Shackleton traverse 22’. The alternative route.
For me the Alternative Shackleton Traverse was unfinished business. We came to try it in 2014 but were turned back by snow, rain and 60 knot winds. So I was thrilled at the chance to have another try. Well, thrilled in theory: setting off from King Haakon Bay in a vicious cold wind, with torrents of spindrift swirling over Shackleton Gap, my enthusiasm took a dent. But after settling into our first camp that evening, enthusiasm returned. On Day Two the wind abated, the sun shone and all was sweetness and light. The skis and pulks ran smoothly and Jean-Pierre the yoga expert did headstands on the glacier, ski boots pointed to the blue sky. In the afternoon Skip and I enjoyed some self-indulgent nostalgia, as we skied past the Trident peaks, which we had climbed with Rodrigo Jordan and other friends in 2014, making first ascents of all three peaks and naming them Tethys, Poseidon and Thalassa.
Onward to the Esmark Glacier for our second camp. Now that the whole team was familiar with the tents, we got them up in record time, securing them with hefty snow blocks. Steve Brown, our ex-British Antartic Survey member, was the master mason, cutting immaculate blocks of finest ashlar. Dinner in our tent that night was soup and risotto, followed by hot chocolate with brandy.
The clear air of Antarctica deceives the eye. It was hard to believe on Day Three that we had to ski six kilometres to reach Zigzag Pass. It looked like a short stroll but after an hour’s pulling, it still looked no closer. When we got there, the final climb to the pass did require a lot of zigzagging. It was steep and brutish, but the reward – for me – was a glorious view of the Kohl Plateau, which I have been wanting to see since I first came to South Georgia thirty-three years ago. It is a sublime place to camp, particularly when you are camping with a highly enthusiastic, competent team, including two people who have skied to both the North Pole and South Pole.
The little notch leading from the Kohl Plateau to the König Glacier on Day Four was supposed to be innocuous. But climate change has done its work here, melting back the glaciers to leave a nasty little serrated ridge of shattered rock. No great problem: you just have to haul all the pulks up one side, secure them with ice screws, then lower them over the other side, down a 10 metres vertical cliff of collapsing masonry. All good fun, but it took four hours before we could get down to a good campsite on the upper König Glacier.
We had been extraordinarily lucky with the weather, but the system was changing and I assumed that on Day Five our luck was going to run out. I was dreading a dodgy descent, groping our way down in wet snow and thick cloud. But not a bit of it! We woke to sunshine, a sprinkling of fresh powder on a frozen crust, and mist lifting from the lower glacier. Descending the König was a glorious long sunny trundle, with nine people weaving their pulks back and forth in elegant S bends. (Why is pulking not a Winter Olympic sport!?) And, best of all there was snow all the way to the beach and the huge König Lake was frozen solid, for perfect flat smooth pulking, as we returned to the sound of breaking surf, chattering terns and trumpeting penguins.
Our high level alternative to the Shackleton Traverse was one of the best ski tours I have done. If only they had had skis and a map in 1916, they should have gone this way!
Pictures by Stephen Venables
