Shackleton Redux

November 23rd, 2025

After our visit to Adelie penguins colony, we did in fact find a location with shore-fast ice – that’s sea ice that is still firmly attached to land. The plan was to drive the resolution deep enough into the ice, so that it would be send everyone out to ski or walk around for a while. It sounds dumb, but it was a lot of fun, and how often do you get a chance to walk on water.  Sea ice is frozen sea water, not glacial ice like the big ice shelf’s you read about. (We learned a lot about different icebergs on this trip).

This is sea ice, but obviously not stable.

So, off we went in search of a suitable site to play – the crew had found a fjord which appeared to still have what we were looking for, on recent satellite images, and sure enough the ice was still there. It was fun hanging out on the bow overlook as the ship very slowly plowed through the ice until it was fairly deep, and sort of embedded. They dropped a stairway down, and sent a crew out to test the ice, and mark out an area that was safe to play and ski on.

You can see the stairs lowered to the ice, and a couple of crew members off in the distance, marking the safe area. And a couple of lazy seals as well.

Once all was safe and set to go, they let two groups go off for a cross-country ski excursion. I had wanted to do this – I used to do back-country skiing all the time in Colorado, and was pretty good a telemarking down mountain passes. But they would only let passengers with recent experience (last year or two) go, and it has been a good ten years for me). I did start to argue the point, but then I heard Jan’s voice in my head ….”you idiot, you have a bad knee that’s hurting…..be safe!!!”. So I went for option 2, which was to take a long stroll out on the ice.  Which turned out to be fun.

They had marked out a one mile or so track, which circled around the bay and passed by the two seals which ignored everyone. It was funny looking back at the ship and seeing this long ine of orange coats – it looked like we had abandoned ship, which was surrounded by ice. It made me think of the famous Shackleton Endurance voyage saga, hence the title of this post.

It was not too cold, but still had to bundle up with all our expedition gear including the Muck boots and the hated life vest. We were walking on water after all – there was always the danger of stepping on a weak spot or a seal air hole.

And they did set up the photo-op of pulling the ship out of the ice. It is a rite of passage for cruising Antarctica

Other than the seals, and a couple of wayward penguins, this was just a fun outing. It is always great to get off the ship and walk around, and it was even better when you can simply walk off the ship onto a flat, stable surface. No waves, rocks or icy climbs. And the views across the open expanse of ice to the surrounding icy mountains was incredible. It is just so hard to fully describe what this place is like. It’s breathtaking where ever you go.

As for the wayward penguins, I noticed after I boarded back on the ship, and was watching below from the lounge, that three penguin had magically appeared. I guess they followed the channel created by the ship, and decided to check things out. It was fun watching them – they just scoot forward on their stomachs, keeping their wings out as stabilizers, and push forward with their feet. They look like little black and white snow mobiles, and scoot forward quickly. When they hit a crack in the ice, they stopped, stared at it for a while, then each one hopped forward. When all three were on the other side, off they went again, heading back to open water. I wish I had photographed it all – it was like watching the three stooges.