Expedition Dispatch

November 26, 2012 – Life on the Branscomb Glacier

It’s 2pm, and I am calling you from Low Camp on the Branscomb Glacier. We’re on our way up Mt. Vinson as you know and Vaughan, Todd, and I are making great progress. Yesterday, at about 2:45pm, the three of us started roped together from Vinson base and it took us 6 hours and 15 minutes to reach this camp. I gave you the distances and the elevation yesterday and you can see that we feel we’re moving very well.

This is a pretty good camp; we live in small mountain tents. We have snow-block walls that were cut and stacked in the windward direction behind the mountain tent so we have some protection from the wind, which by the way is not blowing now, it’s actually quite calm. And here we also have pyramid shaped tarps over snow holes with benches cut inside. So we can sit around and cook meals, rehydrate, and enjoy being together a bit before we go to bed.

Now, the schedule might be surprising to you. Here at this camp on Branscomb Glacier we have good sun. Understand the sun is always high in Antarctica, so it never gets dark by any means, but we’re in the Ellsworth Mountains so, the sun will go behind the ridge and depending on where you are. A mountain ridge will obscure the sun and it will be very cold for a number of hours. Here at this camp, at 2am this morning, we were still outside and it was quite warm but then it got really cold, the sun came back and we got up at about 11:30am.

Nice crew here, this will be a spot where we get continued to get organized and trained a bit, but our progress… (Lost satellite connection)

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