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Reconnoitering Mount Shackleton
Wednesday, February 16, 2000

Hahn

The Team's Call from the Antarctic Peninsula
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Hey there, this is Dave Hahn stepping in for a little guest dispatchin'. I'm standing on the bow of the Akademik Shuleykin and it's twilight down here. It's about 10:30 in the evening, but it's this beautiful light. Clouds are right down on us, but we've got icebergs all around us, every now and then there's little bits of ice bumping against the hull. We're just kind of at drift tonight. We are going to spend a little time down here.

We came through the Lemaire Channel today which was tremendous even though we could only see the lower third of the mountains, just about one of the incredible places I've ever been. These mountains are just a lesson in geometry — just incredible — straight up and down, ice hanging where it shouldn't be, whales, all of it: incredible place. We're all thinking of retiring and buying homes down here, except the home prices are kind of high, but very good stuff. A few of us went reconnoitering today, looking out at some of the climbing possibilities. I'm guiding a group of nine with four guides so we were looking at some mountains — Shackleton — Mount Shackleton and in the area of Mount Scott, down here. A lot of the group went over and visited a Ukrainian base here, and it was great watching the ski and snowboard guys 'cause they did their thing on this incredible coulior that emptied right out into the ocean. And none of them went into the ocean — that was kind of nice.

Things are great here, this place is incredible. The weather hasn't given us much of a break; I don't think it intends to, but I think we're going to have a pretty good time in any case. Take care back home and I'll be talking to you again. Thanks, bye.

—Dave Hahn, MountainZone.com Corespondent

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