Cape Crozier, Ross Island, Antarctica; November 2008-January 2009

Everyone asks the same question: “Wasn’t it cold?”

Well, duh. Antarctica is Earth’s highest, driest, windiest, least-populated, southernmost, and, yep, coldest continent. Sure. It was freezing (actually, 20 below). But, as the saying goes, there is no bad weather, only bad clothing. While wearing 22 pounds of Extreme Cold Weather gear, I didn’t think about temperature too much, even while sleeping in an unheated tent.

My mind was more focused on penguins, apart from daydreaming about fresh iceberg lettuce. With two other researchers, I spent eight hours a day with more than a quarter million penguins. We stuck satellite tags on their backs, GPSed their nests, and generally followed them around, field notebooks in hand – though it was often hard to tell who was following who, since the penguins were fascinated by our presence.

At least the birds didn’t seem to care that we’d gone three months without bathing, unlike the helicopter pilot who picked us up at season’s end.

For more about The Ice, you can read an interview in the Washington Post, my article in National Wildlife Magazine, archived blog posts from Antarctica, or my book, Among Penguins, to be released by Oregon State University Press in spring 2011.