Man in search of summit, 15,500 feet Photo: Robert M. Anderson

Sled Racers

Seven hours later we are awake. Why? Is it daytime. No. Somebody informs me it is midnight. Oh well, it is light, let's go skiing. Camp comes down, our glorious, perched in the clouds camp. We will miss it.

Skiing is interrupted by the sled factor. No ski school in the world teaches how to ski with a sled and with good reason. Our sleds pull us face first down the steep hill and out onto the glacier. One way to get down and it was quick. Then the glacier gentles to the perfect grade, where we can just keep ahead of the sled, but not go quite fast enough to kill ourselves, or miss a turn and ski into a crevasse. We ski unroped, judging the challenge of having two people and two sleds connected and moving in tandem more dangerous than the crevasses that cross our path. Ski fast, ski light, stay free from the depths. We brave a few S turns, though the sled makes Z turns.

The glacier steepens and with the track in from the others descent, Chris and I set the sled ski downhill speed record, facing certain death from sled annihilation if we fall, with the sleds rocketing along behind us like errant bombs on our tail. We swoop down, ice air stinging our faces, across the flats, up the far hill and down again onto the Branscomb Glacier, released from the mountain heights like banshees, whoops included.

It took us two days to ski from the cache of goods we'd left lower down, up to our high camp. We get down in two hours. Flash frozen olives thaw in our mouths; peanut butter and jelly are chopped out onto very old but very well preserved Chilean hard bread. With a swish of scotch, they go down easier.

It is five miles as the crow flies around on the Branscomb Glacier to Vinson Base Camp where we can meet the ski plane for the flight back to Patriot Hills. On the map, it looks fine. Everything on the map looks fine. It is a very beautiful map. I've allowed two days just in case 'beautiful' translates to 'big hole too small for the map to measure' or in other words, anything that could be 590 feet deep. We've asked but found no information that anyone has skied up the glacier before from where we are so we continue into the unknown. Unknown or not, going uphill with a big sled is hard work, and uphill seems to be most of what the glacier is. We go back into traveling rhythm, an hour of skiing, five minutes rest, no more, no less. Right on the hour. Keeps us moving, keeps us motivated.

We do not lack for views; the snow-corniced ridges on Vinson rising high on our right into the clouds. Left is a gentle drop off for a thousand feet to the Nimitz Glacier, framed by the mountains rising five miles away where we originally landed. Above these, the polar plateau extends out into ice fog and clouds run over the ground like silver foxes, with matching shadows. Somewhere in the work of pulling the sled I realize the climb is almost over. I want to reach Vinson Base Camp and the link to civilization and another part of me wants to turn around and explore around all the other corners nobody has been around yet. Antarctica has a lot of corners left to look around.

The ice fog comes up and the clouds come down. Another stop in the mist. Check the GPS. ".82 miles that way," points Chris. There is nothing, one valley extending into the next extending into the heights. Then a barely visible black square pops out of the valley below, and another. The runway delineates itself in the cloud, then the tiny tents of Vinson Base Camp above it. The runway is a final steep climb up into camp, John Lucia an ANI Guide, meeting us to soften the journey and Christoph Hobenreich serving us heaping cups of hot chocolate on arrival. The hot chocolate splashes in our stomachs and is just the prelude to the pasta feast to come. Now we are tired and the tents, with helping hands from the people in camp, appear and we realize we climbed for a very long time and got up seven hours later and have now skied another 12 hours. So it is back to bed for 18 hours or so, waiting on airplanes but in no rush until we wake up.

"I've always had good luck with planes," I claim and knock on the ice. At camp Jerzy and Paullan from Poland have made a father/son ascent of the sixth of their seven summits with Vinson. Rose and Fritz from Holland are back from placing tulips at the top and leave a few outside their tent in camp for good measure. Social life is good, camp is open late.

My plane luck holds, the fog rises and clouds float away in a hurry on a rising breeze and we escape 12 hours later, flying back over our ski tracks, looking up at the Face, is it really that big, and float out over the mountains and back to Patriot Hills. We trade seats on the plane with Conrad Anker at Patriot Hills ten years after we'd both first visited the ice together.

Patriot Hills, windy as ever. And no Ilyushin. The blue ice runway it lands on is a huge swath of ice swept clean by Katabatic Winds that sweep down from the South Pole. But the same winds that make the runway, are also the same winds that are crosswind to the runway and keep the plane from landing. In the camp diary a previous guest writes 'I wished for a plane home, but it was only an Illusion." "Weather dependent" in a brochure and in reality means two different things. Can't wait to get to Antarctica, can't wait to get home.

In the long low insulated weatherport tent of Patriot Hills, waiting is rendered painless as we are served endless meals and told endless tales. Men who spend northern summers in arctic Igloos and southern summers in Antarctica dine next to movie stars and American Billionaires just back from the South Pole. No one lacks for conversation. Fresh fruit, lasagna, chili, endless cups of tea, beer and wine are in abundance and we make up for any pounds we may have lost quickly. We pitch the tent in ten minutes and sleep away. The wind dies, the clouds fade, the Ilyushin is summoned, just sneaks in and we sneak away in its cavernous hold.

The cargo plane interior with exposed pipes and wiring, huge four-jet noise and seven flight crew, set under dimly glowing moonlights 15 feet away is the mental spaceship for our journey back to South America. The fact that it is possible to get to Antarctica at all never fails to amaze me, the inspiration of a few people and then an awful lot of hard work. Double decker sandwiches are served. We doze in our seats. Through the one nearby porthole I see the light start to fade - the first time in 15 real days the sun will go down and it will get dark. Our Antarctic day is almost gone. The approaching dark is a little scary. We have had a long day, a great day.

Antarctica is cold but warms the soul like no other land. Its independence from humanity makes it a self-confident land, a place of power that sets the rest of the Earth in perspective. The porthole goes dim, then dark.

The light of Antarctica stays on, but only inside of us.

Robert Anderson, MountainZone.com Correspondent