Tag Archives: Scenery

A Foyn Day

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Saturday 24 February 2024 – We were still at Plan C1, which involved us eventually having a go at crossing the Antarctic Circle (which, as any fule kno, runs at 66° 33’ South)  – not for any particularly good reason, simply to be able to say One Has Done It.  However, we were still some two degrees north of this point, which meant we had in the order of 120 nautical miles (as the albatross flies) to cover – thus probably a great deal more due to having to weave through channels and around icebergs.  The distance we had to cover meant that the skipper had to put the hammer down and so we vibrated our way southwards during last night.  The calm conditions that had so favoured us gave way to some pretty substantial winds – I heard 60 knots mentioned, and I certainly heard it whistling around the superstructure at times during the night – and the motion of the ship gave away that we were ploughing through some not insubstantial waves.

However, things appeared to have calmed down as we got up; we had arrived at Foyne Harbour.

However, when I went out on deck to get some more photos of the undoubtedly dramatic scenery

I was practically blown off the boat by the wind.  Since the plan for the morning was a Zodiac cruise, I was a bit worried that the wind would make this an unrewarding experience.  Luckily, by the time we set off, the wind had dropped to almost nothing, and the temperature was around freezing point – once again, we’d been astonishingly lucky with the weather.

Our host on the Zodiac was Saskia, a Dutch lady, who did an outstanding job of taking us around the available sights, giving us supplementary information about them and ensuring that everyone got the photos they wanted.  This expedition was our first chance to get up close to some of the fantastic Antarctic landscape, and wherever we looked there were memorable scenes.  Here are just a couple – I would like to put a bigger selection up on Flickr, but the restricted nature of our internet access on board makes this too expensive a proposition for a cheapskate like me.

 

 

As well as the landscape, we had a cloudscape, too, with several lenticular (lens-shaped) cloud formations to be seen, as shown above.

The green and red colours in the photo above are algae, which form within the snow and eventually leak out, going from green to red as they age.

The colours and shapes were fantastic.

There was plenty of wildlife to be seen, too:

An Antarctic shag;

more fur seals;

the occasional chinstrap penguin;

And (considerable excitement all round) some humpback whales.

People do get awfully excited about whale sightings, cooing ecstatically as the things surface, breathe and dive. Maybe I’m blasé, but it’s a sight I have seen so often now – and so dramatically in New England recently – that I’m happy to let them whale away the time without feeling the need to chase after more opportunities to watch them. Hopefully the magic will return when we see whales of non-humpback variety; we’ll see.

The other main objective of the Zodiac cruise was to visit the wreck of a ship called the Governorer, a boat which has an interesting, if rather undistinguished, story behind it.

It was a whaler, an early factory ship operating in 1915 (around the same time as the ill-fated Shackleton expedition to cross the continent). In those days, the whales, once caught and killed, were processed on board the ships, with the carcases often hauled alongside. At the end of its season the ship was loaded with barrels and barrels of whale oil and the crew, having had a fine haul of blubber, had a party to celebrate.  Unfortunately, during the festivities, someone knocked over a lamp onto decks still covered in whale oil and the ship caught fire.  In order to save people’s lives, the captain drove the ship aground and the crew were able to make land and were eventually all rescued.

The hulk languishes there to this day, as a home to nesting Antarctic terns.

It’s actually a very big ship; the vast majority of it is underwater, which is why it doesn’t look too imposing in the photographs.

Water for the whalers was stored in water boats on the rocks.

And that was it for the morning.  We headed back to the Hondius for some lunch, and the skipper spent the next couple of hours taking us to the next destination of the day – Orne Bay – where the plan was a split expedition, with a landing and another Zodiac cruise.

Arrival there is quite dramatic.

The peak is Spigot Peak, and it towers over the straits.

Our Orange group were, once again, landing first and cruising second. The objective, once having landed, was actually to work one’s way a little distance up the flanks of Mount Spigot, to view a colony of chinstrap penguins. And “up” was the operative word, here.

There was a zigzag path through the snow and it was necessary to toil up it.  I was very glad to have brought my walking poles with me, as these made the ascent much less like hard work.

