Beat the Crowds. Antarctica Now. (Cont'd.)

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Outside Magazine November 2001

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Beat the Crowds. Antarctica Now. (Cont'd.)

ANI FLIES ITS CLIENTS directly to the barren interior of the continent, and it has opened the region to a new kind of visitor: the unaffiliated, private-sector adventurer, who operates independent of a government or agency. Until ANI came along, it took an Edmund Hillary or a Reinhold Messner to organize an overland expedition in Antarctica. Now all you need is a checkbook, and this fact does not sit well with Antarctica's officialdom.

"We're concerned about the impact [tourism] may have on the science we're doing now," says Joyce Jatko, environmental officer at the National Science Foundation, the government agency that administers the U.S. Antarctic Program. "And we're very concerned about the disruptive effect that search-and-rescue operations can have on our people."

Who saves whose butt on the ice has been a hot topic since 1979, when an Air New Zealand DC-10 on a sight-seeing flight plowed into the side of Mount Erebus, killing all 257 aboard and interrupting research at nearby McMurdo Station for several months. It came up again in 1985, when a three-man British team retracing Scott's 1912 South Pole route learned that its support ship had been crushed in the ice at McMurdo Sound. Though the group had a Cessna standing by, the NSF forcibly "rescued" the skiers, refusing to let them use the NSF's radio to summon their own plane. Afterward, Peter Wilkniss, then director of the U.S. Antarctic Program, famously told the Britons, "There is no place in the Antarctic for adventures such as yours anymore."

But the adventurers kept on. Many of them, supported by ANI, have met with success. In the summer of 19891990, Messner and a German partner, Arved Fuchs, became the first to ski all the way across the continent, traversing from the Ronne Ice Shelf to McMurdo in 92 days. Seven years later, Norwegian superman Børge Ousland did the same trip solo in 64 days. These guys didn't hit any snags, but others, like the Norwegian expedition that lost a skier in a crevasse in Queen Maud Land in 1993, have called on the U.S. bases for help.

"There was bad weather, and our pilots were there for the better part of a week," Jatko recalls. "They not only put themselves at risk to try to save that guy, but the whole thing put a real strain on our support schedule that season."

Technically, Antarctica still belongs to skiers as much as anyone. The treaty prohibits armed soldiers, but doesn't say anything else about who can or can't visit. In the wake of the Environmental Protocol, though, a wall of regulation is slowly being erected. If you're a U.S. citizen, for instance, and you want to ski across Antarctica, you or your guide are legally obliged to file an impact assessment with the Environmental Protection Agency at least 90 days before you depart. The EPA passes all such assessments on to the NSF for joint review. Even a sailor anchored off the peninsula who wants to go ashore for a stroll has to file, and if he wants to brew up a cup of coffee while he's there, he'd better be armed with more paperwork.

"A camp stove?" Jatko says. "That's hazmat."

The result for ANI: a mountain of red tape that takes a full month out of its business year. "We seem to want to block free spirits," laments Anne Kershaw, the dynamic 41-year-old president of ANI. "And I'm not sure why."

Kershaw, a petite, determined Scot, took the helm of ANI in 1992, not long after her husband, Giles, one of the founders, died in the wreck of an experimental gyrocopter. Since then the former flight attendant has remarried (to Doug Stoup, 37, a filmmaker and snowboard mountaineer), given birth to a son, and kept ANI in the game by running such a clean shop that even the NSF grants it begrudging respect. In the last ten years, ANI's air service has expanded from one plane and 40 passengers per season to four planes, 150 passengers, and annual revenues of more than $3 million. The company attracted the attention of Grand Expeditions, a Boca Raton, Floridabased luxury travel consortium, which bought ANI in April 2000 for an undisclosed sum. (Both companies are privately held.) "We identified ANI as a best-in-class operator," says Grand Expeditions president Bob DeVries of the purchase. "It is a highly profitable organization."

Yet as concern over Antarctic tourism mounts, it's unclear whether ANI will be able to expand its operations. Kershaw, who continues to run the company, will have to overcome a perception that her clients are just rich dilettantes who don't deserve Antarctica, along with a lingering territoriality among those who've had the place to themselves for 50 years. As Hillary once told British author Sara Wheeler, "My experience has been that the scientific community in Antarctica regard it as their property and bitterly resent any outsiders venturing there."

Which isn't to say ANI lacks for potential allies. "I feel the climbing and adventure community does not fully realize how lucky we are to have ANI, allowing us to get down there for our high times," says Skip Horner, 53, a mountaineering guide from Victor, Montana. "If they stop, there will be no access to the Antarctic interior other than the stodgy ol' NSF. More of us ought to realize this, take advantage of ANI, and support it."

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