The expedition officially kicked off Sunday afternoon with the arrival of Jon and Penn in Punta Arenas. After dozens of hours of flights, connections, luggage carts, and check-in counters, it was a huge relief to see all of our gear safely back in our hands here in Chile. We've spent the past two days completing the final preparation for the trip: packing and repacking our gear, chasing down the final but crucial odds and ends (fresh cheese & coffee!) that we need to feel fully outfitted, all the while keeping a careful eye toward the weather forecast for the coming days. With our bags fully packed, we checked in with our logistics partner ALE late this morning and weighed the some 300 pounds of food, supplies, climbing and ski gear into a somewhat manageable stack of duffels and ski bags. Once tagged and sorted, we sent them off to the airport to be loaded onto the plane to be ready at a moment's notice for the flight into Antarctica. It feels great to have the wheels in motion after so many months of preparation.
The fickle Patagonian weather was still holding clear so with our gear in order and facing the luxury of an unstructured afternoon, we caught a ride to the base of Cerro Mirador, the local ski area that sits above town, to shake out the travel from our legs. The spindly but dense trees along the hillside provided just enough protection from the whipping wind to keep us warm as we climbed. Near the summit the vegetation thinned and the full gale of the normal afternoon Patagonian winds swept around us, shaking the towers and brightly painted chairs of the chairlift where we ended. The gusts were strong enough to push us from out stances every now and again but the views down over Punta Arenas and across the Straits of Magellan toward Tierra del Fuego - and eventually Antarctica - kept us focused. After a few minutes of gazing out across the whitecaps far below, we retreated down through the woods and made our way back to town by mid-afternoon.
In the evening we joined up with Dave's team and headed over to ALE's pre-flight briefing. After running through the ins/outs of flight logistics, what to expect when disembarking on an ice runway, and how to handle passport control when heading to Antarctica, our ALE coordinator gave us the news we've been waiting for the past few days: the forecast summary and planned flight schedule. Typically the conditions and forecast are reviewed every morning and periodically throughout the day before making the decision whether to fly or not. In the next 24 hours, however, the ALE team is feeling so optimistic about the weather that they went ahead and gave us the thumbs up to fly tomorrow morning. We are crossing the Drake Passage to Antarctica so we're prepared for the best laid plans to go awry, but we're all thrilled to hopefully being on the ice by midday tomorrow. We're back at the hotel now wrapping some final loose ends and heading to bed shortly before our early departure for the airport and into the interior of Antarctica tomorrow.
RMI Guide Linden Mallory & Team
The RMI Expeditions Mount Vinson climbing season is kicking off in style. The team flew in to Punta Arenas, Chile yesterday from various and distant North American locales. Miraculously, the all-important duffel bags accompanying those team members actually made it into town with them.
After a good sleep, the team assembled this morning for introductions and instructions on how to prepare for flying to The Ice. The day was then spent with gear checks, packing and a little exploring of this classic Patagonian town nestled alongside Magellan's Strait. It was a typically crazy day, weather-wise, here at the tip of South America. We cycled through bright sun, dark clouds, intense wind and rain out of clear skies. It is a great place for bumping into fellow climbers, guides, explorers, adventurers and scientists bound for Antarctica. In the evening, the team relaxed over a fine dinner out on the town. Tomorrow we'll put the finishing touches on our packing and receive a briefing from our logistical partner -ALE- on our prospects for getting the adventure going in the next day or two.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Wow. I don't think I've ever had a trip down and out from the Vinson Massif go so smoothly. A day ago our stoves were getting the breakfast ice melted at 12,300 ft in Vinson high camp. It was colder than it had been the day before, when we'd gone for the summit. We packed up our tents and roped up to go down the steep lines toward low camp and Basecamp. The day got warmer -naturally- as we got lower, but there was still a lot of cloud, just as there had been all week. Six hours after beginning the descent, we hauled heavy packs and sleds into 7,000 ft Vinson Base. The place was humming with activity. We were told to be ready for a Twin Otter on skis in a half hour. That meant 30 minutes of feverish packing and repacking and last awesome views of Vinson for the year. At 5:30 PM the Twin put down and we got in. Not only was the flight through the sunny Ellsworth Mountains magically beautiful, it was taking us to an on-time dinner at Union Glacier. One that none of us had to open, boil, or rehydrate. We reached camp there at a time when it was mostly ALE staff and not so many needy "customers" such as ourselves. Over dinner, we were told that our next flight was already on its way in. The Ilyushin 76 landed with a distant roar on the ice runway at 12:30 AM. We got on after a bunch of freight had been unloaded. There was plenty of room to stretch out as in addition to the five of us climbers there were perhaps three or four staff and assorted personnel going for the ride to South America. I saw the distant Vinson summit sliding by the port side windows after we'd reached cruising altitude. At 7:30 AM the plane touched down gently in Punta Arenas, where summer is currently coming on strong.
