How to Camp Out on the Arctic Ocean/ Antarctica
Winter Camping: How To Get Outdoors When It's Freezing Cold and Beyond...
It can beat summer camping—if you plan it right.
Winter opens up a whole new avenue of transportation. You can ski, snowshoe. It’s actually easier than in the summer. There are no rocks, no mud. You’re on snowshoes or micro spikes or crampons. Snow is a durable surface, too. Just keep your body temperature regulated. Sweat is deadly.
You want a sunny, high-pressure day. You can see forever.
Great Gear ______________
The Ultimate Camping Gear Guide
The Best Camping Gear for Kids
The main thing is: You need a goal.
You want something to accomplish. You want to climb something. My scouts always have a goal. I took my troop out camping once and it got down to minus 20. Even though they were absolutely frickin’ miserable, they never shut up about it afterward. Because we had a goal. Maybe it’s just learning to survive, or get from A to B in snowshoes, but when you achieve that goal, something changes with the group you’re with. It’s not an adversity thing. It’s about mindfulness. Intention.
Speaking of intention: Bring some hot chocolate. Gives you a big sugar wake-up, warms the inside of you. Put a pat of butter in it for the calories. Manhattans might be good for some people, but you can’t take a manhattan to bed with you in a Nalgene bottle to keep you warm.—Don DeClerck, camp operations director for Seneca Waterways, registered New York State trail guide, certified Voyageur, and longtime Boy Scout troop leader
Is Winter Camping Safe?
Yes. Obviously you need to keep an eye on the forecast. There are two less obvious safety issues that you’ll want to prepare for:
A Changed Landscape. A once-familiar place can be transformed by a layer of snow, making it seem like a completely new destination. Snow can also cover landmarks that you commonly use to navigate in the backcountry, too, adding a new challenge to finding your way around. True, you can follow your own footprints in the snow when hiking back to your campsite or the parking lot, but an unexpected storm can fill in those tracks quickly. Bring a GPS device to map important waypoints along the trail.
Dehydration: It’s a common misconception that you don’t need to drink as much water during the colder months because you’re not sweating as much as you would during other times of the year. But staying hydrated is just as important in the winter as it is in the summer. Hiking through deep snow can get your heart pumping, and while your body might not be producing perspiration, you can still exhale a lot of water vapor while breathing heavy. Add in the fact that most people drink less in cold conditions anyway, and suddenly dehydration starts to become a real possibility. Stay ahead of the situation by drinking plenty of water at all times.
Do I Need Different Camping Gear?
Most of the camping gear that you already own will work during the winter too. Your backpack, stove, headlamp, and even some of your clothing should perform well. That said, there are a few items that you may need to replace in order to stay warm, dry, and comfortable at the campsite.
Tents
REI
Thor 2P Tent
Marmot rei.com
$699.00
Buy Now
During the warmer months, most campers get by with a three-season tent. During the winter however, you’ll need to use a four-season shelter. These tents sacrifice some ventilation and breathability in favor of improved warmth and protection from the wind. The Marmot Thor and the Mountain Hardwear EV 2 are good choices.
Pads
REI
NeoAir XTherm Sleeping Pad
Therm-a-Rest rei.com
$239.95
Buy Now
Sleeping pads are essential for staying comfortable regardless of the season, but in the winter an insulated pad adds an extra layer of warmth between you and the ground, too. And they’re now smaller, lighter, and better insulated than ever before. We suggest the Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XTherm.
Sleeping Bags
REI
Hyper Cat Sleeping Bag
The North Face rei.com
$178.93
Buy Now
On mild winter nights, a bag with a 20-degrees-Fahrenheit rating—such as The North Face’s Hyper Cat—should suffice. But in colder conditions, a zero-degree bag, like the Nemo Sonic, will likely be a necessity. There are even warmer sleeping bags for when temperatures drop below zero, but you should avoid camping in conditions that cold.
How Long Can I Stay in the Backcountry?
A winter camping trip can be just as long as any backpacking excursion that you’d take during the warmer months. If the weather conditions cooperate and you carry enough food and fuel canisters, it’s possible to stay out for days or even weeks if you choose. Again, you’ll want to use common sense and avoid extreme weather conditions when things can get potentially dangerous, but otherwise you can camp for as long as you feel comfortable being out in the wilderness.
One of the staples of any camping trip is a bonfire, although during the winter it’s usually more challenging to get that fire going. If snow is covering the ground, it can be difficult to find firewood, and when you do find something to burn, there is a good chance it will be wet, making it harder to ignite. Cotton balls soaked in petroleum jelly make a good fire starter and can help get a fire going more quickly. Just remember, wet wood tends to generate more smoke, which makes sitting around the fire a lot less fun. If temperatures are too cold to stay outside, don’t be afraid to call it a day and escape to the comfort of your tent instead. Huddling around the campfire can be a lot of fun, but cold conditions can easily turn dangerous and nothing quite beats crawling inside a warm sleeping bag.
What To Put on Your Feet
Lowa Renegade Evo Ice GTX Winter Hiking Boots
Boots rei.com
$159.83
Buy Now
If the ground has only a couple inches of snow on it, and walking is fast and easy, your winter hiking boots should be all you need.
Yaktrax Summit Traction System
Crampons rei.com
$59.93
Buy Now
Crampons are especially helpful on rocky, technical terrain, such as when you’re going up or down a mountain. Trail spikes will come in handy on flatter surfaces where a bit of ice may make things slipperier than you expected.
MSR Snowshoe and Poles Kit 10235
Snowshoes rei.com
$199.95
Buy Now
By adding more surface area to your feet, snowshoes allow you to stay above the powder rather than sink down into it. They’ll also help keep your legs feeling fresher, allowing you to walk farther and faster than you would just in boots.
Salomon Snowscape 7 PM Cross-Country Skis with Bindings
Skis rei.com
$156.93
Buy Now
Using a set of cross-country skis makes navigating the backcountry much easier and more efficient, but it requires some skill and experience. If you’re not familiar with how to cross-country ski, your first winter camping trip isn’t the place to learn.
The Best Places To Camp in Winter
First, you should go to your backyard if you live in a cold climate. You can test your gear and get a sense of what it is like to sleep on snow, while still having the safety net of going inside to get warm should you find yourself feeling uncomfortable.
Great Places To Camp in Winter
Crater Lake, Oregon
Crater Lake, Oregon More than 43 feet of fresh powder fall on the park on average each year, making it one of the snowiest places in the U.S. If you go in well equipped and prepared, it is one of the best winter playgrounds imaginable.
ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS, NEW YORK Located in upstate New York, the Adirondacks are beautiful and rugged, yet still easily accessible. During the winter, the Adirondacks tend to be quiet and deserted, making them a worthy winter-camping destination.
GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK, COLORADO Snow isn’t especially abundant in Great Sand Dunes National Park, but due to its high elevation temperatures can get quite cold. Dress warmly, bring a warm sleeping bag and a four-season tent, and soak up the isolation. With few winter visitors, you’re likely to have miles of open space all to yourself.
THE ICE AGE TRAIL, WISCONSIN Stretching for 1,200 miles across Wisconsin, it can be remote, wild, and very scenic, particularly in the winter. Chances are you won’t see another living soul on the trail.
PICTURED ROCKS NATIONAL LAKESHORE, MICHIGAN Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore runs for 40 miles along the banks of Lake Superior and includes towering cliffs, massive sand dunes, and tranquil beaches. In the winter, the crowds that normally flock to the shore are long gone, making it an incredible place for winter campers to escape for a while.
Once you’re ready to hit the trail, however, you can go camping in many of the same places that you would during the summer. A lot of state and national parks, as well as national forests and other public lands, are open year-round, although they are often unstaffed and trails aren’t maintained. Before heading out, be sure to check online to see if your chosen camping destination has any restrictions or warnings that are in effect during the winter.
Will you get bored? If you get bored easily, yes. The colder temperatures, combined with the shorter days and longer nights of winter, mean you will be spending more time in your tent. But even if you don’t get bored easily, you’ll be . . . spending a lot of time in your tent. And probably on your phone. Keep the device as warm as possible to help reduce battery drain and bring a portable charger to extend battery life further.
GETTING THERE:
How to Camp on the Arctic Ocean
T MINUS SIX MONTHS
Gearing up: I’ll be photographing a team of extreme adventurers mountain biking across the frozen Arctic Ocean in Canada. I’ll be on a snowmobile, which is still hard work, so I need to get in good shape. A few months before, I start running and doing core workouts. In the Arctic you can’t sit down if you’re tired—you have to keep moving or get in your sleeping bag. I also put in a request to my sponsors for some gear: a down-filled sleeping mat and gloves I can shoot with.
T MINUS TWO WEEKS
Essential packing list: Our camp in Auyuittuq is 50 miles from civilization in any direction, so I take everything I need for the 2.5-day February trip.
* Emergency beacon
* A satellite phone (which will be on for only two hours a day, so I go over safety protocols with my family beforehand)
* Macadamia nuts (they have the highest fat content)
* A toothbrush with pre-applied toothpaste
* A dozen camera batteries. The cold zaps their power, so I keep them in my vest or sleeping bag.
* Two sets of wear
T MINUS TWO DAYS
Ready for launch: I get excited in various stages, but it doesn’t feel real until I get on the plane in Virginia. When we land in Qikiqtarjuaq, I go to our Inuit guide’s mom’s house to repack. The team members set up their bikes, and we go over hand signals so I can direct them into the camera’s frame while they ride. Before we head out, I put my stuff into a dry sack in case the snowmobile goes through the ice. The devil’s in the details. I don’t deviate from the plan.
By the Numbers:
2,100
Total miles traveled
Distance from Virginia to Alaska is 5,422 kilometers. This air travel distance is equal to 3,369 miles.
-25°F
Average low in February (Qikiqtarjuaq)
-100°F
Average low in February (Baffin Island)
-9°F
Average high in February
The Flight of the Majestic Hunter
SCIENTISTS ARE RACING TO DISCOVER WHY THE SNOWY OWL, AN ANCIENT ICON OF THE ARCTIC, IS DISAPPEARING BEFORE OUR EYES!?
With its ghostlike plumage and yellow eyes, the snowy owl is one of the Far North’s most captivating creatures. Now scientists say it’s disappearing—and they’re not sure why
A WHITE GLOW AGAINST THE BROWN SUMMER tundra caught my eye. Through binoculars, I could see it was a male snowy owl. His body was covered in thick, white down, offset by a black beak, black talons and a few black dots on his feathers. His head swiveled from side to side as his forward-facing yellow eyes watched for any rustling of prey.
The snowy owl, like the polar bear, holds a special place in human imagination, from ancient morality tales told around Arctic fires to Hedwig from the wizarding world of Harry Potter. These northern wanderers can be found in Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, Iceland and the British Isles—occasionally even making it as far south as Hawaii. They can fly back and forth across continents. One female owl tracked in 2012 traveled 7,000 miles round-trip from Boston to Nunavut. In a phenomenon known as an irruption, large numbers of snowy owls sometimes emerge from their nests in a given season and make it down to the suburbs of U.S. cities like Seattle and Boston—even as far south as Texas.
SNOWY OWLS, ONCE A FEATURE OF THE FAR NORTH AS RELIABLE AS ICE, ARE BECOMING LESS AND LESS COMMON.