At the top, the views were pretty good

and the penguins very engagingly penguinish.  One thing that stood out was a “penguin highway”, a route on the far side of this slope, which the penguins trudged up from the sea to get to their rookery. Why such a slog? Because they need bare rock for nesting, and the wind tends to whip the snow first off the tops of hills. So they climb.

I have some nice video of them wandering about, but, again, I’m too tight to buy the internet bandwidth for uploading chunks of video, so you’ll have to make do with photos.

Having toiled up the side of the hill, we then had to toil down it, which was actually harder work and more trying than the ascent, as it was icy and slippery. I never normally feel the need for poles to help me downhill, but once again I was truly glad that I had mine with me.

The Zodiac cruise which followed the landing took us around the bay and into the next one, and our guide, Elizabeth, once again talked us through some of the key points about the conditions and the glaciers that made it such a spectacular landscape.

The ice in the foreground is called “brash ice”, which is formed as calving glaciers disintegrate. It can block the bay and make landings impossible, so yet again we were lucky with the weather and the conditions.

Above you can see a glacier which is in the early stages of calving – there are “steps” appearing in the otherwise flat surface, which indicate some slippage is happening; this will lead to a chunk falling off the end as the glacier calves. This was in contrast to the glacier at the head of the bay where Hondius was parked

which displays a much more crumbled surface, indicating a greater tendency to calve.

There was some wildlife to be seen on our Zodiac cruise, too.  We came across some Weddell seals

and some gentoo penguins,

before we headed back to Hondius, just as the weather was beginning to turn.

An interesting day, then, involving enough hard work to justify the g&t we treated ourselves to before dinner.

The relative lateness of the afternoon’s excursions meant that Pippa’s regular evening recap was a brief 15 minutes before we trooped off to dinner. But it was a very interesting 15 minutes as she explained the plan – and particularly the variable nature of the plan – to us.

Our luck with the weather so far meant that we had a reasonable shot at crossing the Antarctic Circle. However, Pippa emphasised the expeditionary nature of the plan, which basically came down to the fact that we were in the territory of making it up as we went along. If the weather continued favourable, it might be possible, she explained, to thread our way along the Grandidier Channel, the only charted channel that took us southwards.  But this channel was narrow, and it was entirely possible that a large lump of ice might stand in our way, in which case we’d have to try again sometime later. This is sort of the route we would have to take, with a pause en route (the upper star) for a Zodiac cruise, and then proceeding to Crystal Sound, just north of the Circle, before the actual crossing bit.

It was impossible to know what was achievable, pretty much until we tried it. But, should we succeed, there would be some kind of celebration organised to recognise that we’d actually crossed the Circle.

Intriguing, eh?

Let’s see if the gods are still on our side as the trip progresses…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going South

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Friday 16 February 2024 – Just one sleep to go before what is very likely to be an epic journey, at least for Jane and me, both in terms of distance travelled and of cultures explored. For this is definitely an exploration: travelling to Antarctica.

Similarly to our Canada trip, the timing of this one has been bedevilled by events.  We started planning in 2019 for a 2020 trip which fell foul of the first pandemic lockdown.  Subsequent rescheduling then fell victim to the current unpleasantness in Ukraine, which trapped our vessel where it couldn’t get away in time. The excitement has been building, therefore for the best part of five years, and we owe a great deal to the patience, persistence and good humour of Joe Johnson at Sunvil for actually pulling the whole thing together for us.

The vessel we’ll be travelling on, M/V Hondius, is not simply a sort of floating Selfridges, it’s a proper exploration ship – “the first-registered Polar Class 6 vessel in the world, meeting the latest and highest Lloyd’s Register standards for ice-strengthened cruise ships.”  So there.

This is comforting in a way, particularly the knowledge that a Titanic-style end probably doesn’t await us. But I’m finding the overall trip to be a daunting prospect, principally on two counts.

Firstly, given that we’ll be travelling via, and staying for a couple of days in, Buenos Aires (current temperature 29℃) via Ushuaia (9℃) and Port Stanley on the Falkland Islands (12℃, winds gusting to gale force 8) to the pointy bit sticking up to the north of the Antarctic continent* (anywhere from freezing point to -40℃, as far as I can work out), how to pack for the variety of conditions?