The team piled into a car and then hotel rooms for a big snooze. We'll feast tonight and fly homeward tomorrow. Small world... but full of great climbs.
Best Regards,
Dave Hahn
Dave Hahn here. I'm at Union Glacier. Today we started out at high camp on Vinson (12,300'). We climbed six hours down to base camp, and 30 minutes later we were on an airplane bound for Union Glacier and arrived just in time for dinner. And now we are just a couple hours away from a flight to South America on the Iluyshin. So everything's happening pretty quickly for us. And if it keeps happening this way, we will be in Punta Arenas in southern Chile by tomorrow morning, mid morning or so. But we will catch you up a later and so far so good.
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
It was still cloudy at high camp this morning, despite predictions for clearing. But looking up at the summit of Mt Shinn or the higher ridges of Vinson (the summit is not visible from high camp) it was obvious that no wind was in the mix. We decided to go for the top. We were out of camp by 9:15 AM. The cloud cover actually kept us from overheating in the first few hours. The team made steady progress- everybody was strong and using their best energy saving techniques. We all found the summit ridge to be a magical place. We had no big views, since by that point we were in the cloud tops, but that meant we concentrated our attention on the close in views of rock and snow formations. We hit the top at 4:30 PM and were quite surprised at how comfortable it was to sit up there, with zero wind and strong sun shining on the clouds around us.
We enjoyed a half hour on top and then began our careful descent, reaching high camp at 7:25 PM. This allowed us to eat dinner and get to bed at a respectable hour (which has been rare). Good sleep is what we need now to make tomorrow's descent to Basecamp manageable and safe.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Update at 2:45 pm PST:
Dave called with a quick update: The team is back safe at High Camp and doing very well.
11:36 am PST:
Hey, this is Dave Hahn, lucky enough to be on top of the Vinson Massif, highest point in Antarctica- 16,067 ft with the entire team! We've got Larry Seaton. We've got Fatima Williamson. We've got Bill and Sara McGahan. So all of us are up here. We we can't believe our luck. We've got perfect conditions. No wind. I'm going to give you a yell either by voice dispatch or a written dispatch when we get back to camp to let you know we are safe. But right now everything is going extremely well. Everybody's feeling good. Everybody's very happy. All for now. Thank you.
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
RMI Guide Dave Hahn calls in from the Vinson Massif summit!
YAY! Congratulations to the whole team. We cannot wait to hear all of the stories!
Safe travels back down the mountain.
We love and miss you and cannot wait to see you!
Lisa/Mom
Posted by: Lisa McGahan on 12/17/2013 at 5:36 pm
Congratulations everyone! Incredibly proud of you and incredibly happy for you! Stay safe and come home soon. Miss you, Sara and Bill!
