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FIVE IRISH EXPLORERS were recuperating this Christmas after a month-long expedition to the remote sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia.
Kerry men Mike O’Shea, Seanie Murphy and Aidan Forde, Cork woman Clare O’Leary and Keith McDonnell from Meath, along with New Yorker Tom Ruane, set off in mid-November on a 28-day mission to retrace the steps of Ernest Shackleton.
The journey was organised to mark the centenary of the Irish adventurer’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, an ill-fated attempt to cross the Antarctica from sea to sea.
Shackleton’s plan didn’t quite work out, as you might have heard: the crew were forced to abandon their ship after it was crushed in the ice, and ended up setting up camp on Elephant Island, off the coast of Antarctica.
From there, Shackleton, fellow Irish explorer Tom Crean and four others then set out across open waters to seek help in South Georgia, some 1,300 kilometres away.
O’Shea, who also crossed the Greenland ice cap last year, said the group had planned to trek the same route taken by Shackleton to reach the Stromness Bay whaling station.
However, at 15 degrees Celsius, the weather was too warm to risk travelling through snow.
“It would usually be about minus 15 degrees,” O’Shea said.
The warm weather meant there was snow avalanching all around us, so we changed course to Possession Bay, a crossing that’s only been done once before.
The route was not without its challenges: as far as half a mile inland, they faced ankle-biting fur seals that could (and often did) chase them at high speeds.
“It was breeding season at the time, so they were very territorial,” O’Shea explained.
Ice cap challenges
When the team stopped off to take shelter at the Gritvyken settlement, where Shackleton was buried after his death in 1922, they bumped into a familiar face.
Without any introduction, Jonathan Shackleton, a great-nephew of Ernest, asked O’Shea if he was Irish.
I had never met him before but we had spoken over phone and email for over 20 years.
“I couldn’t believe we were finally getting to meet in South Georgia of all places,” O’Shea said.
The expedition, for him, was the latest in a series of ice cap challenges, known as the Ice Project.
He and O’Leary have already climbed Kilimanjaro, crossed the frozen Lake Baikal in Siberia, completed the Greenland crossing, walked Antarctica and trekked the North Patagonian ice field in southern Chile.
But this last trip was among the most challenging, with stormy weathers tossing the group around almost constantly as they sailed through iceberg-strewn waters back to the Falkand Islands, their last stop before returning home, O’Shea said.
I’m not in any particular hurry to return.
Mike O’Shea is giving away a limited edition bottle of South Georgia whiskey, among other items, to raise money for the ISPCC and Childline. For more information, and to donate, click here.
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Life isn’t a long enough sentence for such brutality
true.
Perchance, are you Russian?
The lifestyles exposed in this heinous crime should be a wakeup call to society in general.
To allow this sick violent sub culture to continue in any community is a sure recipe for a collapse in any form of decency. Locking these criminals in jail is fine but the seed bed they grow out of is alive and thriving despite this .
Community activists and politicians should concentrate their energies is engaging with families where initial signs of engaging in professional crime is evident. Humanity is not designed to live in savagery.
Everybody deserves an opportunity to live a secure peaceful happy existence. It behoves all to try and ensure that this is given.
@John, you could be talking about criminals or politicians with that post!! Well said though.
John,
Now is the perfect time where limk is concerned, all the leaders are in jail, all that is left are headless chickens.
People who only got involved to pretend that they’re hard or to get some power.
Raise their self esteem and they are on the path to goodness. It really is not that difficult with the right task force.
We need to reintroduce capital punishment.
Otherwise human life will continue to be regarded as very cheap by the criminals who control areas of our cities.
Capital punishment doesn’t work, it’s just a crude form of revenge. What happens if new evidence emerges in a murder case which casts doubt on the conviction? What then? In cases like this, is it not better to let them sit in prison for the rest of their lives, in the certain knowledge that they have wasted their time on this planet and will now never amount to anything but a statistic?
We’ll have to leave the EU and UN then..No great loss on either.
Dundon was listening to 1999 by prince on his headphones.
I was screamin’ when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray
But when I woke up this mornin’
Could of sworn it was judgment day
My face was all purple
All my people rattin’ everywhere
Tryin’ to run from the destruction
You know you wouldn’t even dare
‘Cause they say two thousand zero thirteen
Party over, oops out of time
So Limerick’s gonna party like it’s 1999
etc……….
I’d say all 3 of these “credible” witnesses would grass their mothers up if it was to their own benefit,
sure paul,
it worked, he’s off the streets.
The Ultimate Gutter Cleaner & a family that could eat their young!
Rot you piece of skum dundon
They should of hung him in limerick town and left him there for all too see
Once he’s off the scene a new bunch of thugs will take over and reign terror.
These thugs are waiting in the wings to take over and make their mark.
Interesting ?, red thumbs when you correct your grammer. Must be serially red thumbers :-)
Have another cup of coffee there will ya. It’s a bit early for all this lark.
.
“Grammar”
have your say