Like ice, these longtime icons of the Far North are becoming less and less common. In the most recent Red List of Threatened Species, published last December, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed the snowy owl’s status, for the first time, as “vulnerable,” after research showed that the adult population had decreased to 28,000, down from 200,000 in 2013. The IUCN cautioned that if the rate of decline “proves to be even higher, the species may be eligible for further uplisting to ‘endangered.’ ”
Denver Holtz, the founder and president of the nonprofit Owl Research Institute (ORI) and one of the nation’s pre-eminent owl biologists, has long been documenting these signs of trouble. For more than two decades, he’s been traveling to Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States and one of the snowy owl’s top breeding grounds. In 1995, Holtz counted 54 snowy owl nests. In 2006, there were 38. This year, he found only seven, and three of those nests failed.
Owls do not build nests like other birds do. Instead, a female snowy—larger and darker than her male counterpart—scratches out a shallow bowl in the earth, usually atop a small hill. Watching for predators,
ONE RISK LEMMINGS DON’T FACE IS SUICIDALLY FOLLOWING EACH OTHER OFF CLIFFS. THAT MYTH COMES FROM A 1958 DISNEY DOCUMENTARY.
she lays one egg about every two days. Altogether, she may lay around a dozen, depending on food availability. “Brown lemmings are the bottom line for snowy owls here,” says Holtz. Males bring home the lemmings, and females stack them around the nesting site in caches as large as 10 or 15.
Though snowy owls will eat voles, arctic hares and smaller birds, a study by the
Owl Research Institute showed that out of 43,000 prey animals collected at snowy owl breeding sites, 90 percent were lemmings. These small, mouselike rodents stay active all winter long, eating moss when there are no green leaves available. Everything has to be just right for them to flourish. Too much snowmelt too early in the season and the lemmings are forced to spend more time aboveground, making them susceptible to every predator in the area. Too little snowmelt and there isn’t enough vegetation for the lemmings to eat. (One risk lemmings don’t face is suicidally following each other off cliffs. That myth comes from a 1958 Disney documentary, White Wilderness, in which filmmakers herded a group of lemmings off a cliff to create a dramatic scene.) Snowy owls need as much as a pound of prey every day to survive the harsh arctic conditions, and catching lemmings is more efficient than hunting seabirds.
Lemming numbers are thought to go through three- to four-year boom and bust cycles. Some scientists believe snowy owls and other predators—such as stoats and foxes—drive these trends. When lemmings are plentiful, the creatures who eat them flourish. When lemmings disappear, their predators’ numbers also shrink, allowing lemming numbers to climb. Once there are more lemmings on the ground again, snowy owl populations rise accordingly.
But Holtz doesn’t believe it’s that simple: “It’s a population fluctuation and everything has to be in line for a boom. But it’s not a cycle.” And the overall numbers are clearly trending down. In November 2017, ORI was awarded a grant to determine if climate change is causing the decline. ORI will draw on its own 27 years of snowy owl and lemming data, along with weather data collected by the National Weather Service and the Barrow Observatory.
As Holtz hunts for answers, he remains awed by the strangeness of the bird itself. “There is something about that huge white owl, adapted to arctic environments, that lures me,” says Holtz. “It’s similar to looking at fresh snow. There’s something special, unusual or magical. I just enjoy seeing them, and it may not be tangible.”
AS HOLTZ HUNTS FOR ANSWERS, HE REMAINS AWED BY THE STRANGENESS OF THE BIRD ITSELF.
After about 3 flights and aboit 10 or so hours of travelling, our group of nine connects in Pond Inlet, a small hamlet in Nunavut, located on the northeastern shores of Baffin Island, 72° North. Pond Inlet has just over 1000 inhabitants who are mostly of Inuit origin plus a mix of ''Southerners'' living and working here. It is a tiny, somewhat peculiar community consisting of a couple of small hotels, no restaurants, two shops and no bars because Pond Inlet is dry: alcohol is forbidden, alas for me, even for visitors.
A couple of days before our arrival, the Canadian company Arctic Kingdom has set up our base camp on the ice, some 70 kilometres away from the town. The perfect spot, it is located next to Bylot Island’s bird sanctuary, close to two grandiose icebergs frozen in place in the landscape.
During the summer months, the air temperature in the Arctic swings between just below zero and five degrees Celsius (23°F) depending on the wind chill. Furnished with real beds, plush linen and even a small heater for when temperatures plunge during the clear, midsummer nights, inside my bright yellow, Arctic Oven tent there is enough space to stand upright. A short distance away, a large marquee contains a hot shower and toilet. Another tent, much larger, is where everybody meets and where the kitchen and mess are located.
Canadian Mike Bedell, our charismatic expedition leader, Arctic connoisseur and renowned wildlife photographer, is the quintessential outdoor expert. Over the course of my stay, on a windless evening, he takes us to the floe edge for the first time, a 15-minute snow scooter ride away from the base camp. At the floe edge, Mike drops a hydrophone into the icy water so that we can hear the outlandish sonar sounds of whales and seals below the surface.
Icecapade
Mike Bedell totes Shamu on the sea ice (1); measuring snow depth (2); ice cores (3); slurping up icy brine (4).
What's inside the box is a holographic microscope it's obvious job is to magnify specimens, but its special talent is making 3D movies that provide compelling evidence of microorganisms alive and stirring. After researchers inject liquid into the sample chamber, the microscope splits a laser beam into 2 shafts, which the collimator lens makes parallel. One ray passes through the specimen and the other acts as a reference beam. Shau's software combines and compares the two rays, revealing microorganisms moving in thesample collected. Meanwhile, a 3D camera st the top of the scope records and transmits the result in R/T (real time).
Spotting a polar bear in the wild for the first time is unforgettable. From the safety of our qamutiks (wooden sledges pulled by snow scooters), I watch a huge male moving quietly away, as he stops to look back at us now and again. Our guide takes us on a walk beside a majestic iceberg as we follow the footsteps of a huge polar bear. He measures the size of the animal by its tracks. ''I think it’s a female, but a big one.''
On our last day in this frozen world, the sky is covered in eerie black clouds; the air is cold and the top layer of ice looks and sounds like the crust of a crème brûlée. Back on the floe edge, we get very close and personal with a giant bowhead whale. The animal is feeding just below the pack ice, right next to the edge where we are standing. Every ten minutes it sticks its massive head above water to gasp some air, while looking at us inquisitively. Incredible. What else is there to say? Despite my huge Canadian Goose Down jacket and 5 layers of clothing underneath, the Arctic has already gotten under my skin. I will be back.
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you may get a chance to view migrating salmon this fall. For the sockeye salmon shown here, the epic journey takes them from the waters of the Pacific Ocean back to the freshwater lakes and streams where they were born. There they’ll spawn, their bodies turning from a silvery blue to crimson and changing shape in the process. This isn’t always an easy journey. Dams and other human interventions have affected salmon runs, and West Coast salmon numbers have been in decline. We’re fans of groups like Long Live the Kings, a Pacific Northwest nonprofit that’s helping rebuild salmon populations and protect their habitat—for the long run.
In the Arctic you can always come across a few of these beautiful polar bears...<
In the fall you can watch Grizzly or Brown Bears fish for Salmon....
Katmai National Park and Preserve is an American national park and preserve in southern Alaska, notable for the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and for its brown bears.
Surviving a brown Bear attack...
Ice Caves and Tunnels of Alaska and Beyond...
See what it's like underneath an Alaskan glacier and how the ice is slowly changing with time.
Mendenhall Glacier Ice Cave, Alaska
Or do it in the lap of luxury with these tours...
Polar bears, ice fields: New cruises across Russian Arctic bring rare adventure
BOLSHEVIK ISLAND, Russian Arctic – As vacation destinations go, Baranov Station is a bit bleak. Located on a remote, ice-covered island deep in the Russian Arctic, the small research outpost offers such attractions as a view of weathered meteorological huts and a walk past rusted oil drums.
But Alan Shenkin, 74, of Glasgow, Scotland, and his companions from the expedition ship Bremen aren't complaining. Just setting foot on this spot – halfway along the little-traveled Arctic sea route known as the Northeast Passage – is a feat of off-the-beaten-path travel. More people get to the North Pole each year than get here.
"There's something special about traveling to a place that has been so rarely explored," says Shenkin, gazing across an ice-clogged coastline that wasn't even known to the world until a 1913 polar expedition. "I've been to many out-of-the-way places, but never something like this."
Operated by Germany-based Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, the 155-passenger Bremen is one of the first western cruise ships to carry travelers such as Shenkin across the Northeast Passage, which connects Europe to the Far East by way of the icy Arctic seas at the top of Russia.
On a small ship Arctic cruise you'll experience a magical land of icy fjords, jagged mountains, & immense glaciers. Comfortable small ships glide travelers beyond the Arctic Circle through dramatic ice floes to walk in the footsteps of the Vikings or marvel at the breaching of a humpback whale. Hull-hardened ships cut through the polar ice to access areas previously visited by only the most adventurous explorers and even to the North Pole.
A cruise of the Arctic offers rare wildlife, natural beauty and unique cultures that have survived in one of the most extreme environments on Earth. Choose from cruises that visit the Arctic landscapes of Northern Canada's Baffin Island, the Northern Passage, Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Canada, Norway, & Russia. Contact one of our Arctic cruise experts for help planning your trip.
At the South Pole the IceCube Nutrino Station or Observatory uses Antarctica to search for particles, including natural magnetic monopoles.
Laureli Ivanoff Nielsen with her 4½-month-old son, Henning Monroe Inuqtaq Nielsen
Sea-worn stones form a path to beached and broken sea ice. Ice is central to life along the 800-mile Antarctic Peninsula, which juts up toward South America, but warming air and water are melting it on land and sea.
Crabeater seals slither onto floating ice to nap, give birth, or hide from killer whales or leopard seals. (Note the prominent scars.) With less sea ice available off the Antarctic Peninsula, icebergs like this one, calved from glaciers on land, provide critical resting places for animals. Despite their name, crabeaters feed mostly on shrimplike krill—another Antarctic staple whose future is in doubt.
A young blue-eyed shag attempts what may be its first dive near shore. Many flying seabirds nest or feed along the Antarctic Peninsula.
Much has changed in the South Atlantic since Dion Poncet crisscrossed it as a boy on his parents’ sailboat. They ranged from South Georgia, where nine-year-old Dion (at left) and brother Leiv stand watch in 1988, south to Antarctica. “The Antarctic Peninsula I knew as a child has largely gone,” Poncet says.
Adélie penguins slip and slide on ice; behind them, on Paulet Island, thousands more line the rocky, guano-streaked slopes. Adélie colonies along the peninsula’s western shores have collapsed as waters have warmed. But here on the peninsula’s northeast tip, winds and ocean currents keep waters a little cooler, and Adélies are thriving.
A fur seal rests near a snow-covered pile of whale bones. Unlike many whale species, fur seals made a remarkable recovery after hunting them was banned in Antarctica. Now the population in the South Shetland Islands is falling again—an indirect result of melting sea ice, which is driving leopard seals ashore to feast on fur seal pups.
Winter air on Antarctica’s western peninsula has warmed more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s.
Translucent krill, about two inches long, are the centerpiece of the Antarctic food web. Fish, squid, penguins, seals, and whales all consume krill—and so do we. Ships from various countries come to Antarctica to net swarming krill by the billions, for use in dietary supplements or to feed farmed salmon and aquarium fish.
WARMING LANDS
The western side of the Anarctic Peninsula has been experiencing some of the fastest warming winters on the planet since observations began in the 1050s. As glaciers retreat, they expose bare, rocky land, altering the ecosystems to provide more habitat for some native species -- but also for invasive ones, which may or may not have natural predators.
