Hi everyone, this is Chris Heintz reporting in from Antarctica 2003. First of all, Happy New Year, New Year's Eve everyone. It's now about 10 o'clock on December 31st and the team's all doing great and we're wishing everyone back home a very, very merry, happy New Year.

Let's see, we've had quite an amazing couple of days. We left our second camp two days ago, but the weather worsened very quickly. Fog rolled in, and the temperature started to plummet, and the visibility was reduced to less than 10 or 15 feet. At some points we could barely see the tips of our skis.

So we were forced to navigate solely by GPS and compass up the hill, as the intrepid explorer Anderson led us another half mile in these hideous conditions until we finally decided that the crevassing was really too difficult to attempt in the area. So, we decided to establish another camp, and wait out for better weather.

About 12 hours ago we woke up to clearing skies, and so we decided to break camp and head up the glacier some more, and as we headed up today the weather has become absolutely brilliant, and we're currently basking in Antarctica sun.

All along our route today I've been taking a number of GPS readings, and we think we've found some inconsistencies with the map that we've been using, which is quite interesting. We look forward to reviewing those with the U.S. Geological Survey when we return. We're right now using a map whose topographical contour lines are 200 meters, or approximately 600 feet, so there could be about a 590 foot hill that doesn't even appear on the map, which has made for some interesting obstacles along our route.

So we finally reached this very amazing col, which Robert says reminds him of the North Col on Everest, both for its beauty and its topographical shape. So we settled here, we pitched our tents, we're going to settle in for the New Year, and tomorrow we're going to reconoiter the route up to the summit. We plan to stay here for the next couple of days, and probably attack the summit the day after tomorrow, or even the following day.

Again, everyone is doing really, really well. Everyone's happy, and we're all thinking of everyone back home and hope that you're all enjoying your New Year, and I guess that's it. Bye for now.

— Chris Heintz, expedition member and MountainZone.com correspondent