At low camp, we woke to another thoroughly cloudy day. But it wasn't as cold as yesterday and there wasn't any wind up above that we could detect. We ate our usual late breakfast and checked in with Vinson Basecamp via the radio to hear the latest forecast (the same folks at Union Glacier who try to find weather windows for the Ilyushin also take a stab at mountain weather predictions). The forecast was just plain good. Clouds diminishing, no significant winds. We packed up low camp and headed for high camp. It was 2 PM by the time we were roped up and walking toward the fixed lines. We climbed in a murky world of cloud, between murky layers of other clouds down low and up high. But we made good and steady progress, reaching high camp at 12,300 ft by 8:30 PM. We worked to get a camp built and a kitchen going. At 10 PM we got our first sunshine of the day, which, thankfully kept on beaming down through clearing skies to make dinner and going to bed a lot easier. Tomorrow could be our big day... Depending, of course on how the weather shapes up and how the climbing team looks at breakfast.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
It was a storm day on Mount Vinson, so we stayed put at low camp. You might wonder how such a day differs from the rest day we took yesterday... it isn't very different. We ate, we slept, we read, we listened to music, we watched TV. The weather seemed to be improving early in the day, in that wind speeds appeared to be dropping on the peaks and ridges above us. Our latest forecasts also suggested that we'd be rewarded for waiting as the outlook is for an easing in both wind and cloud for the next few days. But none of that seemed to do us much good at low camp today. The sun continually found thick clouds and murk to hide behind and so it was a cold afternoon and evening. The team didn't hang out for long in our dining tent after dinner... back to the sleeping bags with fingers crossed for a more useful day tomorrow.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
Hang in there ... taking full advantage of “resting up” in preparation of successfully “heading up” when it becomes safe and appropriate to do so.
Take care,
Fred K
Posted by: Fred Klingbeil on 12/16/2013 at 10:07 am
Hope the weather clears soon for you. Love that you can “watch TV”. You have more power than we do in the North Georgia mountains when it hits a balmy 25 degrees+. Be safe and good luck. We’re thinking of you.
As planned, we took a break from mountain climbing today. We rested primarily to catch up on hydration and acclimatization before our assault on high camp and the summit. But since today's weather was a little on the sloppy side, with clouds at all levels, some falling snow and hints of wind aloft, it wasn't a bad day to be taking it easy at low camp. We ate, drank, rested, read, watched TV and listened to music. The teams that went to Vinson's summit yesterday came through on their descent to base today. All seemed well and happy, and of course relieved that they'd gotten to the top before this particular pulse of inclement weather came through. We will just hope it is gentle and short lived. We'd like to move up tomorrow.
Best Regards,
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
It sounds like you have a great team and hoping weather will be on your side to make it to the summit. Here we are all singing “they’ll all be home for Christmas"so God speed. Love, Deb
We all agreed that carrying a load of food, fuel and gear 2500 vertical feet up the fixed lines was hard. It was steep (both going up and coming down) it took a long time (7 hours round trip from low camp) and it was sometimes too hot and sometimes too cold. It felt a lot like mountain climbing. Today we had crampons on our feet and axes in our hands, unlike the last couple of sled dragging days on the low angled approach glacier. So all around, it was pretty tough, but we did it. We got those unreal Antarctic views as we got higher, spawning questions like "Is that ice way out there or is it cloud?" (It was both). Our hope, of course, is that by doing such tough work today, by going so high (11,800) and by coming back down to sleep and rest through tomorrow, we'll be stronger, more familiar with the route and better acclimated to the altitude. That may be, but at any rate, it sure was fun climbing today. It was a little cloudy which seemed to hold some heat in the air, making things a bit easier. The two teams above us apparently made the summit today, which is great, we'll see them tomorrow on their descent.
Best Regards
RMI Guide Dave Hahn
_Punta_Arenas.png)
Congrats ; all hear enjoyed turkey & football while you were on the top. Hooray!
Posted by: B Lee mallory on 12/4/2014 at 3:01 pm
Go team. Penn and Jon, you guys are nuts. Wishing you a successful and safe climb. Best, Jim J.
Posted by: Jim Johnson on 11/27/2014 at 10:55 am
View All Comments