A damp Adélie fledgling struggles to shake the moisture from its muddy down. Warming has increased precipitation so much along the western Antarctic Peninsula that many penguin chicks—whose moisture-repelling feathers haven’t yet come in—get soaked and then freeze to death in polar winds. Eggs, meanwhile, are drowning in flooded nests.
A leopard seal nips at a young Adélie penguin before dragging it deep and drowning it near Antarctic Sound, at the peninsula’s northern tip. These half-ton predators sometimes toy with penguins, slapping them against the sea surface. Typically leopard seals hunt alone from offshore ice floes. But with sea ice appearing later and disappearing sooner, they now often congregate close to shore, where the penguin colonies are.
Often depicted on maps in white, the Antarctic Peninsula is now so warm that tufts of the continent’s few native plants—as well as some invasives—are spreading.
On a morning when five leopard seals could be seen circling nearby, these chinstrap, gentoo, and Adélie penguins raced ashore, stumbling and bumping into one another on their way back to their respective colonies.
A skua bathes in a tide pool. Skuas prey on penguin eggs and chicks, fish, and krill. They also act as scavengers—the Antarctic equivalent of vultures, on constant cleanup duty in a place where carcasses don’t decompose because of the icy cold.
Warm water and warm air sculpted this iceberg. As its base melted, says glaciologist Richard Alley, plumes of fresh meltwater flowed up its flanks, pulling in warm seawater that carved deep grooves. As the top melted, the iceberg became lighter and rose out of the water.
Bones of
still dot the peninsula’s coast—a stark reminder of how fast humans can upend the natural world. After more than a century of whaling, much of it along these shores, the blue whale population is 5 percent of what it once was.
.....
It can beat summer camping—if you plan it right.
Winter opens up a whole new avenue of transportation. You can ski, snowshoe. It’s actually easier than in the summer. There are no rocks, no mud. You’re on snowshoes or micro spikes or crampons. Snow is a durable surface, too. Just keep your body temperature regulated. Sweat is deadly.
You want a sunny, high-pressure day. You can see forever.
Great Gear ______________
The Ultimate Camping Gear Guide
The main thing is: You need a goal.
You want something to accomplish. You want to climb something. My scouts always have a goal. I took my troop out camping once and it got down to minus 20. Even though they were absolutely frickin’ miserable, they never shut up about it afterward. Because we had a goal. Maybe it’s just learning to survive, or get from A to B in snowshoes, but when you achieve that goal, something changes with the group you’re with. It’s not an adversity thing. It’s about mindfulness. Intention.
Speaking of intention: Bring some hot chocolate. Gives you a big sugar wake-up, warms the inside of you. Put a pat of butter in it for the calories. Manhattans might be good for some people, but you can’t take a manhattan to bed with you in a Nalgene bottle to keep you warm.—Don DeClerck, camp operations director for Seneca Waterways, registered New York State trail guide, certified Voyageur, and longtime Boy Scout troop leader
Is Winter Camping Safe?
Yes. Obviously you need to keep an eye on the forecast. There are two less obvious safety issues that you’ll want to prepare for:
A Changed Landscape. A once-familiar place can be transformed by a layer of snow, making it seem like a completely new destination. Snow can also cover landmarks that you commonly use to navigate in the backcountry, too, adding a new challenge to finding your way around. True, you can follow your own footprints in the snow when hiking back to your campsite or the parking lot, but an unexpected storm can fill in those tracks quickly. Bring a GPS device to map important waypoints along the trail.
Dehydration: It’s a common misconception that you don’t need to drink as much water during the colder months because you’re not sweating as much as you would during other times of the year. But staying hydrated is just as important in the winter as it is in the summer. Hiking through deep snow can get your heart pumping, and while your body might not be producing perspiration, you can still exhale a lot of water vapor while breathing heavy. Add in the fact that most people drink less in cold conditions anyway, and suddenly dehydration starts to become a real possibility. Stay ahead of the situation by drinking plenty of water at all times.
Do I Need Different Camping Gear?
Most of the camping gear that you already own will work during the winter too. Your backpack, stove, headlamp, and even some of your clothing should perform well. That said, there are a few items that you may need to replace in order to stay warm, dry, and comfortable at the campsite.
Tents
REI
Thor 2P Tent
Marmot rei.com
$699.00
Buy Now
During the warmer months, most campers get by with a three-season tent. During the winter however, you’ll need to use a four-season shelter. These tents sacrifice some ventilation and breathability in favor of improved warmth and protection from the wind. The Marmot Thor and the Mountain Hardwear EV 2 are good choices.
Pads
REI
NeoAir XTherm Sleeping Pad
Therm-a-Rest rei.com
$239.95
Buy Now
Sleeping pads are essential for staying comfortable regardless of the season, but in the winter an insulated pad adds an extra layer of warmth between you and the ground, too. And they’re now smaller, lighter, and better insulated than ever before. We suggest the Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XTherm.
Sleeping Bags
REI
Hyper Cat Sleeping Bag
The North Face rei.com
$178.93
Buy Now
On mild winter nights, a bag with a 20-degrees-Fahrenheit rating—such as The North Face’s Hyper Cat—should suffice. But in colder conditions, a zero-degree bag, like the Nemo Sonic, will likely be a necessity. There are even warmer sleeping bags for when temperatures drop below zero, but you should avoid camping in conditions that cold.
How Long Can I Stay in the Backcountry?
A winter camping trip can be just as long as any backpacking excursion that you’d take during the warmer months. If the weather conditions cooperate and you carry enough food and fuel canisters, it’s possible to stay out for days or even weeks if you choose. Again, you’ll want to use common sense and avoid extreme weather conditions when things can get potentially dangerous, but otherwise you can camp for as long as you feel comfortable being out in the wilderness.
One of the staples of any camping trip is a bonfire, although during the winter it’s usually more challenging to get that fire going. If snow is covering the ground, it can be difficult to find firewood, and when you do find something to burn, there is a good chance it will be wet, making it harder to ignite. Cotton balls soaked in petroleum jelly make a good fire starter and can help get a fire going more quickly. Just remember, wet wood tends to generate more smoke, which makes sitting around the fire a lot less fun. If temperatures are too cold to stay outside, don’t be afraid to call it a day and escape to the comfort of your tent instead. Huddling around the campfire can be a lot of fun, but cold conditions can easily turn dangerous and nothing quite beats crawling inside a warm sleeping bag.
What To Put on Your Feet
Lowa Renegade Evo Ice GTX Winter Hiking Boots
Boots rei.com
$159.83
Buy Now
If the ground has only a couple inches of snow on it, and walking is fast and easy, your winter hiking boots should be all you need.
Yaktrax Summit Traction System
Crampons rei.com
$59.93
Buy Now
Crampons are especially helpful on rocky, technical terrain, such as when you’re going up or down a mountain. Trail spikes will come in handy on flatter surfaces where a bit of ice may make things slipperier than you expected.
MSR Snowshoe and Poles Kit 10235
Snowshoes rei.com
$199.95
Buy Now
By adding more surface area to your feet, snowshoes allow you to stay above the powder rather than sink down into it. They’ll also help keep your legs feeling fresher, allowing you to walk farther and faster than you would just in boots.
Salomon Snowscape 7 PM Cross-Country Skis with Bindings
Skis rei.com
$156.93
Buy Now
Using a set of cross-country skis makes navigating the backcountry much easier and more efficient, but it requires some skill and experience. If you’re not familiar with how to cross-country ski, your first winter camping trip isn’t the place to learn.
The Best Places To Camp in Winter
First, you should go to your backyard if you live in a cold climate. You can test your gear and get a sense of what it is like to sleep on snow, while still having the safety net of going inside to get warm should you find yourself feeling uncomfortable.
Great Places To Camp in Winter
- Crater Lake, Oregon
- ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS, NEW YORK
- GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK, COLORADO
- THE ICE AGE TRAIL, WISCONSIN
- PICTURED ROCKS NATIONAL LAKESHORE, MICHIGAN
Crater Lake, Oregon
Once you’re ready to hit the trail, however, you can go camping in many of the same places that you would during the summer. A lot of state and national parks, as well as national forests and other public lands, are open year-round, although they are often unstaffed and trails aren’t maintained. Before heading out, be sure to check online to see if your chosen camping destination has any restrictions or warnings that are in effect during the winter.
Will you get bored? If you get bored easily, yes. The colder temperatures, combined with the shorter days and longer nights of winter, mean you will be spending more time in your tent. But even if you don’t get bored easily, you’ll be . . . spending a lot of time in your tent. And probably on your phone. Keep the device as warm as possible to help reduce battery drain and bring a portable charger to extend battery life further.
AS THE ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC HEATS UP, THE RULES OF LIFE THERE ARE BEING RIPPED APART. ALARMED SCIENTISTS AREN’T SURE WHAT ALL THE CHANGE MEANS FOR THE FUTURE.
....
How to Camp Out on the Arctic Ocean/ Antarctica
Trial by ice – what it takes to be an Arctic/ Antarctic Explorer
The Arctic survey team is off to the north pole, for training. They face exhaustion, numbing cold – and hungry polar bears
• The Arctic team brave polar bears to monitor acid oceans
'Nothing prepares you for the cold' . . . the The Arctic Survey team last year.
Six am on a sub-zero morning in Devon. A five-mile run in the dark, ending in a couple of hill sprints. Breakfast. Circuit training in the barn; beyond any pain threshold to physical exhaustion. Lunch. Ninety minutes dragging weighted tires up and down a 1:6 hill. The only upside is that the mud has frozen over. It's mindless, repetitive, punishing effort, not improved by an ex-marine drill sargent shouting in your ear. Tea. A three-mile run, followed by more circuits. Die. It's an environment that is. unforgiving. Die!
One day of this – well, most of it. OK then, half, and I'm shattered. For Ann D., Martin H. and Charlie P., the three members of the second 'The Arctic Survey Team' into the effects of climate change, whose latest trip to the north pole was announced yesterday, it's day six of a week- l bootcamp, by NSF. I'm just thankful to have avoided the 15-mile run across Dartmoor that entailed wading waist-deep through ice-cold rivers. B-R-R-R-R-R-RR...
You can't pull a 120kg (265 lb) sled over pressure ridges for 12 hours a day for 60 days if you're not fit. And if the three weren't polar fit when they started this camp, they certainly will be by the end. Yet fitness is just a small part of the package. Anyone – even me – could probably get fit enough if we were prepared to put the hours in, but few of us would last a day out on the ice.
Daniels is one of the world's leading polar explorers, the first woman – along with teammate Caroline H. – to reach both the north and south poles as part of all-women teams, and she readily admits there are many people out there who are a great deal fitter than her – "I'm 45 now, (45 is the new 35) for God's sake." Yet when it comes to endurance and sheer willpower, she's in a league of her own.
"You can train all you like," she says, "but nothing prepares you for the cold. On a good day it can be minus 15, on a bad day minus 45; factor in the wind chill and it can feel more like minus 70. The cold penetrates your bones and never leaves. Even when you're in your tent at night there's no respite. It's with you the whole time; you just have to try and shut it out. You can't always do it, especially towards the end of an expedition when you're exhausted."
