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A Clear View from the Top
Sunday, January 2, 2000
 Tejas | |
 Hear Vern's Call from Aconcagua |
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Buenos días, Mountain Zone. This is Vernon Tejas with Alpine Ascents International Team Milenio climb of Aconcagua. [Unintelligible] today we were very fortunate. We hiked to the top of Mount Aconcagua in beautiful weather, we were so lucky. The wind was calm, it was clear, we could see hundreds of miles, 360 degrees. We could see out to the Pacific Ocean and, heck, so far away, we almost saw Siberia, it was so clear.
Like I say, it was clear, but it was cold. Started off 20 below centigrade, and as the sun got higher in the sky it warmed up to eight degree centigrade with 23 km out of the southwest.
Anyway, we stood on the summit for just long enough to find out that two guys that we met up there were the missing climbers that the search had been on for, who had climbed the Polish Glacier earlier. And we were able to initiate a radio stand-down, so that they didn't keep searching for those two climbers. So, like I say, we were fortunate.
Speaking of fortunate, I guess if you are listening to this, or reading this on the Internet, the Y2K bug must not have been as bad as everybody anticipated.
So what we have in store now is today has been a rest day and tomorrow some of the other team, some of the rest of our team, who weren't acclimatizing so well, are going to try to summit themselves, so hope the weather holds for us. And please, once again, remember that we're thinking of you out there — especially you, Tami. Now, bye-bye from Aconcagua. Ciao for now, from Argentina.
—Vernon Tejas, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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