Annie Lu, Retracing Shackleton's Steps at Cape Royds (TRAVEL 2024)

Antarctic history is about exploration, with many infamous tales of tragedy scattered among rare success stories. On this trip, we travelled along West Antarctica and landed at Cape Royds to see Shackleton's hut. Our landing was made on a grey, snowy day with some excited greetings from the local Adelies, but we got a small sample of the temperamental, harsh Antarctic climate on the way back as we hit a sudden whiteout so bad that we could not find our ship. Through the poor visibility and white fog of blizzarding snow, we outpopped the Adelies that greeted us, which we eventually followed back to the ice's edge of our landing spot. The Adelies stood by and watched us load our Zodiacs to return to the ship. It was a very unique type of local hospitality. One that early explorers like Shackleton would have experienced on his Antarctic journey.

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