Camp on the Murray Glacier. Photo: Peter Potterfield

Where the glacier finally played out just short of the beach, we set down loads and began working hard to get up tents. In the process, I kept trying to raise the ship, but since I couldn't see them in our bay yet, I knew we'd need to fend for ourselves for some hours. The team worked well still, with three people holding onto any given tent so that we didn't make a giant beach ball of them that could bound away in the wind. With the last rope safely in and the last tents going up, I brushed the rain off my sunglasses and peered around our gray little world. Yep, that was a herd of reindeer 200 feet away watching us cope (the Norwegians introduced them to the Island, they decided to stay after the whalers moved on). And yeah, those were a few hundred King Penguins standing by politely to one side, dressed to the nines. Those lumps on the beach were elephant seals and fur seals. None of these creatures seemed to think it was a particularly bad day. None of them was calling for Zodiacs. But I was. We wanted out.

All were safely in the tents and pulling out that final dry item or two when the guides and doctor Duncan had the stoves fired and hot water to pass out. I kept working the radio, calling every few minutes for the bridge of the Grigoriy Mikheev. A little time went by then, and I found myself thinking of how what we were doing absolutely did not compare to what Shackleton did. For one, he didn't face the prospect that Anne Kershaw would give him a Scottish yelling at if he screwed up. I did. He didn't have a ship to call in. I did. He didn't have a storm when he crossed. I did. He could always eat a penguin if he really needed to. I couldn't. He had men to rescue and a war to get back to. I didn't. He and his men were some of the toughest tourists of all time. We weren't. We wanted to see the scene of Ernest Shackleton's greatest triumph, we didn't want to die in that effort. I wanted a pick up.