Vinson Massif Expedition

Greetings from Punta Arenas, Chile, at the southern tip of South America! Tatsuo Matsumoto arrived late on Saturday night to complete our team and we are hoping to fly to Antarctica this evening for an attempt to climb Mount Vinson, the highest peak on the continent. Matsumoto is from Brasil and he is joining Maria Alonso, Jonas Karlsson and me, Todd Rutledge on this expedition.

The first hurdle on any international expedition is arriving at your meeting point with all your luggage. So far, so good! None of us had to scramble fo find equipment in this bustling port city thanks to the wonders of modern baggage handlers. Thanks American Airlines and Lan Chile! I arrived a couple of days before the rest of the team and bought some of the food we will take with us on this trip although I flew down with all of the food that we will eat on the mountain. One of the vagaries of climbing in Antarctica is having to deal with the potential for long flight delays due to weather. We will have an additional week’s worth of food with us, just in case.

Everyone was very organized and we made short work of weighing our equipment and food in order to load it on the huge Ilushyn cargo plane that will deliver us to “The Ice.” Due to relatively high temperatures at our landing point on the blue ice runway at Patriot Hills, we won’t fly until evening, so as to land during the night, when the runway is most frozen. With daytime temperatures around 25 degrees Fahrenheit, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The biggest limiting factor to flying to the Ice is wind. Crosswinds are common at Patriot Hills and the pilot does not like to land in a wind of over 20 knots. The estimate is that weather permits you to fly on an average of one day in three.

The past days have been busy in preparation, although that time has been tempered by dining out at some of the many restaurants specializing in the seafood for which Punta Arenas is so famous. There’s no clear winner in the “tasty entrée” challenge. So far it’s a toss up between the white, flaky, grilled Congor Eel and the King Crab casserole. I think we’ll need to sample a bit further…