Trip Reports

South Georgia Traverse - 24 Feb to 20 Mar '11

Written by Leader Mungo Ross, March 2011

When Shackleton, Crean and Worsley set out at 3 am on the 16th of May 1911 to walk across South Georgia they had spent the previous 16 days sailing the 800 miles from Elephant Island in the James Caird (never mind the 6 months before that adrift on the ice since losing the Endurance etc etc).When we started our own walk this year at 5pm on the 7th of March we had just enjoyed 10 days of visiting places of interest on the Antarctic Peninsula, the South Shetland and South Orkney Islands, and had had the chance to practice our crampon and rope skills, pitching the tents, making our sandwiches, oh - and being fed three wonderful meals a day. Shackleton and his men knew that if they could not find the whaling station at Stromness, they and all the men they had left behind would surely die; they had no choice. We were choosing to leave the comfort of the Polar Pioneer (our cruise ship) to deliberately take on the challenge of this famous journey. Shackleton and his men were very lucky (and not for the first time during their adventure) that the weather stayed fine for their search for Stromness, and so indeed were we! While in 1916 the glaciers were covered in snow and hence also the labyrinthine areas of crevasses - as they still often are these days - we encountered a dry glacier after a particularly warm Antarctic summer, so got our own epic after all.

Fully prepared for the extreme conditions to be expected in South Georgia - gales, blizzards or driving rain and poor visibility - suitably kitted out in Paramo or Gore-Tex, mountain booted, roped together, carrying heavy packs full of spare gloves, food and camping kit, we sweltered instead under a hot sun in a clear blue sky! The compensation of the fabulous views was measured against the effort of weaving back and forth, jumping over gaping chasms and teetering along narrow ice ridges to negotiate the nightmare sections of fantastically crevassed glacier. Shackleton and co were pretty well committed before they even started walking - we became so once on the Crean Glacier after our spectacular (if straightforward) descent from the Trident. It became glaringly obvious that this was not a good place to be tripping over crampons or rope (where indeed is?), hardly an "Ecole de Glasse" for crevasse rescue or evacuating injured companions. The focused concentration and pure physical effort took its toll on most of the group, and earned Shackelton and his party the respect they so justly deserve for making the first crossing of this remote, glaciated, mountainous island.

We were all very relieved to eventually find the easy ice slopes leading us down to the shore of Fortuna Bay after two windy nights and a total of 22 hours walking, everyone in our party agreeing that they had underestimated the Traverse. Expecting a bit of a slog, hoping for at least some views along the way, most clambered back into the waiting zodiacs weary, sore and very humbled by what those three men had achieved nearly 100 years ago. The Shackleton Traverse of South Georgia has become one of the great "must do" walks of the world, retracing the steps of one of the greatest survival stories of Polar Exploration. Even in the context of modern cruise ships, kit and clothing, GPS coordinates, Google Maps and satellite communications it is still - and will remain - a potentially serious and committing adventure. Well done and thank you to all 9 of the Aurora and Jagged Globe Team for digging deep and staying on their feet, thank you Tarn for finding a way out of the maze, thank you Jagged Globe, Aurora and the crew of the Polar Pioneer for all the organisation and support and thank you whoever for the weather - this last acknowledgement in the spirit of a brief paragraph from Shackleton himself on behalf of his team openly bowing to some greater presence that had apparently been looking over them.

Mungo Ross, Expedition Leader (Traverse led by Tarn Pilkington)« Previous report | Next report »

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