Encountering pack ice is a fact of life on any expedition to the Antarctic. Robert Falcon Scott in the Discovery had to navigate through it. So did Roald Amundsen in the Fram. For Ernest Shackelton it meant the end of the planned expedition and the beginning of one of the greatest survival stories of polar exploration. His ship, the Endurance, was trapped and eventually sunk by the ice.

Each winter millions of square miles of ocean surrounding the Antarctic continent freeze solid. With the warming of spring it breaks up into loose pack ice. An expedition ship must on occasion navigate through the pack by following leads of open water. Today, as the Caledonian Star navigated the waters on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula, we encountered several miles of pack ice. Our expedition leader, Tom Ritchie, climbed to the crow's nest to look for leads and radioed directions to the captain on the bridge. It was not all open water and so we had to push through some of the pack. With her ice-strengthened hull, our ship cut her own path as passengers snapped photos from the bow. The sense of adventure was with us when we were able to launch our Zodiacs close to shore and make a landing. Our reward at the end of the afternoon was a close up encounter with tens of thousands of nesting Adelie penguins on Paulette Island.