All Black Penguins?

Two years ago on the Antarctic Peninsula we stopped off at a Chilean science base on a wet, muddy afternoon. We stopped purposely searching for an all-white penguin we’d heard about from scientists on King George Island. It took a couple hours, but we found it. Devoid of pigmentation, something like an albino, the penguin was rare though the soldiers stationed at the base for the summer months told us there were three of them scattered around the island. Now comes a report, by National Geographic reporter Andrew Evans, of an all-black penguin. He spotted and photographed the even more unusual King penguin at Fortuna Bay on the subantarctic island of South Georgia. When Nat Geo reached out ...

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Aftershocks

For a scary look into the near-future of Chile (and all earthquake-prone locales worldwide), have a look at www.earthquakes.usgs.gov, which is tracking and posting an hour-by-hour count on continued tremors in Chile. Fifty minutes ago a 5.5 magnitude quake was registered at Libertador General Bernardo O’Higgins; six hours ago a 5.8 magnitude quake rolled under the Bio-Bio region; two days ago it was 6.6. just offshore Bio-Bio. These strong aftershocks are keeping hundreds of thousands of people both frightened and unwilling to sleep inside. Last November I ...

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Posted in News

Crossing Antarctica, Twenty Years Ago Today

It was twenty years ago today -- March 3, 1990 -- that my friend Will Steger and five international polar men completed what will forever be the most audacious crossing of Antarctica. Their Trans-Antarctica Expedition will last in Antarctica history for a variety of reasons: Its length and duration (3,741 miles in 221 days, requiring that it start in winter and end in winter). Because it was the last expedition by dog (dogs were outlawed the following year by an amendment to the Antarctic treaty). And its expense (upwards of $12 million). The book Will and I wrote about the ...

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Posted in Antarctica

Dam Earthquakes

For the past twenty years I’ve traveled to Chile nearly every year. I was initially drawn by the long, skinny country’s incredible wealth and variety of natural beauty: Super-dry deserts, the snow-peaked Andes, a wild, 3,000-mile long ocean coast, the bosque forests of the south, windy Patagonia and its southern icecap. (Lay Chile over the northern hemisphere and it would run from roughly Puerto Vallarta to Juneau, with all of the same landscapes). Both hemispheres share similar geology too. Of the ten most powerful earthquakes recorded, four have taken place in Chile, including the biggest ever, in 1960, registering 9.5 ...

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