December 15 – Preparing to Summit Vinson

Listen to Audio of Wally's Call (.wav)

Okay, Mountain Zone and Berg Adventures dispatch page viewers, it’s Monday, the 15th of December and I’m calling you from high camp on Mount Vinson, the saddle between Shinn and Vinson.

It’s 8:30pm, brilliant sunlight and conditions like I’ve never seen here before. Of course it’s cold but the air is still. You can never take anything for granted in the mountains. But we hope for this to last a little bit longer, my hunch is it will. Exceptionally stable weather.

We’re getting set up for a beautiful climb of Vinson tomorrow. It will be challenging. I expect it will take nine plus hours moving up and a number of hours to get down, but we are going to be on the top of Antarctica and it’s astounding.

I’m sitting right now, the beauty and the expanse from already this high elevation of 13 500 feet and I’m looking across this endless continent, white, barren but inspiring in it’s beauty.

We’ll be settling down tonight and in a little while trying to sleep in the midnight sun. Right now Will’s got the stove going and we’re getting ready for some tea and some dinner. Gus is experiencing a mild headache which is not a surprise, perhaps because of dehydration and or altitude.

So we’ll get the rest we can. We’re excited, we’ll try to settle down and get the rest we can and hopefully climb to the top of Antarctica tomorrow and we’ll report to you on the way or hopefully from the top of Mount Vinson.