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Second Successful Summit
Thursday, December 23, 1999
 Prittie | |
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Hello, this is Willi Prittie, calling again from the Alpine Ascents International Mount Vinson Expedition, Vinson Massif Expedition in Antarctica. We are all back at Base Camp okay. We did succeed on our second summit bid. Two of us, Michelle Santilhano and I went back up to give her another shot at it, being as we were closed down with flights from bad weather in Patriot Hills. We went from Base Camp to Camp III, which is a gain of around 5300 feet with full packs. She did just fine with that, so I figured that she was plenty strong to do the summit. Did a little additional instruction work with her, she's fairly new to climbing and was able to even out her pace and her breathing a bit and she was very strong on the summit bid. So we ended up actually, completing a new route up a mixed ice, rock and snow face on the summit pyramid of Vinson which was pretty nice, very good route.
It's extremely cold, I did send down dispatch over the radio that I understand was sent to you guys and I was actually surprised at the degree of how chilly it was that day, on our summit day. Despite having pretty much the best of everything in clothes, we were extremely cold. It was probably between 30 and 40 below zero Fahrenheit with a good 30mph steady wind across the summit when we got up. Luckily, the technical route we did was on the leeward side of the mountain. So, we were out of that pretty much until we hit the summit ridge. We were just dealing with temperatures.
So we were able to summit and descend the normal route and we heard via radio that the weather was clearing up at Patriot Hills. There were going to be potentially some flights out of Base Camp to Patriot Hills, so we got back down to our High Camp, re-hydrated, had some dinner, some soup and whatnot. Packed up camp and continued all the way down to Vinson Base Camp the same day.
So we had a pretty long day and we got here only to find cumulous clouds here and the weather seems to be alternating between good weather in Patriot Hills meaning bad weather in Vinson Base Camp, and bad weather...[transmission fails].
The fact that there is a little bit of a melancholy air here at Vinson Base Camp. Obviously, virtually everyone here wants to be out of here so that they can be with family and friends for Christmas time. It's early morning here on the 24th of December, right now we're pretty socked in with cloud and some light snow falling down. So it's looking like it's not a real high possibility, although it is still possible, that we could get out to Patriot Hills and then out from Patriot Hills the following day. But it's looking like the delay is going into its fifth day here and probably going to be that way here for another day or so — I'm guessing.
People are coping as best as possible, but like I say we are all looking forward to getting out and getting on with getting back to our other lives and other things. I will call with more updates as necessary. This is all for now from Will, from Vinson Massif Base Camp Antarctica.
—Willi Prittie, MountainZone.com Correspondent
| EXPEDITION DISPATCHES | |
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