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Valentine's Greetings from the Icy Continent
Sunday, February 13, 2000

Stoup

The Team's Call from the Antarctic Peninsula
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Hello Mountain Zone, this is Douglas Stoup with the Antarctic Peninsula Climb and Cruise Expedition. We have finally reached Antarctica and it's such a beautiful place. [Unintelligible]...an island called Aitcho Island, which was full of wildlife: Chinstrap penguin, Gentoo penguins, elephant seals, albatrosses, full of all kinds of birds and seals and we saw a couple of whales, as well on our way in, killer whales. And just beautiful icebergs and it's just an amazing, amazing place. Team is totally psyched.

	King George Island Runway

February 13th, it's around 10pm, the temperature is 28°, wind speed out of the SW at 12 to 16 miles-per-hour, wind-chill is about 19° Fahrenheit, humidity 84%. Altitude, we've climbed about 200 feet, we're at 0 right now. Hours of sunlight we're at about 18 plus, the barometric pressure is at about 99.96. GPS, we're at 62.25 latitude, 53.02 longitude. Location, we're in the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula in the South Shetland Islands.

Our team condition is great, all is well. Everyone is enthusiastic, and tomorrow, hopefully we'll make some turns in Antarctica. We're going to King George Island and there's a couple peaks there that we're going to look at and hopefully we'll get up them. I want to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day and try to check out the sights and see what's going on. Tomorrow we'll be able to send some e-mails as well as some digital pictures...[transmission fails].

—Douglas Stoup, MountainZone.com Corespondent

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