Expedition Dispatch

November 28, 2012 – Made it to High Camp!

It’s just before 11pm on the 28th and I thought I should let you know that we have arrived at Vinson High Camp. 11pm, bright sun overhead and no wind what’s so ever, very cold temperatures, I am sure it’s -30 Celsius or much colder than that. But in the sun it feels very nice without wind. We arrived here at about 9:45pm, in other words, it took us just a little over 7 hours to ascend the fixed lines and come all the way to High Camp.

The report that the Rangers, the Sherpas Namgay and Lakpa and Rob gave us felt through the day, we’re above the clouds here. I’m looking across at Mt. Shinn against a brilliant bright blue sky. It’s beautiful; you can’t see the summit of Vinson from here. But I can look it up the broad glacier basin that leads towards Vinson and that’s where we’ll be going when we start out for the summit. We get good weather reports, they come via HF radio through Vinson base from Union Glacier and it is relayed on to us. So we’ll be checking the weather, making our decision about the strategy for the summit.

It’s great to be here at High camp. It was very strenuous coming up the fixed lines. Vaughan reported to me that he really felt, I can’t remember the word he used but you might say knackered, or exhausted, completely drained. But he made it, we all did. People are looking good as we get settled in, and we begin to brew our tea and pretty soon we’ll have a big, hot dinner, and… (Lost satellite connection)

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