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The Antarctic Peninsula Adventure: Part 3

The best part of the trip to Antarctica were the whales.  Since we had Jorge on board, we had a proper scientific reason for going looking for them.  Jorge was taking photo of the whale flukes, which are like the finger print, and then he was shooting them with floating darts that would (hopefully) hit the whale, take a tiny core samle of whale 2cm long, and bounce off again to float in the water and be picked up by a net.  The DNA gained adds to an international collection of whales data that might one day be used in international courts to PROVE that it is not necessary to kill the whales to study them.  Yes, we all kow that...



The trip was by far the most successful expedition for whale data collection Jorge's team had ever had. 

The best day was an afternoon (all seven hours of it) spent in Collins Bay, beyond the Lemaire Channel and behind Demaria Peak.  We climbed this extremely pretty mountain, skied down and got the zodiak back for a great lunch prepared by Jill and Skye, and motored out to the Collins Bay to get really close to all the whales.  What an incredible and fully exhausting day!

The bay was full of humpback whales, feeding in groups of two and even three.  The whales were "bubble netting", a technique of blowing bubbles out underwater in a circle, thus "netting" the krill and forcing them into a cluster.  Once the krill have been surrounded by bubbles, the whales lunge into the circle with their mouths open, surfacing like this.  It is amazing and easy to see the bubbles before one, two or even three whales emerge exactly as if they were swimming to music. So beautiful!



The whale experience has remained with us. 

Our last ascent was skiing up Mt Scott, from the south end of Lemaire Channel.  My rucksack got dropped into a surging ocean...it rolled down a very steep hill into the water and didn't get washed away!  It was damp, with a sort-of fish bowl high tide in the lenses of my goggles which got broken in the fall. 


The skiing was simple but the view from the top was Deano's favourite scene in our whole visit... we looked down on mountains that had towered over us, and saw how we were surely sailing between mountains on this adventure.

The Antarctic Peninsula Adventure: Part 2

March 20:

On March 15^th Dean, Penny Goddard and I - and the rest of the people on the boat – Jill, Bill, Skye and Ben the sailors, Jorge the whale scientist, and three British Antarctic Survey contractors who rebuilt an historic hut at Port Lockroy to whom we gave a ride “home” , sailed into Ushuaia, Argentina.  We were returning from our month long journey to the Antarctic Peninsula.



Iceberg, Paradise Bay

We had a great time.  All three of our climbing / skiing team had personal significant moments that filled us with complete satisfaction.  For me certainly I decided I was seeing the most beautiful place on Earth, appropriately in Paradise Bay.  For Deano, the view, from the top of Scott Peak, which we skied, looking down on Booth Island was the penultimate vista.  For the three of us, skiing a beautiful peak, Demaria Peak, and then going whale hunting (with a scientist) for hours that same afternoon, was a surreal and incredible experience.

Lydia at start of climbing Jabet Peak, Port Lockroy.

At the beginning, instead of climbing the West Ridge of Mt Parry, certainly an awesome route and our original objective, we decided to try and climb another different new route.  This was because we already had heard that some French climbers had climbed the West Ridge in late January. 

    
West Ridge, Mt Parry, Brabant Island.                                                

  
The Team, Melchior Islands near Mt Parry.

We wanted to make a first ascent, and although we didn’t have a lot of information on potential unclimbed routes within a few days we had spotted a great first ascent to do. The West face (these tend to be the steeper lines) of the First of the Seven Sisters of Fief on Weinke Island in Peltier Channel was unclimbed and sported an obvious line through the centre of the face.

The day after we arrived, Penny felt sick and so Dean and I climbed a small peak called Jabet peak.  When we got to the last pitch, we detoured and climbed a 45m pitch in a steep gully ice climb (with only our crevasse-rescue kit of two ice screws and a belay consisting of an ice axe jammed down vertically behind a flake of rock and tied off at half height with a sling).  It was hilarious.  We even thought it could well be our “first” Antarctic First Ascent.  Naturally my camera battery ran out right at the beginning of the pitch and my second was not charged... so no-one will ever know what dangers we faced!!!

The Seven Sisters of Fief, Weincke Island with Port Lockroy in the front.  Our route makes the first ascent of the face of the left-most mountain, the First Sister.

The day following the three of us got a tour in our boat around underneath the base of the Seven Sisters in order to scope the approach.  There was a steep ice cliff that looked stable enough to climb and we figured we could land in the zodiacs, and one person could climb up, set up a rope, haul the gear and belaying the others up... it was tempting!  But Reality vetoed the idea, as did the hanging piece of ice quite close to the landing... these dangers are real as the ice cliffs drop into the sea and create a single huge wave that can wash people off the rocks or ice and into the freezing ocean.

So back we motored to the original anchorage and the three of us skied to the bottom, four hours of scratchy, icy terrain to ski over with packs on,  conditions would have been great walking! 

“...Feb 23: We climbed what we consider to be a new route; the first ascent of the West Face of the first Sister of Fief.  Early snow prevented an early departure. We started technical climbing at 8.30am.  Weather was either overcast or a complete white-out and at times the lead climber was only faintly discernable.

