there is plenty of area to land helicopters and make camp.
Sure, once you involve helicopters. I did not mean to argue otherwise. I agree with you there.
But helicopters jack up the risk and the expense in that part of the world as we recently learned from the last Bouvet expedition.
There is, I strongly suspect, the very real potential for a group who rely on helis to get stranded in a place like Peter I.
The last South Sandwich group had to take to their heels on very short notice because of ice conditions. The boat had to leave. They did get back, briefly, to pick up gear, but it was all very chancy and could have been worse. If they had a group ashore that could only evacuate with choppers, well, who knows what might have happened?
This is not a very nice area of the world. Those that pull off an expedition here, especially on the budgets we can assemble, have really done something.