South Orkney Islands

Antarctica's South Orkney Islands saw a summer whiteout when I arrived. I love photographing wildlife in the snow, so I was stoked to be there. This was my favorite day of the monthlong trip.

Adelie penguins carefully pick their way down snow-covered rocks to reach the water. Penguins are pretty stumbly. They try their best not to faceplant, but the slippery snow made it trickier.

The South Orkney Islands lie 375 miles northeast of the Antarctica Peninsula where we would eventually make landfall. But I was thrilled to soak in this magnificent and wild scenery. Like most places we went, we didn't see another human being.

Granite towers and icebergs rise out of the Southern Ocean. The scenery was unreal.

You can see annual layers of snow stacked in this ancient iceberg the size of several city blocks.

The penguin colony sat atop a high rocky bluff. The birds had to scamper down a steep boulder pile to reach the beach. And to reach the colony, we had to scamper up the rocks.

At the colony, I saw this lonely penguin climb to the edge of a rocky promontory as if surveying his polar kingdom. He was just looking for a shortcut and decided to take a safer route.

It was late December when we reached the South Orkney Islands — early summer in Antarctica. But the snowstorm provided an authentic polar experience. The squall only lasted a short time, but it was so much fun. The next day we continued south to the peninsula where we would see more Adelies and chinstrap penguins.

Explorers named the South Orkneys for the chain of islands in Scotland. There is also a nearby chain called the South Shetland Islands because explorers had no imagination in the 1800s.

A penguin uses his little flippers for balance like a tightrope walker to keep from faceplanting.

The bottom of a penguin's foot is studded like a snow tire to provide traction on slippery rocks. But this little penguin wasn't taking any chances.

An elephant seal pup investigates our survival gear. Once I made it safely back down to the the beach, our tour leader, an accomplished wildlife photographer, urged me to go back to the top where she had seen sleeping seals and penguins covered in snow. I saw her stunning photos and she was not wrong. They were phenomenal. But taking on the treacherous rockpile again in the snow seemed like pressing my luck.

Instead, I contented myself on the beach, photographing Adelies picking their way through the boulders. And this Adelie caught midstep in the falling snow turned out to be my favorite shot on a day that I will not soon forget in the South Orkney Islands.