§  12 pitches of ice and snow climbing.  Up an ice gully for four pitches, to a snow arête/ ice slope for 2 pitches, then through another steeper ice gully (poor protection on one pitch) to the exit couloir.  Estimated at New Zealand Alpine Grade 5.  Summit altitude was taken by GPS at 940m.

§  Descent was down the back of the peak to the col between Mt Luigi and the first Sister, and thence down the gully on the “climber’s right” of the col.  French climbers had recently used the gully on the “climbers left” of the col to descend from Mt Luigi, both routes being fine to descend.  

§  Descent was seven 60m pitches, six V-threads, one rock bollard.  Generally the rock was of poor quality.

Dean on the first pitch, First Sister of Fief.

       Deano returning from the Australis...

On the eve of the 12^th and 13^th, weather forecasts indicated a swell in the Drake Passage that held back three boats from crossing it until early on the morning of the 16^th.  Until then we made our way slowly though the Beagle Channel to near Cape Horn. 

On our first day we spent an hour or two in Argentinean Naval offices, signing papers to enable us to go on our way.  In a way not dissimilar to the official manoeuvres of Himalayan climbing (!) we then motored to Puerto Williams, which is Chilean, and visited the Chilean Naval Base for the next required signature.  

Puerto Williams had beautiful green hillsides and a glossy-calm inlet.  The green was of grass and heaps of it grows because it rains all the time, the trees were beech like our own, because both our countries came from Gondwana Land. 

Penny found she’d left a kitbag behind in Ushuaia, so we waited there for a day, cruising around the little town of run-down cottages looking like out of a western movie.  The residents were great on colour – a turquoise facade opening into and orange halls the architraves in blue. 

Checking out Puerto Williams in Chile, on the way to Cape Horn.


Two of the boats waiting were primarily sailing vessels, in that they cannot carry enough fuel to motor the passage and spend time in the Peninsula; they were relying on a lighter sea and wind. The Australis is a motor-sailor sporting a single mast, and a single sail during the crossing.  There has been very little swell, essentially a flat sea, but also little wind and we quickly passed the other two boats headed to the Peninsula on the first day past the Horn.

Puerto Williams, Chile; en route to Cape Horn.

    

       ...dinner at Camp One!


On Nyambo Konka...

I looked down at Mark and said absolutely nothing.  We were in a white-out half abseiling and down climbing the East Face of Nyambo Konka, retreating to a tiny ledge of ice at 5600m on a rib of snow between two avalanche runnels, the only potential bivouac place en route to the summit ridge.  The white-out was really a pink-out with the very last light of the day colouring our retreat.  I could see Mark as a dark blob in a pink rather steep world.  The pink world started to snow graupel heavily and suddenly we were immersed in the most intense ear-drum-bursting thunderstorm I’ve ever experienced.  Then the lightning came and all around us the pink walls of cloud flickered with tiny orange lights, repeatedly.

I was dressed in my jacket with collar and hood up, and goggles.  I turned in my abseil and looked down at Mark.  What was going through my mind was that Mark was strong and resourceful, a mountaineer and veteran of many new routes, more to the point he lived on a large land mass and large land masses have electrical storms in the mountains.  Because of all these things he should therefore have some kind of magic answer to this situation of extreme electricity... and I said nothing but looked at him 20m away.

“I know!” he yelled in reply over the wildness, “I’m scared too!”

    

    



Injury: It’s not all been good and glamorous; I’ve been injured and have had operations to repair an injury to my left knee.  At times I have not been able to do any exercise.  At one point I wondered if I would be able to return to the mountains with a pack on my back.  Thankfully, and I say that with deep relief, I can carry a pack and I seem still to be able to go uphill ok! 

House Building at Lake Hawea: The past 18 months have also been spent at home finishing building the house I started some years ago.  My partner Dean Staples came into the property building commitment with a less than half-finished house.  It was a structure that the builder and the building inspector state (with a few eyes cast to the heavens) described as “completely outside of 3604” (the New Zealand standard building code).  That is now our catch phrase – whether something (usually not building related!) is within 3604…or not.  We had to retro-engineer the building, and have added rooms to make it more functional.

 Thus, at the start of 2009 we entered a space that amazed us with the experience of living within its walls.  I have had a life-long amateur interest in architecture and spatial design, and once Dean came into the project with practical and visionary ideas, the team result is fantastic. There is a straight-walled earth-roofed part half of the house, and a curved-walled, soaring roofed half.  We have converted the garage under the earth roofed into two sunny bedrooms with courtyard, and a bathroom, and added the most romantic bedroom for ourselves under the eaves of the highest part of the other roof, looking directly out to Lake Hawea.

 We have a single big room with a very high ceiling for living, cooking and dining.  As a child I used to read books set in Europe in the Pyrenees and the Apennines where people would gather in a farmhouse kitchen at a huge table, to eat simple foods with fresh salads and red wine.  For me, coming from a tiny, relatively poor family of just my mother and I, it evoked a feeling of comfort, abundance and simple luxury. 

 Wishes come true: In late March, before I left to climb in China, and Dean to guide Everest, we sat having a meal with salad, wine and candlelight, on a huge wooden table.  I remembered this childhood passion and desire, marveling in the realization that, unconsciously I had been able to create my childhood dream.  Be careful what you wish for, they say, as it can always come true!