It's the cold Hartley and Paton fear most too. They are also polar veterans and know exactly what's coming. "I'd done a lot of climbing in the Himalayas and I thought I knew all about cold," says Hartley, the expedition photographer. "But I was hopelessly unprepared the first time I went to Resolute [the settlement in the north of Canada that is the start point for Arctic exploration]. My equipment was totally inadequate and I would have died if someone hadn't lent me some warmer clothes. (When working for a company we're provided with about $2,500 + worth of extreme cold weather gear.)
"The first few weeks are bearable but once you start to get frostbite, the cold can start to affect your judgment, especially when you're living in such close proximity to other people."
British polar exploration is sometimes seen as the stamping ground of the upper-class adventurer, an image perpetuated in recent years by the successes of Sir Ranulph F. and Pen H., the director of The Arctic Survey. Daniels, Hartley and Paton don't fit the stereotype.
Daniels was a teller come bank manager's assistant until 1996 when she heard a radio advert asking for ordinary women wanting to go to the north pole; Hartley spent seven years as a studio special effects photographer before going freelance; after joining some polar trips with the marines, Paton worked out that serving in Afghanistan was a great deal riskier than a melting ice-cap at the roof of the world. For all of them – Fiennes and Hardow included – it is a full-time, professional career.
"It's not the type of job you get told about at school," Hartley says. "I started by funding myself to join expeditions to the Himalayas and the Pamirs and selling the pictures. Pen H. approached me at a talk I was giving and said, 'You must come north with me one day.' I thought he was trying to pull me and invite me to his country home. Since then I've been on something like at least 22 assignments to the Arctic and Antarctic.
"You do have to be quite selfish to do this kind of work. The expedition comes first and I forget about home life and relationships for its duration. Basically, you need to be not nearly as nice as you would like to be."
Unless you're lucky enough to have the clout to attract the sponsorship money and fix up your own gigs, your average explorer has to take the jobs that are going. You might be joining a team on a new route; you might be guiding amateurs who fork out £20,000 to be airlifted 60 miles from the pole and escorted in on foot. Or you could, like the team, become scientists for the trip – something that is more controversial than it sounds.
There's a long tradition of science in the polar regions. It's the ideal environment for everything from oceanography, astrophysics, meteorology and glaciolology to all things climate change and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has been a base for scientists for more than 50 years. But the demarcation lines have always been firmly engraved in the ice. Scientists do science: explorers explore.
Hadow crossed the divide with the first The Arctic Survey last year, when his team became the first to measure ice-thickness en route to the pole – a more critical determinant than surface area of the speed at which the ice-cap is melting. Some scientists and climate change skeptics went to great lengths to rubbish their findings that the ice-cap was melting faster than previous projections had suggested, pointing to weaknesses in methodology and ridiculing equipment failures. But the survey is back again this year to continue where they left off.
It sounds as if it should be a no-brainer. If you're doing science, take a scientist. It is, until you consider the conditions up north. The south pole is on a flat, frozen land mass. You can fly in directly, snuggle down in the warmth of the base and get on with your experiments. The Arctic is rather different. It is an un-mappable ocean of ice that is constantly on the move, breaking up, melting and re-forming. You can't go anywhere and expect to stay in one place. Sometimes you can only go backwards. The ice is often crushed into giant pressure ridges that take hours to cross when pulling a heavy sled and a day's hard labor can see you further away from your goal than when you started if the ice flow is against you.
It's not the sort of environment in which scientists operate. If you're measuring ice thickness and water samples, you really want to be able to go back to the same place year after year; you can't do that if the ice is constantly on the move.
"The alternative is doing nothing," says Daniels. "And that's not an option where climate change is concerned. So the expedition's goal is to take samples every day on the trek towards the pole. Charlie will be drilling through the ice to take two water samples – one at the surface and one at a depth of 10m. Some samples will be filtered for microbes, and some will be frozen to have its CO2 content analysed. It will be back-breaking work after lugging a sled for 12 hours."
Hartley will be there to record every-thing; the landscape, the water, the science. "We have a responsibility to document the Arctic ocean in summer," he says. "I've been there many times over the last few years and the ice is melting. It's a fact. It could even disappear completely in my lifetime."
The expedition comes with its own health warning. Ice floes calve, people get injured and rescue isn't always possible if a plane can't land. And then there are the polar bears.
Back at the bootcamp, two marines give us a demonstration in unarmed combat. It's all quite handy for a night out in Streatham, but not much use if a polar bear is heading your way. Even if it doesn't have a knife. So what do you do if a bear comes sneaking up on you from behind a pressure ridge?
For the first and only time, the explorers look nervous. They can see the story. Climate change explorers shoot polar bear. "Um, you would fire the gun above its head to scare it off," says Daniels eventually. And if that doesn't work? "Look," Hartley laughs. "There's no such thing as a small polar bear." Fine. So the bear gets it.
....
Camp Out on the Arctic Ocean
How to Camp on the Arctic Ocean
Gearing up: I’ll be photographing a team of extreme adventurers mountain biking across the frozen Arctic Ocean in Canada. I’ll be on a snowmobile, which is still hard work, so I need to get in good shape. A few months before, I start running and doing core workouts. In the Arctic you can’t sit down if you’re tired—you have to keep moving or get in your sleeping bag. I also put in a request to my sponsors for some gear: a down-filled sleeping mat and gloves I can shoot with.
T MINUS TWO WEEKS
Essential packing list: Our camp in Auyuittuq is 50 miles from civilization in any direction, so I take everything I need for the 2.5-day February trip.
* Emergency beacon
* A satellite phone (which will be on for only two hours a day, so I go over safety protocols with my family beforehand)
* Macadamia nuts (they have the highest fat content)
* A toothbrush with pre-applied toothpaste
* A dozen camera batteries. The cold zaps their power, so I keep them in my vest or sleeping bag.
* Two sets of wear
"The ice was three or four feet thick. We slept right on the ocean, with the tide rolling underneath." - J GoldenAurora Borealis Observatory - Visit Senja
Reindeer posing under the aurora last night
T MINUS TWO DAYS
Ready for launch: I get excited in various stages, but it doesn’t feel real until I get on the plane in Virginia. When we land in Qikiqtarjuaq, I go to our Inuit guide’s mom’s house to repack. The team members set up their bikes, and we go over hand signals so I can direct them into the camera’s frame while they ride. Before we head out, I put my stuff into a dry sack in case the snowmobile goes through the ice. The devil’s in the details. I don’t deviate from the plan.
By the Numbers:
2,100
Total miles traveled
Distance from Virginia to Alaska is 5,422 kilometers. This air travel distance is equal to 3,369 miles.
-25°F
Average low in February (Qikiqtarjuaq)
-100°F
Average low in February (Baffin Island)
-9°F
Average high in February
WIN THE COLD WAR
YOU PILE ON THE LAYERS WHEN TEMPERA-TURES DROP, RIGHT? DO THE SAME FOR YOUR SKIN WITH CREAMS, OILS, AND CONDITIONERS.
You know how people say, “It’s not the heat; it’s the humidity”? Well, it’s not the cold that gets you this time of year. It’s the bone-dry air, indoors and out. Since most guys are better-equipped to winterize their cars than themselves, we’ve assembled a head-to-heels guide for surviving the big chill. The key concept here? Hydration.
HAIR Your scalp is bound to get itchy in the colder months. (Blame it on all those hats.) Scale back your shampoo regimen to two or three times a week so you don’t strip away hydrating natural oils, and seal in nutrients with a conditioner (or a doubly nourishing leave-in conditioner).
FACE Unless you’re wearing a ski mask (in which case we salute you, you risk-taker), your face is in for a lot of windburn. Find a heavier, cream-based moisturizer to build up your defense against the elements. Apply an overnight serum before bed to help skin recover while you sleep.
BEARD Essential oils will make your beard shinier and better smelling, but they also combat beardruff—dandruff’s chin-dwelling cousin. The oil treats the dry skin beneath your beard, which needs hydration, even if you can’t see it.
BODY A long, steamy shower is all you want when you’ve come in from the cold, but resist the temptation. Hot water leaves skin parched and prone to rashes, so stop the tap at lukewarm, and get out before you start pruning up.
HANDS & FEET These always take the worst beating in winter. Go nuclear and coat both with DIY solutions like coconut oil, shea butter, aloe, and even yogurt. (Lactic acid can work wonders.) Just make sure you won’t have to run to answer the door. This is me time.
Meet the bowhead whale hunters of northern Alaska
Each spring, local hunters sit on the edge of the ice and wait for whales—a custom that’s at least 1,000 years old.
On the North Slope of Alaska, the culture of the Inupiat centers on whales. Each spring, men and women spend weeks on the tuvaq—the ice near the water—watching for bowhead whales migrating north from the Bering Sea to the Canadian Arctic. When one is spotted, a team pushes an umiak onto the water. There is typically one chance to harpoon the whale. If the hunt is successful, each person in the village can receive a share of the meat.
A butchered bowhead whale can yield thousands of pounds of food. The ninit—community shares of meat and blubber—are apportioned equitably to ensure that everyone benefits from a successful hunt. “The highest aspiration you can have is to become a whaling captain,” says photographer Kiliii Yüyan. “It’s a job that provides for the entire community.”
This story of cultural continuity enthralled photographer Kiliii Yüyan. Yüyan is indigenous himself, a descendant of the Hezhe (Nanai in Russian) hunters and fishermen of northern China and southeast Siberia. Stories portraying indigenous communities as degraded or destitute miss their complexity, says Yüyan. “You have to be with them to see their full hope and their joy.”
For 10 months in a span of five years, Yüyan lived among the Inupiat in Utqiaġvik (formerly known as Barrow). He camped with a crew on the sea ice to watch for whales, often volunteering for the night shift when the darkness and quiet set in. It’s a silence quickly broken, he learned: When a whale comes, a spotter calls out its position, urging the crew to launch. “When they’re close, [the noise] is not faint,” he says. “It’s notable. They sing songs. It’s like a musical.”
The Flight of the Majestic Hunter
SCIENTISTS ARE RACING TO DISCOVER WHY THE SNOWY OWL, AN ANCIENT ICON OF THE ARCTIC, IS DISAPPEARING BEFORE OUR EYES!?
With its ghostlike plumage and yellow eyes, the snowy owl is one of the Far North’s most captivating creatures. Now scientists say it’s disappearing—and they’re not sure why
A WHITE GLOW AGAINST THE BROWN SUMMER tundra caught my eye. Through binoculars, I could see it was a male snowy owl. His body was covered in thick, white down, offset by a black beak, black talons and a few black dots on his feathers. His head swiveled from side to side as his forward-facing yellow eyes watched for any rustling of prey.
The snowy owl, like the polar bear, holds a special place in human imagination, from ancient morality tales told around Arctic fires to Hedwig from the wizarding world of Harry Potter. These northern wanderers can be found in Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, Iceland and the British Isles—occasionally even making it as far south as Hawaii. They can fly back and forth across continents. One female owl tracked in 2012 traveled 7,000 miles round-trip from Boston to Nunavut. In a phenomenon known as an irruption, large numbers of snowy owls sometimes emerge from their nests in a given season and make it down to the suburbs of U.S. cities like Seattle and Boston—even as far south as Texas.
SNOWY OWLS, ONCE A FEATURE OF THE FAR NORTH AS RELIABLE AS ICE, ARE BECOMING LESS AND LESS COMMON.
