There was a moment when I just wanted to lie in the snow and let the others leave me, but it would have been madness. We had lost our way in a blizzard and radioed for the position of the hut we were aiming at, but it was getting late; no more than three hours of daylight remained. The weather was worsening. Time had been lost walking in what we now suspected had been a great loop. That was becoming clear. So was the remedy; once our new course had been established, we would have to slog back through the blizzard.
But for just a moment I wondered if I could. I had been walking for seven hours. My backpack was heavy with the damned video- camera, batteries and tapes. We had sloshed through a moss bog, climbed 2,000ft, descended again, stumbled for miles across slippery black rocks, climbed another 1,000ft - and now this. The wind roared in my ears and the snow was coming sideways at gale force, stinging my cheeks, hissing into my hood and funnelling past my face to melt and trickle down my neck.
Not that I was cold. This has been a lesson learnt in these past five devastating, exhilarating days walking through the interior of the island of Kerguelen: you don't get cold walking in the sub-Antarctic, you get too hot; you sweat. Then, when you stop, you get cold. My head knew as much but the rest of me knew only that I had no strength left and that I was warm and that the snow was cool and soft. So soft. And I wanted to sleep.
The urge conquered, I struggled on. It had lasted for less than a minute and I would never have given in to it, but momentarily I had understood why exhausted people do mad things in the snow.
It was Wednesday when we set out. The morning had been spent packing and repacking rucksacks. Not all we would need had to be carried as, dotted across this island the size of Corsica, rudimentary huts - often just steel containers with doors - have been dropped by helicopter or landed from the sea. All contain drums of food and places to sleep. Thirst is almost the only problem which over-landing in Kerguelen does not throw at you. Millions of gallons of the sweetest water in the world gush from every mountainside, pour off every cliff, cascade down every gorge and sponge through the moss beneath your boots as you lurch, knee-deep across the bog.
Keeping dry is the challenge and I was well-equipped. But my boots were new and the patent waterproof gaiters untried. We had innumerable rivers to cross. Should I take Wellingtons as a spare? I could not manage the extra weight. But video-camera and batteries would have to come if I was to film for Channel 4's To the Ends of the Earth - and how could I keep all this dry? Much wrapping would do the trick but cost me agonising minutes every time I wanted to film - often at moments of exhaustion, surprise or crisis. I knew this would be a problem.
But, one way or the other, I was ready when, during one of those snowstorms which hurtle at you out of nowhere on Kerguelen, we four - Renaud the cat-tracker, Rémy the botanical researcher, Sylvèstre the hill-stormer and I - shook hands with the Civil Administrator and headed for the mountains. I was under-prepared, over-equipped and 50. They were fit, experienced and less than half my age. Did I worry? Hardly. I've no experience of being the slowest in the group. It hadn't ever happened before so why should it this time? But the new boot hurt my left heel.
I kept up, more or less. The snow yielded to sun as we traversed a waste of stone laced with deceptively deep bogs - and into the teeth of a fierce wind. Whenever I stopped to film, the wind would be loud in the mike, the views stunning - and it would take 15 minutes to catch up with the others. I was beginning to hobble. My companions were kind, waited, started helping me to film. Within a few hours we reached the mountains.
We entered a wide glacial valley, the Val Studer. To each side, cliffs of black rock, glittering in the late afternoon sun, rose like great, forbidding battlements. Waterfalls tipped down from their high edges, blown back into the sky in plumes of spray. The valley floor was a sodden moss mattress, atrocious walking. Water rose to our calves with each step. But this place was so beautiful and - hallelujah! - my feet stayed dry. A wide, shallow river ran down the valley, fringed at its banks with ice. Once, when we crossed it, we took off our boots and waded over, slippery rocks brushing bare feet. The water crept past my knees. The acute ache when I reached the middle approached my idea of leg-amputation without anaesthetic - but it was as far to go back.
These are not moments when you feel like reaching for the video- camera. Sometimes, though, I did. A vast, jagged, black cauldron, gouged from the side of the valley, into which streamed a waterfall 200ft high, rose to one side. A red-and-gold sunset marked the end of our day's walk. We had reached our first hut, a rusty, mouse-ridden container, but there was food, there were iron bunks, there was even a cylinder of butane gas. We radioed in to record our safe arrival, as all who venture beyond Port-aux-Français do at sundown, and we were given the weather forecast. The forecast is always the same: "A depression approaching from the west bringing high winds, snow or rain; after this clouds clearing before the next depression, approaching from the west, reaches the archipelago tomorrow. Temperature 0-4 degrees".
