Reporter's Notebook: Blue Glaciers, Bleating Humpbacks, Beauty at Sea

Jan. 25, 2008 — -- Our journey south ended at 67 degrees latitude amid a thick jumble of pack ice at the southern end of Crystal Sound. Our hope had been to continue south through one of two narrow channels -- known collectively as the Gullet -- and on to Marguerite Bay.

Though we tried to nose our kayaks through the ice, following increasingly narrow chutes of water until they dead-ended in even more ice, it was quickly clear this would be our turnaround spot. To celebrate we pull the kayaks up onto a football field-size sheet of ice and introduce ourselves to its other resident, a 400-pound leopard seal dozing peacefully mid-floe.

Our other option, besides slowly heading back north, is to sail out and around Adelaide Island, toward the British base at Rothera, to reach our hoped-for goal of Blailock Island. But after two long team meetings -- one with the crew of the Pelagic Australis, the other with my team -- we opt to stay where we are for a couple more days, to profit from the incredibly beautiful weather that will certainly end soon and to avoid spending three full days sailing.

Like all my previous expeditions, it has been an incredible joy being out on the ocean with kayaks. While I like using adventure to draw people into our stories and films about oceans and coastlines, I also simply like being out on the sea, separated from the ocean by just an inch of carbon fiber and Kevlar.

That feeling of connectedness with the sea is perhaps even more real here on the southern Ocean than anywhere else I've been, with the water temperature hovering just above the freezing mark, big sea creatures swimming all around and giant icebergs standing out against the horizon like floating cairns.

It is impossible not to be stunned, nearly silenced, by the incredible beauty that is all around. Icebergs. Tens of thousands of year-old glaciers. Tall granite mountains. A sun that never quite sets.

Even the fierce storms are beautiful in their rawness. It is a place to both admire and respect. Especially respect, since left alone out here, minus a stove and warm tent, you'd have a hard time lasting one night.

By Antarctic standards we lucked out when it came to weather. For more than two weeks, we've seen almost entirely blue skies and sunshine. Our lips are peeling, our faces sun-browned.

Typically here, no matter the season, you get that kind of day once or twice a week, but our blue-sky days have been lining up one after the other. According to the weather report, which we download every morning by satellite, northerly winds are on the way almost guaranteeing gray, wet skies. With that knowledge, we luxuriate on our private ice floe as long as possible.

Standing on its edge with powerful binoculars, careful not to stray too close to the floe's fragile edge, all I can see for 2 miles is ice piled upon ice. The floating ice abuts fast ice -- still frozen in one sheet to land -- which runs up to the edge of tall, blue glaciers, which have slid down from the tops of mountain peaks.

While the sights are nearly impossible to describe, so are the sounds of Antarctica. In the sea to my right on an amazingly warm (45 degree) day, a small chunk of clear ice crackles. It is the sound of ice melting in the sun, which may be the most common sound heard along the peninsula this year and in those to come if scientists studying here are correct in their predictions that global climate change is coming first to Antarctica.

In such a remote, quiet place it's easy to stop and tune in to the sounds that surround you. Melting ice is just one. The lightning crack of glaciers caving is the second most heard -- and most frightening, since it is often followed by big waves emanating from wherever the falling ice has landed.

The squawk of penguins is everywhere in the air, parents imprinting their bleating voices on chicks since soon they will not be able to pick them out of a crowd of 10,000 by sight, only by sound. The breathing of humpback whales as they surface is most often heard long before you spy them breaking the surface.

But the almost ever-present sound of Antarctica is the wind blowing down off the continent, onto the glaciers and then over the sea, a constant reminder of the most powerful element down south.

Jon Bowermaster is an adventure writer based in Stong Ridge, N.Y. Click here for his Web site.