Like ice, these longtime icons of the Far North are becoming less and less common. In the most recent Red List of Threatened Species, published last December, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed the snowy owl’s status, for the first time, as “vulnerable,” after research showed that the adult population had decreased to 28,000, down from 200,000 in 2013. The IUCN cautioned that if the rate of decline “proves to be even higher, the species may be eligible for further uplisting to ‘endangered.’ ”
Denver Holtz, the founder and president of the nonprofit Owl Research Institute (ORI) and one of the nation’s pre-eminent owl biologists, has long been documenting these signs of trouble. For more than two decades, he’s been traveling to Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States and one of the snowy owl’s top breeding grounds. In 1995, Holtz counted 54 snowy owl nests. In 2006, there were 38. This year, he found only seven, and three of those nests failed.
Owls do not build nests like other birds do. Instead, a female snowy—larger and darker than her male counterpart—scratches out a shallow bowl in the earth, usually atop a small hill. Watching for predators,
ONE RISK LEMMINGS DON’T FACE IS SUICIDALLY FOLLOWING EACH OTHER OFF CLIFFS. THAT MYTH COMES FROM A 1958 DISNEY DOCUMENTARY.
she lays one egg about every two days. Altogether, she may lay around a dozen, depending on food availability. “Brown lemmings are the bottom line for snowy owls here,” says Holtz. Males bring home the lemmings, and females stack them around the nesting site in caches as large as 10 or 15.
Though snowy owls will eat voles, arctic hares and smaller birds, a study by the
Owl Research Institute showed that out of 43,000 prey animals collected at snowy owl breeding sites, 90 percent were lemmings. These small, mouselike rodents stay active all winter long, eating moss when there are no green leaves available. Everything has to be just right for them to flourish. Too much snowmelt too early in the season and the lemmings are forced to spend more time aboveground, making them susceptible to every predator in the area. Too little snowmelt and there isn’t enough vegetation for the lemmings to eat. (One risk lemmings don’t face is suicidally following each other off cliffs. That myth comes from a 1958 Disney documentary, White Wilderness, in which filmmakers herded a group of lemmings off a cliff to create a dramatic scene.) Snowy owls need as much as a pound of prey every day to survive the harsh arctic conditions, and catching lemmings is more efficient than hunting seabirds.
Lemming numbers are thought to go through three- to four-year boom and bust cycles. Some scientists believe snowy owls and other predators—such as stoats and foxes—drive these trends. When lemmings are plentiful, the creatures who eat them flourish. When lemmings disappear, their predators’ numbers also shrink, allowing lemming numbers to climb. Once there are more lemmings on the ground again, snowy owl populations rise accordingly.
But Holtz doesn’t believe it’s that simple: “It’s a population fluctuation and everything has to be in line for a boom. But it’s not a cycle.” And the overall numbers are clearly trending down. In November 2017, ORI was awarded a grant to determine if climate change is causing the decline. ORI will draw on its own 27 years of snowy owl and lemming data, along with weather data collected by the National Weather Service and the Barrow Observatory.
As Holtz hunts for answers, he remains awed by the strangeness of the bird itself. “There is something about that huge white owl, adapted to arctic environments, that lures me,” says Holtz. “It’s similar to looking at fresh snow. There’s something special, unusual or magical. I just enjoy seeing them, and it may not be tangible.”
AS HOLTZ HUNTS FOR ANSWERS, HE REMAINS AWED BY THE STRANGENESS OF THE BIRD ITSELF.
Expedition cruises or ski trips to Spitsbergen, camping on the ice cap of Greenland, adventurous explorations of Siberia… Nowadays, the intrepid traveller can’t ignore that the Arctic regions are opening up. Arctic Canada, Baffin Island to be precise, in the province of Nunavit, also belongs to this category. I am here to experience what it’s like to camp and live on the Arctic ice for 6 days, beneath the midnight sun, stationed next to towering icebergs that majestically emerge from the frozen, white ocean.Camping On The Frozen Arctic Sea | Yatzer
Skip to main content You are reading Expedition cruises or ski trips to Spitsbergen, camping on the ice cap of Greenland, adventurous explorations of Siberia... Nowadays, the intrepid traveller can't ignore that the Arctic regions are opening up. Arctic Canada, Baffin Island to be precise, in the province of Nunavit, also belongs to this category.
After about 3 flights and aboit 10 or so hours of travelling, our group of nine connects in Pond Inlet, a small hamlet in Nunavut, located on the northeastern shores of Baffin Island, 72° North. Pond Inlet has just over 1000 inhabitants who are mostly of Inuit origin plus a mix of ''Southerners'' living and working here. It is a tiny, somewhat peculiar community consisting of a couple of small hotels, no restaurants, two shops and no bars because Pond Inlet is dry: alcohol is forbidden, alas for me, even for visitors.
A couple of days before our arrival, the Canadian company Arctic Kingdom has set up our base camp on the ice, some 70 kilometres away from the town. The perfect spot, it is located next to Bylot Island’s bird sanctuary, close to two grandiose icebergs frozen in place in the landscape.
During the summer months, the air temperature in the Arctic swings between just below zero and five degrees Celsius (23°F) depending on the wind chill. Furnished with real beds, plush linen and even a small heater for when temperatures plunge during the clear, midsummer nights, inside my bright yellow, Arctic Oven tent there is enough space to stand upright. A short distance away, a large marquee contains a hot shower and toilet. Another tent, much larger, is where everybody meets and where the kitchen and mess are located.
Canadian Mike Bedell, our charismatic expedition leader, Arctic connoisseur and renowned wildlife photographer, is the quintessential outdoor expert. Over the course of my stay, on a windless evening, he takes us to the floe edge for the first time, a 15-minute snow scooter ride away from the base camp. At the floe edge, Mike drops a hydrophone into the icy water so that we can hear the outlandish sonar sounds of whales and seals below the surface.
Icecapade
Mike Bedell totes Shamu on the sea ice (1); measuring snow depth (2); ice cores (3); slurping up icy brine (4).
What's inside the box is a holographic microscope it's obvious job is to magnify specimens, but its special talent is making 3D movies that provide compelling evidence of microorganisms alive and stirring. After researchers inject liquid into the sample chamber, the microscope splits a laser beam into 2 shafts, which the collimator lens makes parallel. One ray passes through the specimen and the other acts as a reference beam. Shau's software combines and compares the two rays, revealing microorganisms moving in thesample collected. Meanwhile, a 3D camera st the top of the scope records and transmits the result in R/T (real time).
Spotting a polar bear in the wild for the first time is unforgettable. From the safety of our qamutiks (wooden sledges pulled by snow scooters), I watch a huge male moving quietly away, as he stops to look back at us now and again. Our guide takes us on a walk beside a majestic iceberg as we follow the footsteps of a huge polar bear. He measures the size of the animal by its tracks. ''I think it’s a female, but a big one.''
On our last day in this frozen world, the sky is covered in eerie black clouds; the air is cold and the top layer of ice looks and sounds like the crust of a crème brûlée. Back on the floe edge, we get very close and personal with a giant bowhead whale. The animal is feeding just below the pack ice, right next to the edge where we are standing. Every ten minutes it sticks its massive head above water to gasp some air, while looking at us inquisitively. Incredible. What else is there to say? Despite my huge Canadian Goose Down jacket and 5 layers of clothing underneath, the Arctic has already gotten under my skin. I will be back.
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you may get a chance to view migrating salmon this fall. For the sockeye salmon shown here, the epic journey takes them from the waters of the Pacific Ocean back to the freshwater lakes and streams where they were born. There they’ll spawn, their bodies turning from a silvery blue to crimson and changing shape in the process. This isn’t always an easy journey. Dams and other human interventions have affected salmon runs, and West Coast salmon numbers have been in decline. We’re fans of groups like Long Live the Kings, a Pacific Northwest nonprofit that’s helping rebuild salmon populations and protect their habitat—for the long run.
Ice Fishing - Winter - Alaska Fishing Guide | Fishtale River Guides
Alaska ice fishing trips include ice fishing tackle, bait, and instructions for catching winter landlocked salmon, rainbow trout, Dolly Varden, Arctic Char in Mat-Su Valley lakes near Anchorage, Wasilla, and Palmer, Alaska.
In the fall you can watch Grizzly or Brown Bears fish for Salmon....
Katmai National Park and Preserve is an American national park and preserve in southern Alaska, notable for the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and for its brown bears.
Surviving a brown Bear attack...
See what it's like underneath an Alaskan glacier and how the ice is slowly changing with time.
Mendenhall Glacier Ice Cave, Alaska
'A Tipping Point.' Greenland's Ice Is Melting Much Faster Than Previously Thought, Scientists Say
Greenland’s massive ice stockpile is melting faster than previously thought, and it may be too late to do anything about it except “adapt,” scientists have warned in a new study.
The rate of ice loss there is up to four times faster than it was in 2003 and is contributing to rising sea levels, according to the new data.
The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), used NASA climate data and GPS stations to study Greenland’s ice sheets, the Guardian reports.
Greenland lost 280 billion tons of ice annually from 2002-2016, raising global sea levels by 0.03 inches per year. If Greenland’s entire ice sheet were to melt, oceans levels would swell up to 20 feet, endangering numerous seaside cities and low-lying Pacific islands.
“Increasingly, large amounts of ice mass are going to leave as meltwater, as rivers that flow into the sea,” Michael Bevis, the paper’s lead author and professor at Ohio State University, told the Guardian.
The ice is also melting four times faster in 2013 than it was in 2003, an increase scientists attributed to rising temperatures and the North Atlantic Oscillation, a pressure system that brings warmer air to Greenland.
“The only thing we can do is adapt and mitigate further global warming – it’s too late for there to be no effect,” Bevis added. “We are watching the ice sheet hit a tipping point.”
These grim conclusions came in the wake of a separate study last week that made similar warnings about Antarctica. Scientists from the University of California, Irving and Utretcht University in the Netherlands found that Antarctic ice loss has also rapidly accelerated over the past four decades, from about 40 billion tons per year in the 1980s, to over 250 billion tons per year from 2009–2017.
Scientists have warned that Antarctic ice melt could raise global sea levels 3.5 feet by 2100 unless urgent action is taken to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Using Fear to Break Out of a Prolonged Funk
Pushing yourself to complete scary but exhilarating activities can give you a lasting sense of strength and accomplishment. Our columnist went scuba diving in Iceland to test the theory.
This summer, I decided I needed to get out of my head and into the world. I was lost in an extended funk: low energy, negative thoughts, fits of tears. I’ve written about how experiencing awe, getting out of our comfort zone and having a mantra can help us be healthier and happier. My mantra is “Fortune Favors the Brave.” So I decided to take my own advice and look for something to help me recalibrate.
I decided to scuba dive in Iceland.
I’m a passionate diver, and there’s a bucket-list dive there—you can swim between the continental plates of North America and Eurasia. I thought it would be exciting and scary enough to make me feel stronger, but still within my comfort zone.
The day before, I took a class to get certified to dive in a dry suit, which I’d need to wear in the 35 degree Fahrenheit water. I spent the morning with an instructor in an indoor pool in Reykjavik. Then we drove to a subarctic volcanic lake, so I could complete the diving required to demonstrate that I understood the skills I’d learned.
The black beach was deserted when we arrived, and the lake churned with white-capped waves. The wind howled—I’d later learn the gusts were 40 mph—and it started to pour. As we waited out the squall in the van, my heart raced. My hands shook. I couldn’t quite fill my lungs with air.
I felt I had a stark choice: Possibly die in a frigid lake in Iceland. Or go home feeling like a failure, even more demoralized than before.
Fear—the emotional response to a real or perceived threat—exists to alert us to danger. By triggering our fight or flight response, it helps keep us physically safe.
