This Antarctica expedition served as an important reminder of the power of nature

That same afternoon, we descend into a snow cave discovered by accident the previous season when a snowplough fell through a crevasse. The entrance is small, then the cave opens up, almost cathedral-like. The walls are covered in crystalline formations grown through desublimation—the process by which gases skip the liquid phase entirely and become ice; in this case, producing geometric structures the size of your palm, architecturally immaculate, growing in silence in the dark.

On the evening of day three, we board a Twin Otter and fly to Whichaway, low enough to the ground to see the details of the landscape unfurl beneath us in minute detail: sastrugi, the features that form when the wind erode the snow; ice ridges; the occasional nunatak silhouetted against the last of the amber light. When we land 35 minutes later, we’re in a different Antarctica altogether.

Where Echo is alpine and extreme, Whichaway occupies rocky ground closer to the coast, lower in altitude, softer in temperature and temperament. The pods are larger, with private shower suites and a conservatory section that extends the living space towards the view. There’s also a central hub with the warmth of a particularly distinguished ski lodge: thoughtfully dressed, generously lit, serviced by an astoundingly ambitious kitchen. The camp may be 5,000 km from the nearest city, but guests here expect—and pay for— excellence, and excellence they shall receive.

Whichaway features its own version of a wellness ritual now found in spas from Shoreditch to Sentosa: the sauna and cold plunge. It is particularly breath taking, in both senses of the word, to undergo this ritual in a manmade bath, surrounded by the world’s largest natural ice bath. Each morning, the plunge tub would be sealed beneath a fresh crust of ice; it is both absurd and quietly ceremonial to break through it with your bare hands before lowering yourself into water that is both shocking and revelatory.

The blizzard came three days into our stay—or perhaps four; time becomes elastic when you cannot see more than ten metres beyond the pod window and the wind almost reaches registers inaudible to the human ear—and with it, the dissolution of our itinerary. We had known nothing was concrete; Ryan Brown, White Desert’s head of marketing and experience, had said to us earlier in the week: “Mother Nature is really in charge here. She’s calling the shots.” We weren’t entirely surprised, therefore, when our planned trip to the South Pole had to be called off. It still stung—to have travelled all that way, to be so close, and miss out at the last moment. We didn’t see the emperor penguins either; we were there at the season’s end and the colonies had moved on.

But we did manage to see the Blue River—and that might have been, perhaps, the most quietly staggering experience imaginable.

Five kilometres east of Whichaway, the terrain shifts from rocky outcrop to glacial shoreline, where crampons go on and the guides lead you in groups of three across what they call “the waves”: frozen ridges of blue-grey ice that rise and fall like a sea arrested in time.

After two and a half hours, you arrive at a river system of improbable turquoise blue, set against the stark white of the glaciers, a combination so striking as to appear almost alien. It’s also almost impossibly silent, the only sounds being the occasional breath of wind or the human- caused disturbances such as when one of our group put a foot through a thin section of ice.

Travel to Antarctica requires an infrastructure of stunning complexity. For its part, White Desert has a staff member whose sole responsibility is sourcing ice and melting it into drinking water.

There are mechanics, engineers, doctors, physiotherapists, pilots. Each season, the operation produces 22,000 meals, most
of them partially prepared and frozen in advance. Echo’s new solar farm generates more electricity than the camp can consume. All waste— human, culinary, consumable—is removed from the ice. Nothing stays. The company has been carbon neutral since 2007 and was the first Antarctic operator to trial sustainable aviation fuel.

“We’re really a logistics company with a hospitality problem,” Brown tells us, laughing at a phrase that has apparently become a kind of house motto. But perhaps “compulsion” is a better word than “problem”—this is a group of people dedicated to showing this incredible place to visitors, and ensuring every moment spent on the seventh continent is awe-inspiring and unforgettable; the sort of staff that, when the blizzard comes and the South Pole disappears from the schedule, look you in the eye and say: “We’ll find something better.” And then, improbably, they do.

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