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High Hopes
Wednesday, December 8, 1999
 Prittie | |
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Hello, Mountain Zone. This is Willi Prittie from Punta Arenas again, just a quick update tonight. We were pretty much on a holding pattern again here today. We had check ins every couple of hours or so at 10, at noon, at three, and at eight. Slightly deteriorating weather conditions with slightly increasing cloud cover and poor visibility with blowing snow, so we're still on hold. They are very hopeful; looks like perhaps improving conditions and they will actually be looking at the weather at 5am tomorrow morning and hourly for several hours there after. As usual, we have hopes.
Today was actually pretty interesting. We pretty much had to stay close and roamed around town a bit. Turns out the Chilean Naval training vessel, the Ezmerelda, is in Punta Arenas. It's a little over 300-foot long, steel-hulled, barkentine-rigged, sailing vessel that they use for training cadets on. We actually wondered on down there early in the afternoon. They were actually accepting visitors aboard. There were well over 1,000 people, Chileans, locals, in line to check the boat out. So we, pretty much as a group, all elected to just observe from the pier rather than actually trying to stand in line and boarding her. Beautiful vessel though, definitely harks back to an earlier time — kind of adds to the interesting ambiance and certainly fits in with the historical aspect of Punta Arenas, as well. So that was really interesting.
Then we went up and the entire rest of the climbing team was in on the plot, whereas I was totally clueless to the end. We had a briefing with ANI at 3pm and it turns out it was just our group and it turns out the briefing was actually a surprise birthday party for me, as today December 8th was my 44th birthday. So that was great fun and, like I say, I was totally clueless to the end. Took me totally by surprise and everyone was very amused at that one. This is how we pass another slow day in Punta Arenas.
Once again we are very hopeful for tomorrow. It does appear there's an improving weather pattern and I'll call back with more later. That's all for now.
—Willi Prittie, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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