Remembering the White Continent
The Amundsen centennial brings back Antarctic memories I recently wrote a post adding my modest homage to the extraordinary accomplishment of Norwegian Roald Amundsen to the South Pole a century ago. He could hardly have imagined that within a human lifetime, tourists too would be visiting Antarctica. Travel to “the white continent” started with the first [...]
Amundsen South Pole Centennial Today
Norwegian explorer reached the South Pole 100 years ago today Some “great races” undertaken today are reality-show “adventures” contrived for television. The competitors are accompanied by television crews recording the happenings. When Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole exactly a century ago, he won “the great race”– a real race – a month ahead of British [...]
Glaciers Up Close and Personal
Article about Argentina’s Perito Moreno Glacier stirs up my own memories of a hike down Switerland’s Great Aletsch Glacier (left). “A Touch of the Arctic in Argentina, ” a front-page feature about an Argentine glacier in today’s Denver Post (originally published in Newsday), set off a torrent of memories. The headline writer’s cavalier use of [...]
"Explorer" Goes Down
Yesterday’s two-part post on the expedition ship “Explorer’s” unfortunate encounter with an iceberg, or submerged ice, had an inevitable ending. Twenty or so hours after the ship hit the ice, she sank. I intentionally wrote “unfortunate” rather than “tragic,” because no one died and no one has been reported as having suffered more than hypothermia, [...]
"Explorer" Hits Iceberg en Route to Antarctica
When I posted the entry below a couple of hours ago, I wrote that I wouldn’t keep monitoring all the reports — but of course, I did. The New York Times web page includes an image of the red-hulled “Explorer” lying practially on her side in amid the ice floes in forbodingly gray water. The [...]
Antarctic Adventures Aboard ‘Berserk’
I was invited to be a guest blogger by my friend Rosemary Carstens who maintains an elegant quarterly E-publication and an equally elegant blog, both called Feast. She covers travel, art, food and books, which are passions we have in common. I wrote a review of Berserk, a wild tale of three mismatched shipmates (boatmates?) [...]
