Vinson Expedition Dispatch
December 7, 2010 – An End in Sight at High Camp
This is the fifth full day of our major Antarctic storm that has us hunkered down here in the Ellsworth Mountains in our attempt to climb Mount Vinson. As Kate said to me a little while ago, “Who would have thought I would spend 5 days in a tent in the middle of Antarctica?” but that is exactly what we are doing. This stationary front has stayed on the Ellsworth Mountains.
The skies begin to clear.
One of the biggest events of our day is at 21:30 each evening, the weather forecast is generated by Mark, the meteorologist back at Union Glacier Station. He’s reads it over the VHF radios. It has been a pretty boring radio broadcast most evenings because they really have not had much information about any chance for a weather change for us. The low pressure was still there, the winds still high, no end in sight. Last night’s radio broadcast put us in high spirits, however. It did say that today there would continue to be high winds and very low visibility with clouds, and that is how it has been. There is hope that tomorrow, the 8th of December, will change. The 8th of December may very well be our summit day. We’ll have to wait at least 24 hours to know. At least our spirits are lifted knowing that an end is in sight for this storm.
I got up early this morning and found that, even though we think there is an end in sight for this forecast, the storm is still very much upon us. In fact, the strongest winds we’ve seen yet were present this morning. I’m sure they were over 50 miles per hour. The temperature, just as Mark forecasted, indeed dropped. It was even colder this morning.
We’ve been eating a lot of dehydrated foods. We get together in the Pash tent, the pyramid tent, in the evenings for dinner. You pour about 2.5 cups of water into your meal and it reconstitutes to make a pretty good meal. You have to choose your evening entré first. Last night, John and I had beef stroganoff, Kate had "mountain chili" and some of the other selections were things like Kung Pao Chicken with noodles or rice. It is not that bad; but it is simple. We’ve been enjoying our evening get-togethers.
This morning the winds were so high, as I mentioned earlier, that we did not put the pyramid (or the Pash) up. Pachi and Winslow had been using their mountain tent as a cook tent. They circulated thermos bottles with hot water to make hot chocolate and other hot drinks, and oatmeal and other items for breakfast. I spent a little bit of time in each tent and there was laughter as we passed the morning hours with high winds screaming overhead, having breakfast in our tents.
The sun is overhead this afternoon. We still have lenticular clouds (very mean looking lenticular clouds) on the summit of Mount Shinn near us and other high peaks around us, including Vinson. The sun is up and spirits are bright with hope that tomorrow we might actually be climbing towards the summit of Mount Vinson.