Gales buffeted our iron nest. My sleeping bag was warm enough - just. I slept heavily. We rose before dawn; a long day's walk, said Rémy. Even he did not know quite how long. At 7:30am we began the climb out of Val Studer, passing just beneath the 3,000ft peak of Mt Crozier. Not even my hurting heel could mar the glory of the morning. The whole valley now lit beneath us, streams tumbling by as we lurched up the black rocks.
At the top I told the camera that the worst of the day's climb was behind us. Fool. Across a rocky shoulder we stumbled, leaping rivulets. I saw three reindeer, spooky-white. Then Rémy pointed to the neck of Mt Crozier. We climb that, he said.
I was struggling to keep up. At the top I told the camera that the hardest part was behind us and this positively must be our highest point. It began to snow.
At about midday Renaud and Rémy consulted. Snow turned to horizontal hail, then sleet. "Now we contour the southern side of the Val de l'Ouest," said Renaud, "then we climb through a breach in that escarpment". I saw no breach. I saw a grim wall of black rock beneath which we must pick our way, across icy boulders topped with snow.
Sometimes I would fall as much as half a mile behind, but the others never let me out of sight. And we did get up through the cliff. On top, sleet now turned to blizzard as we sheltered behind a rock, trying with frozen fingers to eat ham and chew Mars bars too hard to dent. I told the camera that this was undoubtedly it. All downhill from here.
That was when we got lost. Our aim had been to walk along a narrow neck of the plateau we had now reached, with cliffs to each side. We had come up through one cliff. The slightest deviation (we later realised) would have led uselessly over to the other. And that is what happened, though at first without our knowing it. The snowstorm had grown so strong that we could no longer see where we were going. We began to descend. In this kaleidoscope of meteorological events you lose sense of what is coming from where - sense, almost, of up or down. Where were we?
Rescue in the interior of Kerguelen is a slow business. There is no plane or helicopter for a thousand miles and no roads. Everything away from the ocean must be taken on foot. But a good system for radio communication is in place and the base at Port-aux-Français would at least be able to offer us an exact position for our destination. We managed to make contact. I huddled with the others as we worked out where we had gone wrong and how to get back on course. This meant climbing up. That was my low point. "Ca va?" asked Renaud. Oh yes, I said. I was fine, just a bit slow. It never does to betray despair - not, anyway, until the last.
It was a long slog through the gale but I limped doggedly behind until, as fog cleared and light began to fade, we saw where we had to go: a wooden hut a thousand feet below, perched by an arm of sea reaching into our mountainscape. Relief came with gritted teeth; this would not be easy. My heel was giving me hell but though we had been walking now for 11 hours, confidence seeped back and with it that last scrap of energy you always think you don't have.
As we stumbled down through the dusk, something strange stole over me. A mood? A mental state? An imbalance of chemicals in the bloodstream? I do not know, but these unforgettable shifts come just occasionally in life, leaving as unaccountably as they arrive, yet for a while they alter perception. I can best compare it with the effect of LSD for no fiction is conjured up; some aspect of reality warps or magnifies; thrown into subtle relief. For me, a trick of the light assumed a kind of monstrous wizardry.
It was really quite dark now, with just a silver-grey pallor draining to the west. The fresh snow sucked this in and reflected it back with a soft luminosity. Beneath the snow the earth was black and such was the force with which the wind had driven the snow across that, to the lee of every rock and every pebble, a long black streak of bare earth stretched away like a shadow. These "shadows" were of a cruel intensity. The effect was absolutely uniform - all the wind shadows parallel. The impression on my exhausted mind was of a kind of enchantment. It was as though the whole landscape were caught: picked out in the glare of a celestial headlight, shining low and merciless across the ground: beamed from whence the wind came. We alone had no shadows. Were we not of this place?
I stopped. My spine pricked. Was I on some alien moon? No - and yes - I was on Kerguelen.
