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A Winter Ascent on Aconcagua








The Perfect Christmas Gift
Monday, December 27, 1999

Willi
Prittie
Hear Willi's Call from Antarctica
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Hello, this is Willi Prittie reporting on the Alpine Ascents International Vinson Massif Climb in Antarctica. Christmas Day cleared up really beautifully for us, finally.

And after six days of waiting for such a clearing our heroes, the Canadian pilots of the First Air Twin Otter, finally flew in and picked us up and flew us all out to Patriot Hills. It was a spectacular day and, on the flight, it was pretty amazing to be staring into a flat ice [Unintelligible] hundreds of miles in distance. Also, we were flying over thousands of unnamed, unclimbed, unknown mountains. I think we all really shared the viewpoint that one is one is literally awestruck by seeing the scale of this continent when we we're flying back out.

Once we did get to Patriot Hills, we had a wonderful Christmas dinner prepared for us by the Adventure Network staff and then some of us walked over to a Russian encampment nearby. Just a couple of days previously, a very large private Russian military transport type aircraft, called an Ilysushin, had flown in. I believe this was the first landing, ever, of a jet aircraft at Patriot Hills. And they offloaded a goodly number of supplies and people, including six or eight vehicles that were described as, 'unusual dune-buggy-type vehicles.' They were six-tired vehicles, kind of very large balloon tires, designed to be driven over snow and ice. I actually like to think of them as [Unintelligible] vehicles, or [Unintelligible] buggies, rather than dune buggies.

In any case, they had some unique plans coming up in chatting with them. Patriot Hills is about 80 degrees south. The pole, of course, is 90 degrees south, at 60 nautical miles per degree. So, it's 600 nautical miles between Patriot Hills and the South Pole. Well, they're planning on laying in a couple of fuel and supply depots and driving the entire distance in these vehicles through the fields and mountains and continuing on to the South Pole; where, the same Ilyushin aircraft on January 1st, of the new millennium, will apparently be dropping about 100 sky divers over the pole. Then these same vehicles will pick the ski divers up and drive back to Patriot Hills where the Ilyushin will land and pick everything up and take off.

So, we were able to go over there and actually caught a send-off ceremony for everybody and, of course it was very necessary international relations in mind that we helped them send everyone off by consuming toasts of vodka and hors d'oeuvres with the Russians. So that was also a bit of a highlight of our trip. The best Christmas present for everybody, however, was the 11:30pm Christmas evening arrival of the C-130 Hercules from Punta Arenas. By 12:40, we're all airborne and we're flying towards home finally.

So a quick recap, on the 18th of December three of us summited via the standard route. And on the 22nd of December two more of us summited via a new direct mixed route up the northeast face of the summit block. And I think a couple of people shared with me that a trip such as this is an interesting window into one's inner self, a lot of times. It is one of the few places on earth where nature really does truly rule supreme, period. Makes no difference how important you are or how much wealth you may have amassed; how many connections you have, how badly you really must get back home or back to business interests. When the weather's good planes fly, when the weather is bad they do not fly, and when the weather is really bad you just hang onto your tents and hope.

This is Willi Prittie in Punta Arenas, in Southern Chile and good-bye.

Willi Prittie, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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