Secondly – and much more importantly – the strictures placed, quite rightly, on visitors to the Antarctic and South Georgia are quite draconian.  There is a huge emphasis placed upon biosecurity generally and fighting avian flu particularly.  Whatever the conditions, we will be obliged to wear waterproof trousers and jackets, being careful about carrying everything with us in only one waterproof bag, and only being allowed to stand once we land: no sitting, squatting or putting anything down on the ground.  I absolutely understand and support the need for and the importance of these, but it’s going to make handling camera gear into a non-trivial task, complicated further, of course, by the need to wear robust enough gloves.

Here’s our cruise itinerary, spanning some three weeks in total.

This is, of course, only an initial plan – specific destinations will be subject to weather and sea conditions, as you’d expect.  But it’s an exciting prospect as well as a daunting one.

I’m hoping to get some suitably dramatic scenery photographs of snow and mountains (somewhat different from my recent skiing holiday vistas). Also, of course, there will be plenty of opportunities to take photos of the wildlife – seals, whales and a wide variety of birdlife, from albatrosses to terns. Among all the possibilities there are nearly a dozen types of whale, over half a dozen varieties of seals and penguins, five sorts of albatross and nearly two dozen different kinds of petrel.  So I doubt there will be a petrel shortage (indeed, I expect to Fulmar boots) and I might even get a shag out of the trip. But please don’t skua my pretensions, at least for the moment.

There are many challenges ahead, almost none of which are of any great pith or moment. What photographic gear to take? Will I be able to cope with being offline for possibly days on end?

I will write about them as I go along, but I have no idea as to when I’ll be able to publish anything. I hope you’ll be patient enough to wait for and then read about the trip, so watch this space!

 

*   Yes, I know that everything sticks up to the north of Antarctica

France v Italy

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Friday 19 January 2024 – One of the various activities that Crystal Ski had organised during the week was an outing from the Sauze end of the Via Lattea – Milky Way – skiing area over to the other end of the system: Montgenèvre, which is just over the border in France.  I had the very vaguest recollection that I might have visited there on a previous Sauze holiday, but couldn’t be certain.  Anyway, after a week of getting very familiar with the lifts and runs close to Sauze D’Oulx, I thought that a change would be as good as a rest.

I was slightly, but tellingly, wrong in that.  Read on to find out in what way….

While it’s possible to ski from Sauze to Montgenèvre, it’s somewhat time-consuming and in any case one couldn’t rely on the links being open, as high winds were bedevilling the area, resulting in some critical link lifts occasionally being closed for safety reasons. Crystal Ski had, in any case, organised a coach to take us over, a journey of about 40 minutes, at an extra cost of €25.  The coach was to depart from the Tourist information Office, which was where (you’ll remember) we were deposited on our arrival some days before – a 10 minute walk down through the town, carrying boots and skis.  So about 40 people arrived and checked in with the Crystal team, loaded skis and boots into the loading bays of the coach and hopped on board for the journey.

When we arrived, the reverse process was a little more chaotic, as people tried to unearth their skis and boots from piles of other people’s equipment

but soon enough we were heading for the nearest lift.

Montgenèvre’s skiing in split by the road. The majority of the lifts were on the same side as the coaches, but the Crystal team recommended crossing the road and heading up the other side, the Chalvet area, as this would get the benefit of the morning sun; so I hied myself thither. There was a bit of jostling for position for the gondola ride up but after only a short delay I was headed up the mountain.

At the top of the gondola, there was a very limited choice of activity – ski back down, or choose between two lifts. The nearer of these, a chair lift, was very iced up and not operational, so I headed for the other, a drag lift. As I approached it, it also stopped going, which was a bit dull. There was obviously Something Going On, as a skidoo with flashing lights headed up the track after a few minutes; perhaps someone had had a misfortune? We never knew. After some moments, people got fed up and began to drift away to other parts of the mountain, so of course the lift started again. So I hopped on.

