International / Navigating icebergs in Antarctic waters
Cantabrian Georgie Archibald shares her experience of kayaking in Antarctic waters.
It’s a crisp 1˚C and I’m sitting in a kayak surrounded by brilliant blue icebergs, immense glacial cliffs, and towering white mountains behind them. It feels like a moment frozen in time. As I propel my way through a thick soup of brash ice, I hear a sharp series of thunder-like cracks that shatter the silence and make my hair stand on end. I whip my head to my left and see that a glacial wall is calving – shedding tons of ice into the sea. The booming cracks echo around the bay and the view is spectacular, with mounds of sloughed glacier sending up pillowy puffs of ice, snow and water. It’s a bit like a bag of flour has been dropped from a great height onto a hard surface – if the bag was the size of a skyscraper.
The scene takes place in mere seconds but it seems to occur in slow motion as my thoughts gallop at speed; one of our guides is yelling, reminding our team to turn our bows into the waves so that we don’t get caught sideways and tip. I know I’m far enough away from the glacier to feel safe despite sizeable waves now rolling towards me. However,
I’m close enough to be totally awed by the sheer scale of the calving event. My mouth is gaping and I’m acutely aware of how small and insignificant an element I am in this extreme environment.
Six months earlier in September 2018, the Antarctic Heritage Trust (AHT) opened applications for their
fourth Inspiring Explorers’ Expedition. The AHT is a New Zealand-based charity whose mission is to conserve, share and encourage the spirit of exploration. To encourage young people to explore the world and to inspire others by sharing their stories, previous Inspiring Explorers’ Expeditions include: retracing Ernest Shackleton, Frank Worsley and Tom Crean’s route to traverse South Georgia Island; summiting Mount Scott on the Antarctic Peninsula; and crossing the Greenland ice cap in the footsteps of Fridtjof Nansen. Inspiring Explorers’ Expedition 2019 was an opportunity for a group of young New Zealanders to explore the Antarctic Peninsula by kayak.
From hundreds of applicants five of us were selected to join Antarctic Heritage Trust Executive Director Nigel Watson and Olympic kayaker Mike Dawson on this adventure of a lifetime. A seasoned polar explorer, Nigel would lead our expedition, while adventure buff Mike came on board as our kayak mentor. The Trust has also recently formed a partnership with Auckland’s Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate, and it was fantastic to have two of the Collegiate’s Year 13 students and their teacher join the expedition, rounding us out to a 10-strong team.
After a mid-February teambuilding weekend in Auckland, we departed New Zealand for Argentina in early March.
My excitement levels were through the roof but I was also intensely nervous. Despite having trained on the water for the past three months, there were so many unknown elements ahead of me: how I’d keep warm, what would happen if I fell out of the kayak, how I’d manage paddling long distances in the extreme cold, and would I be able to mentally push through obstacles and risks that were sure to arise? How would my new team-mates deal with these same challenges?
In Ushuaia we boarded the polar research vessel Akademik Ioffe, run by Antarctic tour operator One Ocean Expeditions. Taking two days to cross the notoriously rough Drake Passage, our land-starved eyes and queasy stomachs were forgotten once enormous icebergs came into sight. They signalled our approach to the South Shetland Islands and the white continent beyond; my nerves took a backseat and I felt beyond excited that we had reached our destination after many months of planning and training. The whole team was similarly giddy with anticipation!
We luckily struck an unusually warm and settled patch of weather that allowed us to kayak every day in Antarctic waters. The paddling wasn’t to be any more different from my summer training along the hospitable Banks Peninsula coastlines. However, I was immersed in the extremities of polar environments and constantly on alert, analysing information using all five senses. We kayaked past epic terrains that included stark rocky headlands, mushy snow fields, blackened volcanic craters, and sky-high white mountains. The pungent stench of marine life dominated my sense of smell; more agreeable was the clear glacial ice I scooped up to suck on while paddling. There was a rich soundscape throughout the paddling, as water slapped against icebergs, wind tumbled over vast vistas, and wildlife yelped and squawked. I was cold, but not uncomfortably so due to my merino layers, except for my hands where I developed a stinging rash from the sharp temperatures and salt water. It was painful but didn’t register much when I felt so amazed at the otherworldy environments we were traversing.
While managing the severe cold, our team also navigated icebergs, ice floes, brash ice, and tideline glaciers. Keeping our distance from glaciers and icebergs was required, because they can calve, and the bergs can roll as they melt in late summer. We learnt how to kayak through the fragmented clutter of brash ice – it feels like paddling through thick porridge and I found it a huge amount of fun as well as technically challenging. We were often working through open water too; sometimes it was soft and tranquil with stunning reflections on its calm surface, while other times we were paddling through chop or into a bitter headwind.
Throughout the experience it was incredible to bond with a group of passionate, caring and inspiring New Zealanders;
their company enriched my polar adventure tenfold. A highlight of our team bonding was our overnight camp at Portal Point, where we dug shallow berths in the snow for our bivvies and sleeping bags. The –5˚C campout gave us a real taste of the hardships that early Heroic Age polar explorers such as Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton had to manage daily.
It was the campout that tested me the most on the expedition. Physically, I was bone-chillingly cold throughout the night; I figured it must be because I worked up a sweat digging out my snowy berth before jumping into my bivvy bag. After the first few hours of nightfall I mentally started to struggle too, a couple of times even wondering if I could opt out of the freezing overnighter. But I was faced with the reality that there was no way to get back to the ship – it was too dangerous to navigate the ice in darkness. I also bucked up my game by reflecting on the legacy of early polar
‘Keeping our distance from glaciers and icebergs was required, because they can calve, and the bergs can roll as they melt in late summer.’
‘Experiencing Antarctica was immense, in beautiful, humbling ways.’
explorers: if in 1915 Shackleton and his 27 crew could survive for 14 months marooned on Antarctic Peninsula pack ice with limited shelter and food, I convinced myself that I could get through one night of hardship.
As the hours wore on I was increasingly exhausted from shivering and a lack of sleep, but started to find myself on an emotional high – have I mentioned that the lack of light pollution in Antarctica makes for the most stunning celestial skies? In the early morning, still freezing, I entered an almost meditative state as I watched the slow-moving satellites and shooting stars above. I was rapt to arise to a beautiful sunrise and relieved to then travel back to the ship, taking advantage of a hot shower and hearty breakfast before eagerly climbing into the kayak once more.
After a whirlwind of adventures, our 10-day expedition came to an end. Experiencing Antarctica was immense, in beautiful, humbling ways. I’m now intimately more aware of how Antarctica’s environmental issues are profoundly tied to our planet’s climate and ocean systems; the issue of polar landscapes shedding ice at record rates was demonstrated firsthand by the monumental glacial calving our team experienced. I’ve also experienced the power of exploration for personal development, as the expedition helped me develop skills in problem solving, cooperation and resilience.
As I now look to share my story in presentations to Canterbury schools and tertiary organisations, my hope is that our expedition can help inspire others to get out there and explore, in adventures big or small, whether somewhere as otherworldly as Antarctica or much closer in our own incredible South Island landscapes.