Hardwear Sessions

Like all of my previous expeditions it has been an incredible joy being out on the ocean with kayaks. While I like using adventure to draw people into our stories and films about oceans and coastlines I also simply like being out on the sea, separated from the ocean by just an inch of carbon fiber and Kevlar. That feeling of connectedness with the sea is perhaps even more real here on the Southern Ocean than anywhere else I've been with the water temperature hovering just above the freezing mark, big sea creatures swimming all around you and giant icebergs standing out against the horizon like floating cairns.

It is impossible not to be stunned, nearly silenced, by the incredible beauty that is all around. Icebergs. Tens-of-thousands-year-old glaciers. Tall granite mountains. A sun that never quite sets. Even the fierce storms are beautiful in their rawness. It is a place to both admire and respect. Especially respect, since left alone out here, minus a stove and warm tent, and you'd have a hard time lasting one night.

By Antarctic standards we lucked out when it came to weather. For more than two weeks we've seen almost entirely blue skies and sunshine. Our lips are peeling, faces sun-browned. Typically here, no matter the season, you get that kind of day once or twice a week but our blue-sky days have been lining up one after the other after the other. According to the weather report, which we download every morning by satellite, northerly winds are on the way almost guaranteeing grey, wet skies. With that knowledge, we luxuriate on our private ice flow this day as long as possible.

Standing on its edge with powerful binoculars, careful not to stray too close to the floe's fragile edge, all I can see for two miles is ice piled upon ice. The floating pack ice pretty quickly abuts fast ice - still frozen in one sheet to land - which runs up to the edge of tall, blue glaciers, which have slid down from the tops of mountain peaks.

While the sights are nearly impossible to describe, so are the sounds of Antarctica. In the sea to my right, on an amazingly warm (45 degree F) day, a small chunk of clear ice crackles. It is the sound of ice melting in the sun, which may be the most common sound heard along the Peninsula this year and in those to come if scientists studying here are correct in their predictions that global climate change is coming first to Antarctica.

In such a remote, quiet place it's easy to stop and tune in to the sounds that surround. Melting ice is just one. The lightning crack of glaciers calving is the second most heard - and most frightening, since it is often followed by big waves emanating from wherever the falling ice has landed. The squawk of penguins is everywhere in the air, parents imprinting their bleating voices on chicks since soon they will not be able to pick them out of a crowd of ten thousand by sight, only by sound. The breathing of humpback whales as they surface is most often heard long before you spy them breaking the surface. But the almost ever-present sound of Antarctic is the wind blowing down off the continent, onto the glaciers and then over the sea, a constant reminder of what is the most powerful element down south.

This story also appeared, in a slightly modified form, on ABC's website.