It was a long, long drag lift – and cold. It was difficult to get an accurate idea of temperature, but I suspect it was several degrees below freezing and there was quite a stiff and chilly wind blowing.  As I went up, I looked for evidence of pistes to ski down, and such evidence seemed a bit scant.

(Actually, if you look carefully at the picture above, you can just see that there’s a track in the distance on the left.)

Having reached the top, it was clear that there was only one way down – the piste to a further lift was marked “closed”

and it was here that the difference in style between this resort and Sauze began to be borne in on me. Much of Sauze’s skiing area is below the tree line, which I find very attractive, and which helps when trying to work out which general direction one is supposed to take.  Much of  Montgenèvre’s is above the tree line, and hence very open, making the choice of direction less intuitive.  These wide open spaces are great for people who are looking to ski off-piste, but I wasn’t – it’s fucking dangerous to go off piste by oneself – so I found the area a bit disorienting.  What was even more disconcerting was the discovery that very few people had skied in the area, and so the snow was soft and deep.  Again, expert skiers tend to love this and actively seek it out.  Me? Not so much – particularly since I was on my own, meaning potential problems if I fell and incapacitated myself.  I could just about see where people had skied before and so followed this general direction

but it was hard work for me, as the soft snow highlighted the shortcomings of my technique, and frankly I didn’t enjoy myself hugely.  However, I was where I was, so I blundered about, fortunately without falling or doing anyone else any damage.  Restful, it was not – skiing in this deep stuff saw the one and only time during the week when I actually had to stop and take a breather because I was exhausted. I did, though, eventually find some satisfaction in being able to link a few turns even in the softer snow. I doubt I’d have got many points for technical expertise, but my artistic impression, consisting mainly of swearing loudly when the conditions caught me out, was certainly unique, and I have to admit that the views were pretty good.

At this point – the point at which I could really have done with a rest and a coffee, the other key difference between this French resort and the Italian one I was used to became clear – finding a mountainside restaurant was difficult, because they’re very few and far between and don’t advertise themselves with any clarity.  In Sauze, it is difficult to ski more than a few hundred metres without passing a sun deck that announces the presence of a restaurant or café.  Here, I couldn’t find any such evidence.  Montgenèvre is a purpose-built ski area, and the priority was clearly on getting people skiing rather than relaxing.

I decided to get down to the town in search of a coffee, so skied down and crossed the road.  The other side did feature some trees, but was largely more of the same wide-open space

and even standing by the main buildings, I couldn’t detect anywhere to have a coffee.  Anyway, it was getting close to lunchtime, so I decided that a restaurant was what I should seek.  I got Google Maps out and could see that there were just a couple anywhere near the skiing area, which, again, I thought was odd; I would have expected several to be available.  The first one was packed, but the second one had space, so I sat myself down to a simple, but very good, lunch of steak haché and chips with a beer.

After lunch I skied on the other side, where more people had skied and thus the pistes were firmer – indeed, icy in places.  A couple of the pistes and lifts I wanted to explore were closed, but it was a decent afternoon’s skiing.  Again, there were some fine views to be had

but I found that I had used up a lot of my energy dealing with the morning’s more challenging (to me) conditions, so I stopped skiing quite early in the afternoon, making sure that I had enough time to find that elusive cup of coffee before the 4pm deadline for getting back on the coach home.

The skiing was more varied and more challenging than in Sauze;

but, being a purpose-built skiing operation, I found it less charming.  This is not a view shared by others who were part of this excursion, for whom, the views and the existence of some very easy skiing made for great enjoyment. But I missed the charm – and particularly being able easily to stop for a coffee/beer and a rest. This is, I think, a difference in my current approach to skiing and how I used to go about things; before, I was more interested in covering ground and ticking off all the lifts and runs in an area; now, I’m more engaged by simply being active and relishing the exercise, not minding repeating pistes if I found them enjoyable. The net of this is that, at least for this limited sample of two resorts, I found the Italian experience the more attractive.

I’ve got a couple more posts up my sleeve about this holiday and how I’ve found it, so I hope you’ll check in to read them in the coming days. For now, au revoir!