SNOW Alps 25-26 web - Flipbook - Page 104
“Antarctica’s snow is old,
notorious for its sharp
sastrugi ridges etched by
relentless katabatic winds.”
C
rack open any Antarctica storybook, and you’ll find many
a tall, frosty tale – of amiable eccentrics, adventurous
madmen, and beautiful people doing wild things for
good snow. In short, our people.
Take the 1903 expedition of Frenchman Jean-Baptiste
Charcot. Preparing to set sail, and having secured sponsorship
from Mumm’s Champagne, it wasn’t a real caper until he roped
in a few friends. One future seaman, invited to venture into the
unknown, simply replied: "Where you like. When you like. For
as long as you like."
And was it ever.
In a last-minute change of heart, Charcot redirected, not
insignificantly, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. On arrival, he
and his ship Le Francais were promptly suspended in hostile
pack ice for six long polar months. Making the most of it, the
men staged high-stakes ski competitions with tin cans for
prizes, mounted vigorous chess tournaments, enjoyed daily
rum rations, ate fresh bread three times week and croissants
on Sunday – with, to be sure, lashings of Champagne to wash
it all down.
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Now there’s the spirit.
On a nine-day Swan Hellenic expedition exploring the
northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, I learned a good
deal about the highs and lows of these early adventurers.
Daily lectures from glaciologists, ornithologists, and marine
biologists are an intrinsic part of life aboard the SH Vega – a
state-of-the-art Polar Class V vessel, one of just four of its
kind in the industry, built in 2022 in Helsinki for the luxury
market. What was clear from Charcot’s early French sortie – if
it weren’t clear before – no one comes to Antarctica looking for
humdrum.
It’s the grandeur, the silence… it’s the snow.
Even if you never click into a binding, Antarctica seduces.
Standing on the prow, Day Three at sea, I spot my first iceberg
off the starboard – a mass the size of a small opera house. Its
curtain shifts from silver to turquoise to inky green as it floats
slowly past, behind mountains shimmering in alpenglow. For
photographers, naturalists, dreamers, this is cathedral en plein
air.
It is snow as religion.
