Inside Antarctica's Most Exclusive Camp: $88K for a Week on a Glacier

Three Glaciers Retreat costs $87,975 per person for seven days. It sits at the intersection of the Driscoll, Schanz, and Schneider glaciers in the Heritage Range of the Ellsworth Mountains, deep in the interior of Antarctica, at the base of Mount Sporli. The camp accommodates a maximum of 16 guests at a time across eight suites. A private chef prepares original dishes with fresh ingredients flown in from Chile. It is the only luxury camp in Antarctica that offers ensuite hot showers, with water supply sourced from glacier snow that is gathered, melted, and heated through a custom-built shower facility.

This is not a cruise ship that passes by the Antarctic Peninsula while guests watch from a heated observation deck. This is sleeping on the ice, at the intersection of three glaciers, in one of the most remote locations accessible to civilian travelers.

Getting There

The journey to Three Glaciers Retreat begins in Punta Arenas, Chile, the southernmost city of any significant size in the Americas. From there, a charter flight crosses the Drake Passage to Union Glacier Camp, the main logistics hub operated by Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions (ALE), the company that runs Three Glaciers. The flight takes approximately four and a half hours, depending on weather conditions over the Drake.

From Union Glacier, a scenic fifteen-minute flight by small aircraft delivers guests to the retreat itself. The total transit from Punta Arenas to Three Glaciers is approximately five hours of flying, weather permitting. The “weather permitting” caveat is non-trivial. Antarctic weather can ground flights for days. Flexibility in travel dates is not a luxury but a requirement.

ALE has been operating logistics in Antarctica since the early 1980s, supporting scientific expeditions, mountaineering teams, and more recently, luxury travel experiences. The infrastructure at Union Glacier includes a blue-ice runway capable of handling large aircraft, accommodations for transit passengers, and the operational base from which Three Glaciers and other ALE expeditions are supported.

The Accommodations

Eight sleeping suites, each heated by high-efficiency Toyostove heaters. Three suites feature king beds. Five suites feature two extra-long twin beds. The bed frames are constructed from white oak and walnut. The mattresses are described by ALE as “dreamy” (a subjective term, but one that suggests the camp has invested in sleep comfort to a degree unusual for a facility 600 miles from the nearest permanent structure). Sateen sheets. Down duvets covered in vintage linen.

Each suite includes a cozy sitting area and a private patio with unobstructed views of the polar landscape. “Unobstructed” in this context means there is nothing between you and the horizon in any direction except ice, rock, and sky. The view from the patio is the Antarctic interior in its most undisturbed form. No other camp. No research station. No evidence of human presence beyond the eight suites around you.

The ensuite shower situation deserves elaboration because it’s the detail that separates Three Glaciers from every other Antarctic camp. Snow is gathered from the surrounding glacier, transported to the shower facility, melted using a heating system, and delivered as hot water to the suites. The process is resource-intensive and logistically complex, which is why no other Antarctic camp offers it. Guests at competing camps (including ALE’s own Union Glacier Camp) use shared facilities with limited hot water. Three Glaciers treats the shower as a non-negotiable amenity.

The Dining

A private chef creates original dishes using ingredients flown in from Chile on the same aircraft that delivers guests and supplies. The menu changes daily. The dining suite and lounge provide communal spaces where the camp’s maximum of 16 guests eat together, creating an intimacy that larger expeditions can’t replicate.

The library, stocked with polar exploration literature and photography books, provides a space for quiet time between activities. The combination of dining suite, lounge, and library creates a social architecture that mirrors a private lodge more than a base camp.

The Activities

Experienced guides design personalized daily adventures based on weather conditions, guest fitness levels, and the specific interests of the group. The activity menu includes snowmobiling across glacier terrain, hiking to viewpoints that overlook the convergence of the three glaciers, climbing rocky ridges for Antarctic summit experiences, and skiing down powder slopes that have never been commercially accessed.

Every activity is guided. The Antarctic interior is a wilderness environment where temperatures drop well below -20°C, winds can exceed 50 knots, and whiteout conditions can develop rapidly. The guides are experienced Antarctic operators who manage safety while enabling guests to access terrain that feels genuinely unexplored.

Environmental Operations

Three Glaciers Retreat is primarily solar powered. Generators are used only during extended cloud cover periods. The high-efficiency Toyostoves that heat the suites minimize fuel consumption. ALE operates under the Antarctic Treaty System’s environmental protocols, which require all waste to be removed from the continent and prohibit any permanent structures or environmental modifications.

The camp is assembled each Antarctic summer season (roughly November through January) and disassembled at the end of the season. When guests are not present, the site returns to undisturbed glacier. The temporary nature of the camp is both an environmental commitment and part of the experience: you are staying in a place that exists for only a few months each year and then disappears entirely.

The Price in Context

$87,975 per person for seven days works out to approximately $12,568 per night. That number is staggering in absolute terms, but the experience has no direct comparable. The nearest analog is a private charter expedition to the Antarctic interior, which typically costs $100,000 to $250,000 per person for similar duration and access. Three Glaciers packages the logistics, accommodations, dining, and guided activities into a single fare that includes round-trip flights from Chile.

For travelers who have exhausted the expedition cruise circuit (Galapagos, Arctic, Antarctic Peninsula, Norwegian fjords) and want something that exists outside the category of “cruise,” Three Glaciers Retreat represents the most remote, most exclusive, and most deliberately designed luxury camp on Earth. Sixteen guests. Eight suites. Three glaciers. One of the last places where the act of being there is the entire point.