antarctica

Kensington Tours Offers Antarctic Adventure

If the hot summer has you dreaming of ice then this might be the time to book an adventure somewhere cold. Really cold. Kensington Tours has launched Kensington Antarctica, an exclusive luxury eco-camp offering once-in-a-lifetime trips to the heart of Antarctica's interior. The sustainable camp, perched on top of a 200 foot icefall, is the first of its kind. The camp has a zero impact policy meaning that there is carbon offsetting for flights, it is solar and wind powered, serves locally sourced food (well, semi-locally, the food comes from South Africa), and all waste is removed and dismantled every season. The main living area is comprised of two large, dome tents with a dining room, library, kitchen and communications area. The camp has only six sleeping tents, each one shared by two people. Gourmet meals are served by an acclaimed chef.

Experiences at the camp include kite skiing, rock and ice climbing, abseiling into crevasses, 4x4 adventures to the coastal ice barrier or to one of the science bases, a flight to the South Pole as well as access to a 12,000-strong colony of fearless Emperor Penguins and their hatchlings.

"Kensington Antarctica is a step forward in our mission to offer private travel to the entire world," says Jeff Willner, founder of Kensington Tours and an experienced explorer himself and a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. "Once the exclusive domain of explorers and scientists, Kensington Antarctica now gives amateur explorers the opportunity to see landscapes and wildlife at their most untouched with personalized service from experienced professionals and the comfort of a luxury camp."

The Antarctica season runs from late November through January when temperatures average a comparatively mild 23 degrees Fahrenheit. Trips cost from between $9,635 to $48,075 for a 12-day excursion.

Tags: adventure travel, antarctic travel, antarctica, kensington tours, travel

Shackleton's Whisky Unearthed For Testing Not Tasting

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Spirits

Last year I mentioned that a trove of spirits crates left by Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton under the floorboard of Shackleton's small wooden shack at Cape Royds in Antarctica had been unearthed. A crate of the Charles Mackinlay & Co. whisky has now been recovered and is being slowly thawed in New Zealand. Four crates were left in the ice and the one labeled Mackinlay's whisky is now at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island.

Handling 100-year-old whisky that has been subjected to such harsh conditions is no easy task. The crate has been carefully thawed in a controlled environment. Whyte & Mackay, the Scottish distillery that now owns the Mackinlay's brand, was behind the push to recover the whisky after it was discovered in 2006. It hopes to obtain for samples to test and potentially use to relaunch the defunct Scotch label. Although the whisky may be drinkable it will probably not be tasted. The museum has created a special website to keep the curious informed on the state of the project.

Tags: antarctica, charles mackinlay, shackleton, sir ernest shackleton, whisky, whyte and mackay

Unearthing Shackleton's Whisky

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Spirits

Old whisky can be found in some pretty amazing places. I've heard of it stashed in the walls of houses, buried under ground, and discovered in shipwrecks under the ocean. But the trove left by Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton might be the most unusual. Shackelton and his crew left two cases of Scotch whisky stashed under the floorboard of a small wooden shack at Cape Royds.

The whisky was discovered by conservators in January 2006. They were unable to get the crates out but will be trying again in January during the Antarctic summer. It's not known what shape the bottles of Charles Mackinlay & Co. whisky will be in after one hundred years of freeze and thaw. The crates and bottles will remain in Antarctica unless they need to be taken off the continent for conservation reasons.

Richard Paterson, master blender at Whyte & Mackay, the company that now owns the Mackinlay label, would like to be able to taste the whisky. He has a 1907 letter from Shackleton along with a photograph of the bottles' label. He tells the Global Post he would like to extract some by sticking a needle through the cork and taking out liquid with a syringe. If the corks remained intact the whisky could taste much like it did in Shackleton's day but if the corks were dislodged and oxygen got in the taste may have been compromised. If a bottle were to make it out of Antarctica and onto the open market it could fetch over $1,000 a bottle not as much for the taste but for the provenance.

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Tags: antarctica, sir ernest shackleton, SirErnestShackleton, whisky

Polar Library Up For Auction

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions

With global warming proceeding briskly along, a collected polar-themed library might be even more of a precious relic. On May 24 Swann Galleries in New York will auction off 160 items from the Polar Library of Dr. John M. Levinson, a past President of the Explorers Club, who has assembled an collection of works on Arctic and Antarctic exploration. One of the star lots in the auction is one of only 65 extant copies of the first book published in Antarctica, Ernest Shackleton's Aurora Australis, 1908. This copy of the book is known as the "Veal" copy because boards from a packing crate containing veal were used to create its cover. This book is inscribed to expedition member George Buckley and signed by Shackleton and others and estimated to sell for $50,000 to $75,000. Other lots include other books by Shackleton, a complete set of first editions of all three of James Cook's Voyages, in nine volumes, copies of The South Polar Times, the first Antarctic newspaper, edited by Shackleton, Louis Charles Bernacchi and Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Charles Swaine's rare Account of a Voyage of Discovery of a North-West Passage from 1748, a set of first editions of each of William E. Parry's four Voyages, and artifacts such as a message buoy used on the 1901-02 Baldwin-Ziegler Expedition to the North Pole via Franz Josef Land and silver and china from various expeditions.

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Tags: antarctica, arctic, book auction, explorers, polar library, PolarLibrary, rare books, shackleton

Burberry Endurance Watches

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Timepieces / Watches

You don't think of the Burberry set as being the rough-and-tumble crowd but their Endurance watches make a strong argument for manliness. It's not as big as the Hublot Big Bang, but at 42mm across the Burberry Expedition Antarctica Big Date is no shrimp. All the Endurance watches feature a map of the continent (buy now before global warming changes the landscape). This watch has a rubber wristband and a Swiss Ronda quartz movement with a big-date feature and sells for $475.

[via Time Zone]

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Tags: antarctica, burberry, men's watches, timepieces, watches, wristwatches