According to the rare-earth hypothesis, there is a strict set of conditions that allows life on earth to succeed. Imagine our planet was moved a few inches from its current path: the factors that keep us alive would be changed enough to drastically alter the earth into a dusty orbiting rock. Even within the comforts of our atmosphere life is sensitive and vulnerable. This is the case in the severe climates of the poles, and it’s why there are not a lot of people living on the islands off the coast of Antarctica.

On one such island it’s not only cold, but it’s illegal to make a landing without papers, so there truly is no one there. But say you are interested in going there, and all the correct forms are filed, and you’re approved, and you’ve registered with the captain of the ice-busting  “Polar Bird” and paid your way, even then you would only be granted a few days’ access.

You’ll need to spend each night on the boat because there are no man-made anythings on the island. And everything you bring to land must be collected and brought back off the island. These are some of the reasons why no one has ever come to surf here and why it could be a long time until anyone does. But beyond these difficulties lies an island so mysterious and so furious that it would gray even the most colorful arctic surf fantasies.

The island, which is about the size of Martha’s Vineyard combined with Nantucket Island, has 17 known sandy and reefy point breaks.  The proposed names for these breaks, starting from the northern tip of the island and going clockwise, are: Cosmic Lefts, The Cove, The Station, The Sledge, Prometheus, Quasar Reef, Numbs, Ninnies, Noobs, The Spit, He-Man, Doom Reef, Leviathan Left, The Terminal, Frosties, Pod, and Gandalf.

While I’m not sure if armchair naming of breaks is allowed — someone told me that I have to be the first to surf it to name it — I feel like having these names establishes the breaks in our minds and on the map and brings them out of the abstract, all of which they rightly deserve. There are a few waves that look to be some of the biggest waves on the planet, and one or two lefts that are longer than G-land.

There may be a profundity of waves in a small area, but it doesn’t change the reality of how unfriendly this place is. It is rare to see anyone here. Mankind on this cold and hostile rock is like volcanic lava flows mingling with glacial terminals. What I mean is the two are very different things, and when they come into contact with each other the stronger always wins. So if mankind naturally gravitates toward a strict set of conditions in which life is comfortably preserved (which he does), then why the fascination with such severe and deadly beauty?

Iceland: Every day roughly 65,387 flights are coming and going from the capital city of Reykjavík. These planes ferry bankers, economists, tourists, musicians, writers, politicians, farmers, craftsmen, builders, scientists, and psychologists back and forth between the home island and separate lands.

Desolation Island: there are no flights to Desolation Island. No one has ever landed here, ever! And there are no cities. The only representation of mankind is a small outpost of nomadic scientists studying the island’s biological profundities, like the wingless butterfly. Desolation Island is one of the most remote places on earth – not to mention one of the most difficult to get to – and yet it has a few things in common with Iceland.

Both of these islands are geological masterpieces. They have a bunch of fjords, glaciers, and tons of treeless ice-scapes. If you look at a picture of the two side by side you might easily mistake one for the other. Also, Iceland is close to the 50º latitude, while Desolation is close to the 50º latitude, south. The island is stowed away in the Furious Fifities, a vast conveyor belt of meteorological monstrosities located in the southern hemisphere. Giant sea storms rage here unobstructed and free of continental road blocks. When storms descend on the island it’s with velocity. Desolation Island is the Iceland of the south, but wilder, less elvish, and more defiant. No one has ever surfed here. But like Iceland, pack your hoods and booties, because there’s surf.

As I think some more about Desolation Island, I wonder what it’s actually like to surf there. What’s it actually like? And what are the chances that I’ll see a photo of Dane Reynolds throwing fins there like he did that time back in Iceland when he was wearing a tweed overcoat and a bus-full of famous surfers almost slipped off an icy cliff?

The fact of the matter is, getting to the cold is all about cash. It will take the resources and interest in sending four professional surfers to the bottom of the world. But who’s going to go to an island with no airports and only a handful of gravel roads and the first nazi grave from World War 2?

Wherever there’s money, there’s people. Surfing is not about people, it’s about no people surfing good waves. And its also about money, so that no people surfing good waves equals lots of money. Therefore I conclude, the time it will take to see a photo feature of someone shredding Desolation Island is the time it will take to surf all the other unsurfed places on this planet that are less expensive and more easily accessed. Until then we can only imagine the island’s picnic basket of icy Uluwatus peeling off into the sunset with no one there but nomadic scientists and wingless butterflies.

An aerial fly-over reveals some of the long-held secrets of the antarctic continents. From this particular archive I was able to find images of waves on some of the most astounding coastlines. Take for example the left-breaking wave above, peeling along a sandbank deposited by glacial water melting off the glacier’s terminus into the antarctic ocean.

Photos by Cyril Szakolczai.