Atop the Devil

Canon 7D, 17-40f4L @ 17mm, 1/3200th, @f9.0, ISO 200, handheld

Finally, we found the sun. It took two days of bashing through broken sea ice and trying to make up time in areas of open water, but we finally made it to the Antarctic Peninsula. Our first landing was on Paulet Island, a speck of rock north and east of the mainland and tucked up against the glaciated dome of Dundee Island. Paulet is a remarkable place where 100,000 or so Adelie Penguin pairs make their nests. There are penguins atop the icebergs that surround the island, they climb up and down the snowy slopes like ants, and fill the edges of the sea ice. It was sunny, warm, and a near-perfect day. And I got just about nothin' photographically.

Well that isn't entirely true, there are a few keepers in there, but nothing that really excited me. But I was in Antarctica and that alone made up for the fruitless hours with my camera.

That's why, for the time being at least, I'm skipping over Paulet Island and moving straight on to day 2 on the Antarctic Peninsula where we first visited Devil Island. This little visited island in the Weddell Sea is home to a few thousand Adelies, Skuas, Sheathbills and the other mishmash of Antarctic wildlife, but it is the scenery that makes the place.

Devil Island is tucked into a steep-sided cove of the heavily glaciated Vega Island and its summit rises some 1000 feet above the surrounding water. It is a remarkable place that made me wish for a sea kayak to explore the glassy waters. Instead I climbed.

With a handful of others I scrambled up the scree slopes to the taller of the island's two summits. From the summit ridge sprouts the pinnacle of the rotten stone in the picture above. Ted Cheeseman, the expedition leader and Ross Hofmeyr the ship's doctor went for a scramble to the top and I snapped a few images as they stood atop it.

Had I known that that glaring sun would be almost the last we'd see during our time on the continent, I'd have spent more time appreciating it.