New research shows that it also can boost our mood. In a study to be published next month in the journal “Emotion,” researchers at the University of Pittsburgh measured the brain waves of 100 people before and after they went through an “extreme” haunted house—one where the actors can grab them, shock them with electricity, or stuff them into a coffin. They found that after participants went through the haunted house there was a significant reduction in their brain wave activity.
After such an event, people often feel less stressed, less tired, even euphoric. Margarita Kerr, a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh, lead author on the study, and author of the book, “Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear,” explained why. When we’re terrified, our sympathetic nervous system, which is in charge of that fight or flight response, floods the body with adrenaline and the brain with neurotransmitters such as dopamine and norepinephrine. Our blood vessels constrict, to preserve blood for muscles and organs that might need it if we decide to run. And our mind focuses on the present. “The background noise washes away,” says Dr. Kerr.
The physical response typically lasts only four to six hours, Dr. Kerr says, “but the memory of how you got through it is what you draw strength from in the future.”
Kaisha Berglondon at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
You don’t have to dive in Iceland to reap positive benefits from fear. Dr. Kerr recommends trying physical activities that are safe but make you feel a loss of control: doing a cartwheel, running down a hill with abandon, or sprinting through the woods as fast as you can. Other simple challenges include a roller coaster, a haunted house or even a scary movie.
But the biggest feats can have the biggest payoff, especially when they involve some skill. Kaisha Berglondon decided to hike Mount Kilimanjaro this past summer to clear her mind of excessive worry about her future. She trained for months, then flew to Tanzania in July. On the fifth day of her climb, around 14,000 feet, the fear set in. Ms. Berglondon had a terrible headache. She saw climbers being carried back down the mountain by their guides after they collapsed. And she worried she might die—or fail. “I felt like if I can’t do this thing, what does that mean about other things in my life?” says the 30-year-old social worker from New York.
She pushed through by refusing to acknowledge that quitting was an option—and hugged the summit sign when she reached it. Now when she’s having a tough day, she says: “I go back to that place where I can do anything.”
How do you know when to listen to your fear? There’s no easy answer. In the moment, it’s important to ask yourself if you are truly in danger, or in pain. If you’re deciding in advance whether to do something, ask a friend to tell you honestly if your plan is stupid. Another tactic is to write about your fear in a journal, which can help you evaluate it more objectively. Ultimately, though, your decision to continue with your plan or abort it depends on whether you can master your fear and move through it.
Experts say you can benefit even if you don’t fully complete the challenge. In fact, it’s essential that the scary situation is your idea—and that you can opt out if you want. “If you were truly blocked from disengaging, that’s where trauma comes in,” Dr. Kerr says.
Mike Lopes, 28, a copywriter in Los Angeles, is terrified of heights. But when his friends suggested a rock climbing trip in California’s Joshua Tree National Park last year to help him get over a breakup, he agreed. That’s how he found himself hundreds of feet up a rock formation, belly pressed against the wall, trying to maneuver himself into a narrow cave entrance. He inched toward it. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled. He even sat and scooched over on his rear end. Then he gave up.
Mike Lopes hiking in Joshua Tree National Park.
“It took me a long time to realize that it’s a journey and the destination doesn’t matter,” he says. “I was a success just being there.”
In Iceland, my biggest fear was that I would panic, which would be dangerous. As we waited out the rain, I assessed the situation. I decided to trust my instructor, Rhami Seib. I recalled other dives I’d completed in tough conditions. And I forced myself to take slow and deep breaths.
Then I stepped out of the van and into the lake. I focused on my breathing as we swam about 1,000 feet against the waves. I immediately felt more comfortable when we submerged and had no trouble demonstrating my new skills. Rhami gave me a fist bump underwater to let me know I’d passed the class. Then we swam toward shore.
When we reached shallow water, I stood to take off my fins and a wave knocked me onto my back. Another crashed over me, and I took in a mouthful of icy water. Buffeted by surf and feeling weighed down by my tank, I became disoriented. And then I did have a panic attack. Flat on my back, in two feet of water, I repeatedly screamed: “Rhami, help me, I’m dying!”
Author in Iceland.
Rhami got me out of the lake quickly. And he insisted that I focus on my success in completing the course, not on what happened in the last few minutes. Still, I was left shaken for hours.
Yet when he picked me up the next morning, I got back in that van. I suited up when we got to the dive site. And I followed Rhami into some of the coldest water on earth.
It was worth it. The rift is filled with glacial runoff so pure that visibility is limited only by the human eye. The many shades of blue are truly dazzling. And floating in the stunning cavern between two continents, I felt strong, brave and happy. Best of all, that feeling has stayed with me.
Achieving Catharsis Through Fear
Consider a challenge that takes place in nature. Research shows this may increase the gains, says Margarita Kerr, a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh who studies fear. It helps us tap into our primal self, makes us feel competent at survival and gives us a sense of awe, she says.
Choose something that requires skill, not just luck. This will give you a sense of accomplishment, Dr. Kerr says.
Select an activity with multiple steps. Take skydiving: You show up at the shop, listen to a lecture, gear up, get on the plane. “Each of those moments will feel like an accomplishment,” Dr. Kerr says.
Practice in everyday life. When you start to feel scared before a giving a presentation or taking a test, tell yourself you are excited.
Visualize your success. Imagine the scary event—complete with sights, sounds and smells—and picture yourself completing it successfully. “You are strengthening the neural pathways necessary to complete the task,” says Gregory Chertuk, a certified sports and exercise psychology consultant in New City, N.Y.
Decide ahead of time what you will tell yourself if you back out. (“I tried and got this far, and that is a success.”) This will prevent you from feeling like a failure, Mr. Chertuk says.
Document the experience. Write about it. Share it on social media or with friends. Frame the photo or make it the screen saver on your phone. These things will help you in the future more easily access the positive feelings the experience produces.
Polar bears, ice fields: New cruises across Russian Arctic bring rare adventure
BOLSHEVIK ISLAND, Russian Arctic – As vacation destinations go, Baranov Station is a bit bleak. Located on a remote, ice-covered island deep in the Russian Arctic, the small research outpost offers such attractions as a view of weathered meteorological huts and a walk past rusted oil drums.
But Alan Shenkin, 74, of Glasgow, Scotland, and his companions from the expedition ship Bremen aren't complaining. Just setting foot on this spot – halfway along the little-traveled Arctic sea route known as the Northeast Passage – is a feat of off-the-beaten-path travel. More people get to the North Pole each year than get here.
"There's something special about traveling to a place that has been so rarely explored," says Shenkin, gazing across an ice-clogged coastline that wasn't even known to the world until a 1913 polar expedition. "I've been to many out-of-the-way places, but never something like this."
Operated by Germany-based Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, the 155-passenger Bremen is one of the first western cruise ships to carry travelers such as Shenkin across the Northeast Passage, which connects Europe to the Far East by way of the icy Arctic seas at the top of Russia.
On a small ship Arctic cruise you'll experience a magical land of icy fjords, jagged mountains, & immense glaciers. Comfortable small ships glide travelers beyond the Arctic Circle through dramatic ice floes to walk in the footsteps of the Vikings or marvel at the breaching of a humpback whale. Hull-hardened ships cut through the polar ice to access areas previously visited by only the most adventurous explorers and even to the North Pole.
A cruise of the Arctic offers rare wildlife, natural beauty and unique cultures that have survived in one of the most extreme environments on Earth. Choose from cruises that visit the Arctic landscapes of Northern Canada's Baffin Island, the Northern Passage, Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Canada, Norway, & Russia. Contact one of our Arctic cruise experts for help planning your trip.
AntarcticaIt's different down under where there is at least a landmass below the ice cover though most of it, is below sea level... but that's yet another adventure ...Analysis | This man just crossed Antarctica alone - and in record time
The week between Christmas and New Year's Day is what one writer has called the " Sunday afternoon of the year," a time for lazy reading and ambitious cooking projects - or, in Colin O'Brady's case, the final, sleepless 80-mile leg of a two-month race across Antarctica.
The Last Unexplored Place on Earth
The Russians held off drilling into the accreted ice for seven years, while they went through the long process of preparing a comprehensive environmental evaluation detailing their drilling plans and inviting comment, as required by the Antarctic Treaty, an environmental-protection agreement signed by nations with a presence in the Antarctic.
East Antarctica's Sleeping Giant Awakes
Along Antarctica's west coast near the Amundsen Sea, great white glaciers the size of U.S. states slowly slide into the ocean. In the early '80s, scientists dubbed it the continent's "weak underbelly" after learning that ice here - which helps hold back the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet - is anchored below sea level.
Environment: Scientists caught an Antarctic ice shelf singing a strange tune
This bizarre phenomenon could better predict how quickly the planet’s ice is melting into the ocean.
A man holding machine on icy plain
Seismometer, being used to measure vibrations that travel through the Earth.
Antarctica is honestly kind of creepy. It’s leaking from the inside; it loves to ooze some bloody liquids out into the ocean like some gargantuan stabbing victim; it’s a dry hellscape despite being covered in a thick layer of literal water (albeit the frozen variety); and now it turns out Antarctica is an avid whistler of some eerie tunes. Bear with me: a new study published in Geophysical Review Letters this week details how scientists have picked up on strange tones resonating near the surface ofthe massive Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. While these wintery sounds have their place in the wintery landscape, you can banish the idea of anything resembling Frozen—these songs are more of the inaudible-to-human-ears type.
“Ice shelves are a critical element of the Antarctic glacier system,” says Rick Aster, a geophysicist at Colorado State University and a coauthor of the new study. “We care deeply about them because their stability in decades to come will substantially affect global sea level rise and other issues that affect millions. This discovery provides a new tool to measure and understand how they are affected by warming in the atmosphere and oceans.”
Lead investigator Julien Chaput, a geophysicist at the University of Texas, El Paso who began this work under Aster at CSU, describes the study as a “bit of a happy accident,” stemming from a broadband seismic instrument deployment on the Ross Ice Shelf, which is roughly the size of Texas, to study the crust and mantle underneath. Chaput, an expert in ambient noise monitoring, started noticing “strange spectral anomalies that escaped easy explanations,” suggesting some sort of high-frequency seismic waves were persistently trapped in the firn (the top couple of meters of snow).
“The end result was really just the outcome of chasing a cryptic puzzle,” he says. “Chasing down that lead gave us a unique insight into all the environmental effects an ice shelf can ‘feel,’ and on remarkably short time scales.”
The team eventually found that these trapped firn waves were created by the constant hum of wind brushing against the snow on the surface of the shelf. These sounds have been recorded before in other areas of the world, including Antarctica, but this research found that the tones were changing over time, in direct response to what was going on in the environment.
In Antarctica, movements on the surface can often be translated into vibrations that propagate throughout the ice shelf. The frequency of these waves vary based on changes to the loose snow in the firn, including the impacts of heavy winds or temperature shifts. The team measured the vibrations (aka seismic waves) that moved through the shelf for a little over two years, and were able to detect in what ways the frequency shifted based on nasty storm events or heavy winds, seasonal changes or unusual shakeups in average temperatures, and so forth.
“This last point is particularly interesting,” says Chaput, “because it could allow us to quantify which ice shelves have firn layers that are strongly impacted by repeated warming events, and also yield a metric of how resilient these firn layers might be.”
