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Hello Antarctica
Tuesday, November 30, 1999: Daily Stats

Koch

The Team's Call from Antarctica
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Hello, Mountain Zone. This is Stephen Koch from the Antarctica '99 Ski and Snowboard Expedition, on Tuesday, November 30th, calling from Vinson Base Camp. We arrived today a couple of hours ago at 10 o'clock Vinson time. So, 5 o'clock Seattle time.

We started traveling last night at around 12:35 leaving Punta Arenas and got down to Patriot Hills at 6:30 [Unintelligible] which was great and had some incredible views of the ice and the continent flying south. So we're all really thrilled to be here. We were originally going to fly on a C-130, or excuse me, we did fly on the C-130, but we were going to fly on another plane but couldn't get out because of some ski troubles and whatnot. We ended up getting out on a Cessna 185, which was great. We just had to split the groups up into [Unintelligible] to get to Vinson Base. But we're all here and we had briefing with Dave Hahn, the climbing ranger, or head climbing guy.

Perfect weather, not a gust of wind for miles around [Unintelligible] and if the wind blows, you got to throw on a layer [Unintelligible] and we're all ready for some sleep actually because we've been going for...on maybe an hour or two of sleep in the last 24 hours. We're pretty fired-up to get things going tomorrow morning. We're going to head up to Camp II and then we'll see where to take it after that. But had a good time at the airport last night doing some bouldering, looking for something to occupy our time. So that was a lot of fun.

I don't think sleeping is going to be a problem tonight for us; we're all pretty much ready to hit the sack and to get things rolling tomorrow. Everyone's healthy and psyched to be here and that's about it for now. Unbelievable weather and thanks a lot. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye-bye.

— Stephen Koch, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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