10 days on Zavodovski.
My diary for January 26th records “The gusts of wind, enough to knock you off your feet if you were unlucky enough to be wandering around outside taking a pee, were hitting the tent at random intervals alarmingly pushing in the double poles. Dead calm, silent breaks in between although welcome, were creating some suspense while we waited for the next blast. These are turbulent katabatic winds coming off Mt Asphyxia, the 550m summit of the volcanic cone. The wind, not quite tent busting yet, was also carrying flying rocks – and is more of a concern. In the strong gusts we are being peppered with fine ash and coarser material called tephra which we were warned could shred the tent fabric. Although we are warm, comfortable and cozy in our expedition tent, just having snaffled a ‘risotto al funghi,’ the thought of having to go out to mitigate damage or worse, face an abandonment, is always in the back of my mind.”
We had successfully embarked on the shore with all that equipment, only because this fortress of an island had a ‘key’ which was discovered decades ago by Dion’s father Jerome. The ever-present ocean swell around this tiny island propagates surge against the cliff faces just about everywhere except at this one spot. Here two swell patterns oddly come together near a prow with a climbable weakness and essentially the surge cancels itself out. Although there can be meters of heave where you have to cross yourself and jump for a ledge on the top of the cycle, it is only one of two places identified on the island for a relatively safe landing, and that if only in relatively settled weather which is usually in short supply.
Yes, this is a rugged and windy place, but the reality is after ten days camping on this outlier in the Southern Ocean, we had been lucky with the weather. The campsite held and Vinson stayed on station, although rolling its guts out 15 degrees port to starboard, 24/7.
Generally dry during the day and spitting with rain during the night, the analysis was that we had picked a good campsite at the southeast end of the island, just north of Fume Point, on a raised bit of ground leading up to two mounds of chinstrap penguin nests. I had prepared 45 tent pegs from 25mm steel angle in Stanley, and luckily with the help of a 5lb maul, they could be driven into the hard clay soil and were ‘bombers.’ If this had been soft ash with no holding power (an unknown) it would have been a game changer. Climbing ropes were also deployed as guy ropes to various pegs which we could change with the angle of the wind which was always southwest to northwest, the tents aligned in the direction of the summit. With our heavy kit boxes and bags on the tent valences along with 150 kg of boulders carried up from near the cliff edge, (ouch!!) we had a safe as can be base camp, on an otherwise totally open and exposed landscape.
We had four tents deployed and two complete spares, knowing that if the ‘shit hits the fan’ there would be no escape back to the boat which was anchored 300m off the cliff face near that precarious landing. If it was windy enough to bust the tents it would be too windy to launch the Zodiac and the cliff face would be a wash machine. In extremis, we could survive, but it would be miserable.
Always with an eye to the weather, we had enjoyed nine days of glorious trekking all over the island, much of it on moonscape terrain negotiating deeply eroded gorges all above the margins from the cliffs which were dominated by the chinstrap and macaroni penguin colonies, some extending 100m up slope. Our scientific mission revolved around 1.5m penguins and one volcano. Dr. Tom Hart from Oxford University flew drones censusing the penguin colonies and Dr.Nicole Richter from RWTH Aachen University in Germany drone mapped nearly the entire island using some very sophisticated tracking software. The high point, in all respects, was the three of us having the privilege of spending part of a late morning on the summit (on the only day in 10 which was sunny and windless); flying, flying, flying until the stock of batteries ran out. With drones it is all about the batteries, which you can never have enough that are ready and fully charged.
The coastline features are more than descriptive, they can be smelled; Acrid Point, Stench Point, Reek Point, Pungent Point and Noxious Bluff. This volcano is classed as ‘active’ and it is ‘degassing’ continually, its plume with SO2 and other more dangerous gases, usually streaming out to sea, is to be avoided, so gas masks were carried always, helmets and goggles in rucsacs de rigueur. Predicting an eruption however is quite impossible so an evacuation plan was mooted and discussed but in reality it would be a very much ad hoc, panic situation, of which we were all aware and happy to take this risk.
We also tagged 20 chinstrap and 15 macaroni penguins with ‘geolocator tags’ which are attached to a leg and records diurnal/nocturnal cycles and periods of ‘wet and dry.’ These will be recovered on our next expedition to Zavodovski next December.
On January 31st we evacuated the island and sailed for the ‘mainland’ of South Georgia, with the planning for next year being discussed.
Going back, you ask? Certainly, why wouldn’t you?
Skip Novak
Expedition leader