These effects were perhaps crystallized best in observations made in January 2016, during a particularly warm period when temperatures rose slightly above freezing, and allowed a bit of the snow and ice to melt. The melting slowed down the seismic waves and changed their pitch. But when temperatures rose once more, the waves didn’t revert back to their previous state. The firn had been altered permanently, and the ice shelf song was changed permanently as well.
The study is a particularly good illustration of why it would be useful to use seismic observations to keep a close eye on firn, all over the world. Firn melt is broadly considered by scientists to be one of the most important factors in the destabilization of an ice shelf. And ice shelves themselves are particularly important, since their melting accelerates the streaming of ice into the ocean from abutting ice sheets. Recent years have highlighted the role of ice shelves as the “real heavy hitters in any potential sea rise,” says Chaput, and he’s encouraged by the notion of using this technique to study ice melt broadly across the globe. He hopes future researchers might be able to spot melting pockets or cracks that are forewarning signs of a larger shelf breakup, be it in Antarctica or Greenland or wherever else.
“Polar environments are more or less the vanguard of climate change, but instrumentation and modeling of these environments has lagged behind by quite a margin,” says Chaput. “We all know we're in hot water—the problem is, we're not really sure how hot it is yet.” He cites the collapse of Larsen B in 2002 as a prime example of how limited we’ve been in really spotting and gauging the loss of ice mass as it occurs.
“In a sense, this way of looking at continuous seismic data could be considered a ‘canary in the mines’ sort of observation, with almost real time temporal resolution,” he says. “Deploying a single seismometer on an ice shelf could provide the means of observing very subtle environmental forcing, on time scales as short as minutes, and would provide a means to directly understand the sequence of physical changes that happen in the near surface as a melting event strikes.”
There’s a lot of work that needs to take place to really prove how viable seismological observation could be for monitoring ice melt, but it’s probably a safe bet to follow the humming. If the ice is going to be singing aloud, we may as well keep an ear out and listen closely.
A Seal My Son May Never Hunt
Opinion
The Bearded Seal My Son May Never Hunt
The Bearded Seal My Son May Never Hunt
Inupiat have sustained themselves with these seals for thousands of years in the Bering Sea. Climate change threatens this tradition.
UNALAKLEET, Alaska — It’s October and we haven’t yet had a frost. The ground is still soft. When my grandpa was little, ice anchored to the shore would begin to form at this time of year. But last year that didn’t happen until around March and it melted soon after.
We are Inupiat, northern indigenous people with communities from Alaska to Greenland. I had always thought the cold was necessary for the ways we live our lives and relate to this earth. But we may have to learn to live without it. Last winter, there was less ice in the Bering Sea than any winter since the start of record-keeping in 1850. The ice road truckers have had a bad time.8
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conducted a bottom-trawl survey in the summer and found that a large cold pool of water that has historically formed southwest of the fishing community I call home was gone. Sandwiched between Russia and Alaska, the cold-water pool, or curtain, is created when the sea ice melts during the summer, making a natural barrier in the Bering Sea.
The creatures in the part of the sea north of the barrier are usually cold-water fish like small cod and the mammals that eat them. Larger Pacific cod and pollock and creatures like sea lions typically remain in the south. Without the cold-water barrier, these southern fish appear to be moving farther and farther north.
When a scientist told me this news, my stomach got heavy. We need the northeastern Bering Sea to stay cold so the creatures the Inupiat traditionally rely on can thrive. We couldn’t go hunting last spring because there wasn’t enough ice cover in the Norton Sound, an inlet of the Bering Sea.
.....
A CRACK IN THE WORLD
AS THE ANTARCTIC HEATS UP, THE RULES OF LIFE THERE ARE BEING RIPPED APART. ALARMED SCIENTISTS AREN’T SURE WHAT ALL THE CHANGE MEANS FOR THE FUTURE.
The warming is changing what animals eat, where they rest, and how they raise their young.
ONLINE
Visit ngm.com/Nov2018 to see videos made by the National team as they traveled along the Antarctic Peninsula in 2017 on Dion Poncet’s boat.
Dion Poncet came of age in a place almost no one calls home.
HE WAS BORN ON A SAILBOAT in Leith Harbour, an abandoned whaling station on South Georgia island. His father, a French adventurer, had met his mother, an Australian zoologist, on a jetty in Tasmania while sailing his boat around the world. The couple started a family in the South Atlantic. For years they traversed the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, surveying wildlife in uncharted bays—seals, flowering plants, seabirds—with three boys in tow. Dion was the first.
The Antarctic Peninsula is an 800-mile string of mountains and volcanoes that juts north from the White Continent like the tail on a horseshoe crab. It was Poncet’s playground. Young Dion and his brothers read, drew, and played with Legos—but also chased penguins, lifted chocolate from derelict research stations, and sledded down hills that might never have seen a human footprint. Other kids face schoolyard bullies; Dion was tormented by dive-bombing skuas, which whacked his head hard enough to make him cry. Other kids star in wobbly home movies; the Poncet boys were featured in a 1990 film about growing up in the Antarctic. Sometimes, during breaks from homeschooling, Dion’s mom had him count penguins. “It got pretty boring pretty quickly,” he says.
On a frigid evening nearly 30 years later, Poncet and I stood in the wheelhouse of his 87-foot boat, the Hans Hansson, scanning the ice for Adélie penguins. At 39, Poncet is blond, block-jawed, and quiet, with enormous hands. He has spent much of his adult life ferrying scientists and other visitors in charter boats through the waters around South Georgia and Antarctica from his base in the Falklands. Along with a team of photographers led by Paul Nicklen, I had joined him for a voyage along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. We wanted to see how things were changing in a region he’d known his whole life.
Here at the bottom of the world, a place all but free of human settlement, humanity is scrambling one of the ocean’s richest wildernesses. Fossil-fuel burning thousands of miles away is heating up the western peninsula faster than almost anywhere else. (Only the Arctic compares.) The warming is yanking apart the gears of a complex ecological machine, changing what animals eat, where they rest, how they raise their young, even how they interact. At the same time, the shrimplike krill upon which almost all animals here depend for food are being swept up by trawlers from distant nations. They’re being processed into dietary supplements and pharmaceuticals, and fed to salmon in Norwegian fjords and to tropical fish in aquariums.
So much here is changing so fast that scientists can’t predict where it’s all headed. “Something dramatic is under way,” says Heather Lynch, a penguin biologist at Stony Brook University. “It should bother us that we don’t really know what’s going on.”
What we can see is troubling enough. On the western peninsula, Adélie penguin populations have collapsed, some by 90 percent or more. Records of great hordes of the birds in one bay date back to 1904; today in that spot “there are only about six nests left,” Poncet says. That day in the wheelhouse, when Poncet and I spotted our first massive colony, we had left the west for the peninsula’s northeast tip.
On tiny Paulet Island, thousands of penguins were perched in rows up a rocky slope, evenly spaced, like an audience at an opera house. We could see some wandering the remains of an old stone hut built in 1903 by shipwrecked Swedish explorers, who survived a long Antarctic winter by eating penguins. On an iceberg off our starboard beam, a noisy cluster of penguins slipped and knocked about like wobbly bowling pins. When I saw one glissade down polished ice, its flippers pulled back in a skier’s tuck, then tumble into a trio of fellow birds, I laughed out loud. Poncet just nodded.
Antarctica is not all death and chaos: Millions of Adélies still thrive around the continent, performing their unintentional comedy. But the western peninsula’s transformation is profound, and few have seen more of it unfold than Poncet. The world he once knew is unraveling. He speaks of the loss like a farm kid who has watched suburbia gobble the family homestead.
“All the things you used to experience, the places I went when I was a child—I took it for granted then,” Poncet says. “Now you realize it’s not ever going to be possible again.”
MUCH OF ANTARCTICA is a vast plateau, a high desolate desert of blowing snow where temperatures can plunge to minus 140°F. Poncet’s Antarctica isn’t like that at all.
The Antarctic Peninsula is longer than Italy and curls north toward the temperate zone. Its climate—for Antarctica—has always been mild. Summer temperatures often rise above freezing. Isolated patches of vegetation dot exposed granite and basalt. Adélie penguins live all along the coast of Antarctica, but the peninsula also supports species the harsh mainland can’t: fur seals, elephant seals, gentoo and chinstrap penguins. Petrels and sheathbills flit about the skies. All this life relies on the sea.
WARMING LANDS
As the sea ice season off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula shrinks, species that rely on the ice will have to adapt or perish. The loss of ice could also reduce krill populations. Many species consume these tiny crustaceans, which for now are still abundant.
Sea change
Global warming is heating deep waters circulating from northern oceans. As winds blow away colder surface water, the warmer waters rise from below, making sea ice and glacial ice thinner. A warming climate also increases storminess, which pushes sea ice south.
Prey under pressure
The ice-free fishing season now extends deeper into fall. Strict quotas limit krill catch size, but the shorter sea ice season and the longer fishing season could put humans and wildlife in more competition for the same prey.
Winners and losers
Animals that hunt in open water and breed on rocky shores along the western Antarctic Peninsula may fare well as sea ice retreats. Others that depend on sea ice for food, protection, and a place to rest will likely face decline.
On the rugged peninsula, Antarctica’s stillness is punctuated by squawking and chattering and concentrated motion. It’s a place of bizarre angles: Blue-white glaciers flow to the ocean and calve into icebergs that assume every form imaginable. Bergs the size of small towns reach into the clouds. Even dozens of miles away, you hear them crack and explode like cannons.
It looks like wilderness, and it is, but it is not untouched. People began altering life in this region decades before anyone had even seen Antarctica. Not long after Capt. James Cook first cut through Antarctic waters in the 1770s, hunters started slaughtering fur seals by the millions, mostly for hats and coats. They also killed elephant seals for oil, to be used in paint and soap. The first to set foot on the continent were probably Connecticut seal hunters who came ashore briefly on the western peninsula in 1821.
In time whalers began harpooning sei whales, blues, fins, and humpbacks. They stripped baleen, or whalebone, from their mouths to make whips, umbrella ribs, corsets, and carriage springs and used the whale oil for heat, lamps, and margarine. In the early 20th century South Georgia became a whaling mecca. Leith Harbour was the last of its stations to close, in 1966.
Climate change has since left an unmistakable mark. Winter air on the western peninsula has warmed more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s. Winds drive changes in ocean circulation that bring warmer deep water toward the surface, helping to reduce sea ice—the broken crust that forms when the ocean’s briny surface freezes. Sea ice now appears later and disappears faster: The ice-free season on the western peninsula lasts a full 90 days longer than in 1979. For a Northern Hemisphere equivalent, imagine summer suddenly stretching to Christmas.
The winter before Poncet was born, his parents spent weeks camping and exploring frozen Marguerite Bay, hauling gear by sledge across its solid surface. “Nowadays,” Poncet says, “that’s finished. Sea ice barely even forms.” The loss of ice exposes warm water to the cold air, increasing evaporation, which returns to the world’s driest continent as snow—even rain. On a 2016 trip to Marguerite Bay, halfway down the west coast, Poncet faced a deluge that lasted almost a week. “Thirty years ago I don’t think anyone had ever seen a drop of water fall from the sky down there,” he says.
The balmier water pulled from the deep even affects ice on land, by attacking glaciers where they meet the sea as floating shelves. At least 596 of the western peninsula’s 674 glaciers are in retreat, according to a British survey. Else-where in Antarctica, far larger ice shelves are thawing and crumbling, threatening a rapid rise in global sea levels. On the east coast of the peninsula itself, ice has been failing spectacularly ectacularly too—a Delaware-size piece broke off the Larsen C Ice Shelf just last year. But the east coast can still be five degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the west. Prevailing winds often push sea ice from the west around the tip of the peninsula to the east, where a gyre traps it against land.
