness of this sighting into perspective – Sue Flood, our expedition photographer, says that in 35 years of working in the Antarctic, her husband (film-maker Doug Allen) has never seen even one Ross Seal, and now we’ve seen two! So a very rare treat indeed. I think a few of us have got some fantastic photographs of the Ross Seal, especially when it finally turned its head round and yawned at us!
As if that wasn’t good enough we get to see a third Ross Seal the following day – albeit again at a fair distance. Having crossed the dateline in the morning, it’s now the Antarctic summer solstice, which we celebrate with champagne on ice. On the Ross Ice Shelf that is! This amazing slab of fast ice is 40m high in places (above the waterline), a further 350-700m deep (below the waterline), more than 350 miles long on its coastal edge, and roughly 400 miles long from the coastal edge back to land. Which to put it in context means it’s roughly the size of France or the Australian state of Victoria. It’s very hard to comprehend just how large it is – even when flying over it by helicopter. It’s impossible to gauge the distance it covers back to land, as the flatness belies it’s vast extent, and even though we sail along a fair part of it’s coastal extent, the curvature of the earth and its various inlets again limit the view to eastern and western ends.
We encounter thick ice and fog overnight, which slow the progress of the ship to a standstill at times – when visibility is that poor the captain can’t even use the ship’s helicopters for their main purpose – ice reconnaissance! So it’s a great bonus to be able to visit from Cape Evans (Scott’s 1910-1913 Terra Nova South Pole Expedition) and Cape Royds (Shackleton’s 1907-09 Nimrod South Pole Expedition). It’s fascinating to see the two huts, but there’s really very little time inside each hut (12 of us – the max allowed in the huts at any one time, and 10mins duration – is far too many of us in far too short a time to take things in properly). The amazing sense of history and conditions – that can only be imagined on a sunny and (relatively!) warm day such as we visited on – can’t escape you, even in such limited time.
“We will be starting with Zodiac groups 3,4 and 5. When they get back, it will be groups 6,7 and 8, then 9, 1 and 2. I cannot guarantee that we will be able to get you all to shore safely, and if conditions change, we will have to stop the zodiacs” said Shane, rather prophetically as it turned out. This time luck was with me – I was in Zodiac group 5, the last Zodiac of the first group of 5, heading out to Peter 1 Oy (or island), a very remote peri-Antarctic island, some 450km from the mainland on the rarely visited est coast of Antarctica. In fact the Bellinghausen/Amundsen Seas that it is situated between are so rarely sailed across that we are the only passenger boat going near Peter 1 island this year.
10 short minutes later, having skimmed across the surface of the freezing water between the Kapiran Khlebnikov and the shore, dodging icebergs by the dozen, we were landing at the shore of Antarctica’s Peter 1 Oy. Originally discovered by the Russian explorer Fabian Bellinghausen in 1821, it wasn’t until 1929, some 108 years later, that the first person set foot on its shores. This Norwegian landing party were whalers, looking for suitable places to establish whaling stations along the west Antarctic coast, and claimed it in the name of the Norwegian king. Their hopes of Peter 1 becoming a useful whaling base were soon abandoned though, as the coastline is extremely precipitous and landing is rarely possible.
We were soon to discover this for ourselves. The most favoured landing point was out of action due to fast-moving pack ice blocking the entrance in a Zodiac-munching way. So we were landing at a second choice – under a very precipitous cliff, with large ice cornices complete with a heavy arsenal of volcanic “bombs” towering above a very small stony beach. The plan was to beach the Zodiac at the shoreline, each person then gets off on one side of the Zodiac, walks around the bow on the beach and get back into the Zodiac again on the far side. Thus being able to claim that they were one of a very small number of folks who have set foot on the island. Of course a few chose to wander further – most of us wanted a picture to prove we we’d set foot on the land. Some went further and wandered several metres away from the boat and started to set up tripod… seemingly oblivious to the intermittent rain of small stones and pieces of ice – which could so easily become house-sized blocks at any time, and that would rather spoil the party… permanently.
All too soon we were back on the zodiac heading back to the KK via an icy passage near the Tsarporten – a natural arch. Groups 6,7,and 8 were not so lucky. The pack ice was shifting fast here too, and although most of them got to shore ok (the last Zodiac driver out heeded the acquired wisdom of the first and turned back early), they discovered that heading back to the KK was a rather different matter. A rather fraught time was had on the bridge for the best part of an hour while the crew with binoculars did their best to help guide the Zodiacs into clearer water and back to the ship. Strangely enough, this seemed to decide the fate of the rest of the groups - no more attempts would be made today. 4 near misses with the pack ice were 4 too many. Shane did try to get those who missed out on the Zodiac trip out there in the helicopters, but the staff reconnaissance flight was nearly engulfed by a white-out coming in from the far side of the island, and the pilots sensibly deemed it unsafe to continue. So I am now one of only 850 folks to have set foot on this, one of the most remote and rarely visited of Antarctic islands, (the total apparently stood at 800 before half of us managed to land).
Other than a very rare Ross Seal coming to lunch, (more about that in the next blog) the rest of the week passed rather uneventfully with the Quark staff breaking up the monotony (for some) of passing through pack ice with a variety of lectures and films. And we discovered first-hand why the Phantom Coast got its name – it’s an even rarer occasion that landings are possible here than on Peter 1 island. With pack ice frozen fast to the shoreline for 300 nautical miles out, even getting a glimpse of the coastline wasn’t possible – much less a landing on Siple Island – the proposed landing site. And this of course is why it’s known as the Phantom Coast. Sailors have long known it must exist, but actually seeing it is so rare that accurate navigational charts of it still don’t really exist.
So its now been 6 days without a landing on Antarctic ground, and folks are getting a bit fractious. I don’t think anyone expected the weather to be so against us (we’ve not seen the sun since Peter 1 either), but everyone’s really looking forward to getting to the Ross Ice Shelf now, and praying for good enough weather to allow the helicopters to fly and land us back on Antarctic ground – whether that’s ice-shelf or land!
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