Antarctic Adventure - 1

Each Kilchoan winter Trevor Potts, who runs the Ardnamurchan Campsite, leaves us to travel to Antarctica, where he works as a guide on a cruise ship.  Many thanks to Trevor for this, his first report from the Antarctic summer.

Hope all is well in Kilchoan.

Our season has not got off to the best of starts. During our first night at sea we had a severe gale with 15m waves when we were about 50 miles SE of Cape Horn. This delayed is a bit but we suffered no damage.

Our first landing, at Brown Bluff (a 2000ft layer of volcanic ash) to see the Adelie and Gentoo penguins, started well, then the wind picked up and the ice suddenly closed in.

Brown Bluff is the most northern tip of the Antarctic continent, part of the Trinity Peninsula which in turn is part of the Antarctic Peninsula. We landed the first of our 90 passengers onto the stony beach just before 9.00am - a beach all of the expedition staff knew well, I myself have probably landed here in excess of 50 times over the last 12 years as has John the expedition leader and Oleg the zodiac driver. The temperature was about 1C with a cold NW wind. After an hour we had all the passengers ashore and some of the first arrivals were starting to get cold so we started to ferry them back to the ship. That was when the trouble started. With a low spring tide at 1.00pm we knew it would be tricky finding our channel through the rocks. Usually there are bergy bits of ice grounded on the rocks giving us a clue as to where the deeper water is. There was not much ice around at the time and the ice that was around was being swept along just offshore. Then it all changed as the wind picked up to about 30 knots and veered slightly and started to blow big pieces of ice in towards the shore, these grounded on the reef as the tide was dropping. Within half an hour we were trapped.

I had been for a short hike with about 30 passengers to the foot of the degraded glacier and we were out of sight of the landing area for no more than 30 minutes. As the landing area came into view I was totally shocked to see a loaded zodiac trapped in the ice and another zodiac at the beach area, unable to access open water. The third zodiac had been returning passengers to the ship when the ice came in and was still in open water. John our expedition leader had seen the ice closing in and was organising the zodiac shuttle as quick as he could but it was impossible to get everyone back to the landing area before some of the larger pieces of ice grounded just offshore and blocked our escape route. We searched along the beach for an area where this zodiac might manage to get close enough for me to get aboard. I managed to clamber over some ice blocks to reach a large rock where he was able to deposit some more emergency food and get me aboard (we had an emergency shelter, a few sleeping bags and food already at the landing beach). We then searched further along the beach for a better landing site but it was impossible to get ashore again with a big swell and lots of rocks and ice. During this time the ship had to take its anchor up and leave as it was nearly surrounded by ice.

After an hour or so the ship came close enough for us to get back to the ship for me to collect another zodiac, but it was late afternoon before the tide had risen enough for us to get back in over the rocks and through the thick pack ice.

After many aborted attempts by myself and Oleg the other zodiac driver, we managed to get everyone back to the ship. Each load we took off was taking us a huge amount of effort to force our way in through the pack ice. At one point I was so firmly wedged in the ice I got out of the boat onto the ice to try to push myself free, a hugely risky thing to do. Oleg had to come to my rescue, he got as close as he could to me and I threw him a line. He soon pulled me clear using the powerful 50 hp engine that the zodiacs are equipped with. It took a few hours to get all the passengers off the trapped zodiac (picture above) onto the other zodiac that was inside the ice barrier, and back to the beach. The trapped zodiac was eventually recovered by towing it up out of the water and over a 5 ft high block of ice. It was nearly 6.00pm before I was hoisted aboard in the last zodiac. We had managed to get one hot drink and nothing to eat for the entire day.

The ship sailed overnight further south where we encountered a lot of ice during the night delaying our arrival at our next landing site at Cuverville Island until late afternoon. We then fitted in a second landing for the day at Neko Harbour in Andvord Bay after dinner. We hoisted the last zodiac aboard just before midnight after another long day.