The western peninsula is Antarctica’s hot spot. Often depicted on maps in white, it’s now so warm that tufts of the continent’s only native flowering plants, hair grass and yellow-flowered pearlwort, are spreading. So are invasive grasses and lichens. Green moss is growing three times as fast as it did in the past. Island peaks once cloaked in snow are now wet and melting, exposing mud or yawning crevasses.
“The landscape is shriveling,” Poncet says.
Hiking recently on the south shore of Elephant Island, off the tip of the peninsula, Poncet was flabbergasted by how temperate things seemed. The weather was humid, the landscape ice free, and enough grass had sprouted that it brought to mind a meadow.
“It didn’t feel like Antarctica at all,” he says.
A HEAVY RAIN is falling as we depart the Hans Hansson one morning on black rubber rafts, bound for a pebbly shore near the Antarctic Sound, at the northern tip of the peninsula. On a rocky shelf colored like a sunset by streaks of guano, we spy several muddy Adélie penguins. One is a fledgling, whose gray, pillowy down is damp and matted.
Adélies are the peninsula’s only truly Antarctic penguin species. (Chinstraps also live in South America; red-beaked gentoos range from there to Africa.) They build nests of pebbles and return to the same site each year at the same time, even if it’s raining or snowing or ice is melting. They prefer dry rock or soil but now are often forced to build on light snow—only to have nests collapse when the snow melts or fill like ponds when it rains. Adélie eggs are drowning in flooded nests. Drenched and windblown chicks are freezing to death; they lack the moisture-repelling feathers that protect adults.
Adults, meanwhile, struggle with lost sea ice. Adélies molt on floes far at sea and use ice as way stations to avoid predators between hunts. They can swim for days but tend to dive only in the upper few hundred feet of sea. As waters warm, more adaptable penguins are pushing in. Gentoos—fat, tall generalists—are more flexible about when and where they build nests and are more apt to lay new eggs if nesting fails. They hunt closer to land and eat whatever is available. From 1982 to 2017, the number of breeding pairs of Adélies along the western peninsula and South Shetland Islands dropped by more than 70 percent, from 105,000 to 30,000. Gentoo pairs saw a sixfold increase, from 25,000 to 173,000.
Ice is essential to more than just Adélies. It’s as central to this region as grass is to the savanna. When it disappears, relationships can shift unpredictably. One morning near the Antarctic Sound, Nicklen, photographer Keith Ladzinski, and I zip into dry suits and go snorkeling near shore. We watch a skittish Adélie survey the waves from a crumbling raft of ice. The bird seems hesitant to plunge in—with good reason. A leopard seal is circling and occasionally nosing onto the ice.
A leopard seal can weigh half as much as a small car. Its toothy jaws open wider than a grizzly bear’s. When closed, its mouth curves in a mischievous smile. That’s how the predator looks as it corkscrews around us—rakish, impatient, the king of its domain.
Suddenly, two more leopard seals appear. They turn in lazy laps, spiraling one after the other. Soon there are two more, their eyes locked on other penguins. One by one, the birds slip into the water, and the seals give chase. Some penguins turn and scamper back to ice and safety. Others aren’t so lucky. In an area not much bigger than two suburban backyards, five seals are soon feasting on penguins, shaking and shredding their bloody prey.
The show is mesmerizing—and “highly unusual,” Tracey Rogers, a leopard seal expert at the University of New South Wales, later tells me. Leopard seals, like grizzlies, are solitary creatures that usually stake out vast territories offshore. They need ice floes to rest on between hunts. Loss of ice from climate change is leading them to congregate near land, shifting how, where, and even what they hunt.
Leopard seals used to be rarely seen near fur seal breeding grounds. “Some sealers in the 1800s kept meticulous logs and records,” says Doug Krause, a wildlife biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “None of them reported seeing leopard seals hanging around.” Now, 60 to 80 leopard seals wriggle ashore every year at Cape Shirreff, in the South Shetlands. At the region’s largest fur-seal breeding ground, they kill more than half the newborn pups.
After commercial sealing stopped in Antarctica in the 1950s, fur seals started making a triumphant comeback. Scientists thought they would adapt well to a warming climate. Now their numbers at Cape Shirreff are declining 10 percent each year. “What we’re seeing is extraordinary,” Krause says. “No one saw this coming.”
NO ONE FORESAW the good news either—the boom in humpback whales.
Starting in the early 20th century, industrial whalers drove most of Antarctica’s cetaceans nearly to extinction, and many species are still struggling. Blue whales, for example, are thought to have numbered about a quarter of a million around 1900; the population today is 5 percent of that. But Antarctic humpbacks are roaring back: Their population is rising by 7 to 10 percent a year. “They’re going bonkers!” Ari Friedlaender shouts as we dart across the water in an open skiff in the Palmer Archipelago, where we rendezvoused with him.
Friedlaender, a marine ecologist with the University of California at Santa Cruz and an Explorer, has been studying humpbacks off Antarctica since 2001, tracking how and where they move and feed. He has recorded them rolling and playing with one another and diving deeper than anyone expected. He’s seen them opening gashes in ice with their blowholes. For animals that can weigh up to 40 tons, all this requires a lot of energy—and for now, he says, climate change is making more fuel available.
Friedlaender saw his first sign of that on a cruise in May 2009. It was late fall, so he and his colleagues assumed the humpbacks would have long since left for their wintering grounds near Ecuador and Panama. Then an echosounder detected a blob of krill that spread for miles below the ship. “We woke the next day, and there were more whales than any of us had ever seen at any time, at any place on the planet,” says Friedlaender, who has also studied them off Alaska, California, and New England. They counted 306 humpbacks in a 10-mile stretch. “They were here because there was no ice.”
Humpbacks, he explains, used to leave Antarctica in late March or early April, when sea ice closed in. Now they have many more ice-free weeks with more open water in which to roam widely and feed on krill. Those beady-eyed, translucent creatures are the size of a child’s pinkie, but they travel in thick swarms that can stretch for miles, with 78,000 or more in a single cubic yard. Humpbacks are sticking around and fattening up on krill, and that’s fueling a population boom. Female whales are producing calves every year. Lactating mothers have so much strength they’re feeding newborns while pregnant. “That’s insane for an animal that big,” Friedlaender says.
He pulls alongside a humpback and her calf, resting in brash ice. The skiff bobs as Friedlaender, like some ponytailed modern harpooner, raises a long shaft above his head. The business end holds a waterproof camera fitted with suction cups. Friedlaender steadies his quivering weapon, takes aim, then slaps the camera on the leviathan’s back. The surprised whale makes a sound like a wet snore. Both mother and calf dive.
“Felt like a great stick!” Friedlaender yells. For a day or two, until it falls off and floats to the surface to be retrieved, the camera will record a whale’s-eye view of the sea. Humpbacks fare far and deep with few natural competitors. But how well they fare now depends on us.
A FEW YEARS AGO, an icebreaker dragged research nets around the Palmer Archipelago, looking for Antarctic silverfish—oily, sardinelike creatures that spawn beneath sea ice. They used to be the dominant fish off the western peninsula, composing half of what some Adélie penguins ate. But the team, led by Joseph Torres of the University of South Florida, towed day and night around Anvers and Renaud Islands and never caught a single silverfish. In waters that have experienced some of the greatest sea-ice declines, the fish had all but disappeared. Meanwhile scientists noticed penguins gulping more krill—even though it can take 20 krill to match the caloric value of one silverfish.
Will there be enough krill to go around? It’s not an easy question. Penguins and humpbacks eat krill, but so do skuas, squid, fur seals, and crabeater seals. Leopard seals sometimes eat krill. A blue whale eats millions a day. Animals that don’t eat krill often feed on prey that does. Antarctica loves fatty krill. So do we.
In the 1960s, seeing a potential new seafood source, Soviet fleets began circling the continent. Today about 10 ships a year catch krill, led by Norway, South Korea, China, Chile, and Ukraine. The catch turns up in omega-3 pills and chewable krill-oil gummies and farmed salmon. In Ukraine peeled krill is sold in tins, like sardines. Sometimes krill gets processed at sea, boiled and dried into powder on huge trawlers.
After almost a month at sea we finally see one, in the Bransfield Strait, off the South Shetlands. A storm rocks the 333-foot Long Da, a Chinese mid-water factory trawler, as we pull along her stern. The boat’s net courses through the water like a gape-mouthed whale shark. As the crew haul it in, the net’s green mesh curls over itself, cocooning millions of krill.
For now, krill around Antarctica remain abundant. Trawlers net only a tiny fraction of the continent’s krill. Fishing is tightly managed by 24 countries and the European Union, organized as the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). But krill populations are cyclical, and researchers can’t say how quickly or severely warming and loss of ice may affect them. “We measure krill and may think we understand it, but we don’t, really,” says Christian Reiss of NOAA Fisheries.
Many experts worry that krill boats could target and deplete krill on feeding grounds important for other wildlife. A team of U.S. government scientists in 2017 put it bluntly: “If predators and the fishery use the same population of krill, it follows that removal of krill by one group may limit the availability to the other.” Most fishing takes place where climate change has stressed animals the most—near the western peninsula. “Where is there also one of the greatest densities of predators?” Friedlaender asks. “Same place.”
In 2017 Chile and Argentina proposed that CCAMLR place thousands of square miles west and north of the peninsula off-limits to krill fishing. Just this summer, environmental groups and Norway’s AkerBioMarine, the largest krill-fishing company in the world, helped persuade most others in the krill industry to avoid fishing near penguin colonies during breeding periods next year. Starting in 2020, the companies say, they will stay at least 30 kilometers, or 19 miles, from penguin colonies year-round.
Many scientists and wildlife advocates maintain that permanent no-fishing zones regulated by CCAMLR are the safest solution. Otherwise, says Kim Bernard, an Oregon State University oceanographer who studies krill, “things could go very badly here. That really scares me.”
ONE EVENING ON THE Hans Hansson, after a dinner of lamb and potatoes, Poncet traces a map in the galley, pointing out places he once chased krill with a butterfly net. It was common when he was a child to see massive swarms at the surface, he says. “Sometimes the engine would overheat because the water intakes were blocked with krill,” Poncet recalls. Today “you almost never see them” in those places.
Scientists take Poncet’s long experience seriously. “In a way, it’s traditional knowledge,” Bernard says. As Antarctica hurtles toward the unknown, scientific knowledge is still sparse.
This year Poncet abruptly sold the Hans Hansson. He says he and his companion, Juliet Hennequin—also an accomplished boat captain—were exhausted. But he also felt that too many visitors took the region’s bounty for granted, just as it was changing into a place he barely recognized. “When I take stock of the current situation, the Antarctic Peninsula I knew as a child has already largely gone,” he says. “I do wonder a lot what it will become.”
Photographer is still awestruck by his face time with a leopard seal in 2006, a Antarctic veteran. This was some ones first trip.
The nonprofit Universal Society, working to conserve Earth’s resources, helped fund this article and others.
Adver
Subscribe for $1 a week. Ends soon.
This is your last free article.
Support independent journalism.
Subscribe.
Unlimited articles on any device.
Support independent journalism.
Subscribe.
Unlimited articles on any device.
$3.75 $1.00/week for one year
QUICK CHECKOUT
Comments
Post a Comment