Lee
8 podsShelter, then silence.
Our first camp, tucked on the lee side of a dark rock outcrop where the wind drops to a whisper.
72° 14′ S · 31° 08′ E1,480 m
Private field camps on the Antarctic plateau. Twenty guests at a time, flown in from Hobart between November and February.
72° 14′ S · 31° 08′ EWind 14 kn SE Scroll
Every ridge out here points the way the wind went. We teach you to read them.
01Field notes
Sastrugi are the ridges the wind carves into hard snow. They all point the same way, and a guide can cross a plateau by them alone. This is a journey about learning to see that.
Three small camps, never more than twenty guests on the ice, and a guide for every four of them.
Everything comes back out with us. The camps leave nothing behind but footprints, and the wind takes those.
Conditions at Lee Live
- Wind
- 0kn
- Katabatic, from the south-east
- Air
- 0°C
- Feels like −31 °C
- Sun elevation
- 0°
- Circling, never setting
- Daylight
- 0h
- Until 21 February
02Journeys
Four ways
onto the ice
Every journey is private, guided and flown from Hobart. Dates move with the weather; the camps wait for the right window.
The Wind Line
A guided crossing on foot through fields of sastrugi, with a night on the open plateau.
- Length
- 6 days
- Season
- Nov – Dec
- From
- US $68,000
Emperor Coast
Days on the sea ice beside an emperor colony in the weeks the chicks first stand alone.
- Length
- 8 days
- Season
- November
- From
- US $84,500
Ninety South
All three camps and a flight to the geographic South Pole on the calmest day of the window.
- Length
- 9 days
- Season
- Dec – Jan
- From
- US $121,000
One Long Day
Hobart to the ice and back between breakfast and midnight, with lunch on blue ice at Lee.
- Length
- 1 day
- Season
- All season
- From
- US $18,900
03The season
Four months
of daylight
The camps open when the sun stops setting and close when it starts again. Drag through the season to see how the ice changes.
- Month
- November
- Sun at noon
- 12°
- Mean air
- −26 °C
Chicks on the sea ice
Emperor chicks leave their fathers' feet for the first time. The coast is still frozen hard and Blue Hollow opens for the season.
“On the fourth day our guide stopped, knelt and ran her glove along a ridge. Home is that way, she said. I have never felt so small, or so looked after.”
04Three camps
Three
camps,
twenty beds
Each camp sits where the wind allows. Pods of fabric and ash, warm inside, gone without a trace at the end of the season.
Spindrift
6 podsWhere the wind begins.
Six pods on the open plateau, with nothing between you and the horizon in every direction.
75° 02′ S · 34° 51′ E2,900 m
Blue Hollow
6 podsThe ice turned to glass.
A basin of polished blue ice near the coast, a short flight from the emperor colony.
70° 41′ S · 28° 19′ E310 m
Ash, wool and one round window. Inside, it is always 19 °C.
05The crossing
Breakfast
in Hobart
Lunch on blue ice.
- Flight time
- 04:50 HRS
- Distance
- 3,420 KM
- Runway
- Blue ice, 3 km
