SNOW Alps 25-26 web - Flipbook - Page 105
Photo courtesy of Swan Hellenic
this page clockwise left to right
1. A whale of a time on the Swan
Hellenic SH Vega.
2. Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Charcot
making the most of the Mumm’s.
3. Squeezing through the needlethin Lemaire Channel.
Photo courtesy of Swan Hellenic
Some travel by dogsled, chronometer and diary in hand.
Some by high-test Zodiac, I-phones at the ready. Others arrive
in what can only be described as super-bougie style. Recently,
a Swiss billionaire traded the rolling slopes of Gstaad for a
tricked-out Antarctic mega-yacht equipped with not one but
two helicopters, and a quorum of his luckiest ski buddies. From
teak deck to frozen drop-zone in minutes, this must be the
most exclusive vertical on Earth. But even a $2.5 million boys’
break like that is uninclined to promise Bugaboo-light powder.
Antarctica’s snow is old, and notorious for its sharp sastrugi
ridges etched by relentless katabatic winds. Neither heli-skiers
nor ski tourers come here for waist-deep tracks. They come for
a glimpse of what lies beneath.
Antarctica, after all, is spiritual home of the iceberg theory.
Ninety percent of the world’s icebergs ply these seas. And, as
every schoolchild knows, 90 percent of each one remains unseen
by the human eye. As nimble as the SH Vega is – crossing 12foot swells in the 625-mile-wide Drake Passage; four days later,
squeezing dramatically through the seven miles of needle-thin
Lemaire Channel, our flutes raised dancing to Ricky Martin
on the forward deck – like most Antarctic adventurers, we
will scarcely dust the tip of the 800-mile-long Peninsula. And,
while at times it feels we’re surrounded by bobbing ice planets
and carpets of penguins, it truly is the tip of the cosmic iceberg.
Consider the mysterious Gamburtsev mountain range, a
ghostly Antarctic massif the size of the European Alps. Off the
visitor’s menu for obvious reasons, these peaks were discovered
not with binoculars but via ice-penetrating radar, entombed as
they are beneath more than a mile of primordial ice. Indeed,
the continent is almost wholly covered in a permanent icecap
with altitudes that rise well over 4,000 metres above sea level.
Peaks on the Peninsula alone climb to 2,800 metres. In places,
the snow hasn’t melted in 800,000 years.
Aboard the SH Vega, things run tightly. With around 120
passengers, there’s a 1:1 employee to guest ratio and staff are
both plentiful and beyond helpful, ready to adjust and react
as needed. By international convention, only vessels carrying
fewer than 500 passengers are permitted to disembark onto
the continent, though life can get in the way even of small105
