Reporter's Notebook: Life on the Antarctic Ice

SNOW ISLAND, Antarctica, Nov. 30, 2007 — -- We reached as far as 65 degrees south two days ago -- roughly 50 miles north of the Antarctic Circle -- before turning back.

During the past month the big ship -- the National Geographic Endeavour, a former fish-processing boat converted to a tourist-research vessel 25 years ago -- had spent many hours crunching its way slowly through sea ice, squeezing through the beautiful LeMaire Channel and onto the Branfield Straits.

Eventually, the ice stopped us.

While still recovering from the shock and emotion of being the first ship to reach the sinking Explorer one week ago, the rest of my scout of the Antarctic Peninsula was a great success. I will return to the Antarctic Peninsula on New Year's Eve -- with five teammates -- to spend all of January sea kayaking along the eastern side, the Weddell Sea side.

My prime reason for spending this past month here was to get a sense of how much ice surrounds the continent this year (each year is different) and to talk to scientists and researchers here about expected conditions for the rest of the austral summer.

On Thanksgiving night, we had pulled the ship into Fildes Bay, loaded my three, big (21 feet 10 inch) kayaks onto rubber Zodiacs and ferried them to shore. There we were greeted by a small pack of leopard seals swimming in the shallows and the four-man team of Chileans that runs the Harbor Master's office on King George Island.

KGI is home to a dozen small scientific bases, each representing a different country (a reminder that Antarctica is the only place on the planet successfully governed by international treaty).

It also has the only public runway in Antarctica, used by resupply planes and the occasional emergency effort. (King George is where the passengers and crew of the sunken Explorer would ironically be delivered the following day and flown out by charter plane.)

The men from the Harbor Master's office greeted us at the edge of the ice. It was darkening at 9:30 p.m. as they helped me pull the kayaks wrapped in bubble wrap and plastic onto shore. They've been stationed here for a year and three of them are due to leave within the month.

I ask if they'll miss Antarctica, a query greeted by a resounding "NO!" They admit they can't wait to be standing on a Chilean beach in shorts, away from the eternal cold.

The biggest news down south -- after the sinking of the tourist ship and the debate that will follow as to whether tourism is a good thing for Antarctica -- is the fact that it had been a particularly cold winter, even by standards here -- which means lots of ice.

The Weddell Sea, where I plan to take kayaks in January, is still mostly blocked by pack ice. Studying navigational images of the continent on the bridge of the Endeavour we were able to make out two sizable icebergs -- each more than several miles long -- blocking the Antarctic Sound, stopping the pack ice from moving out to sea as it normally does each spring.

My hope is that these next five weeks will be warm and windy, that the icebergs will blow out and that the Weddell Sea will clear.

Between scouting missions, our days were spent exploring islands just off the coast of the Peninsula, including Elephant Island where Ernest Shackleton's men spent nearly five months awaiting rescue in 1915.

By comparing historical photographs taken at that time with pictures from our visit, it was evident that the beach area of the island has shrunk, as has the nearby glacier. It's hard to imagine 23 men living here for that duration.

We also stepped foot on the continent, always a pleasure for me; this is my eighth visit to Antarctica, and I've spent more days on its interior than its coastline. If you can imagine the snow-capped peaks of Alaska flooded by a cold sea -- that's what Antarctica looks like in the springtime.

An immediate question regarding the abundance of ice this year is, "I thought global warming was changing Antarctica." Which it is.

The seas around the Peninsula have warmed by more than 4 degrees F in the past decade, meaning more glacial melt at its fringes, thus bigger icebergs afloat and melting.

In the 1970s, cold winters, like the one just past, occurred during seven out of 10 years. Now it's down to two or three out of 10 years. So things are changing, and fast, around the Antarctic Peninsula.

How fast? I'll have much more to report during January, when we are seeing this very remote place from the seat of a kayak.

Jon Bowermaster is an adventure writer based in Stong Ridge, N.Y. Click here for his Web site. Please check back in January for updates from the ice.