A 1992 Climb of Antarctica’s Mount Vinson
Antarctica is a very alien environment, and you can’t survive here more than minutes if you’re not equipped properly and doing the right thing all the time. Jon Krakauer
This is the journal of one of the very early expeditions to Mount Vinson, the tallest mountain in Antarctica and one of the fabled Seven Summits. The very remote peak, at 16,077 feet above sea level, is the highest point in Antarctica.
Mount Vinson is the high point of the Vinson Massif, a large mountain massif that is 21 km long and 13 km wide and lies within the Sentinel Range of the Ellsworth Mountains. It was discovered in January 1958 by U.S. Navy aircraft. In 1961, it was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names, after Carl G. Vinson, a United States congressman from Georgia, for his support of Antarctic exploration.
Vinson is so remote, and so difficult just to get to, it was first climbed only in 1967. I was lucky to have been part of a small climbing team led by legendary Everest climber Phil Ershler, one of the first Americans to complete the Seven Summits and a founder of International Mountain Guides. Our team also included Mr. Paul Morgan from Florida and Mr. Abelardo Sotelo from Arizona. We were there in November/December 1992, and in the prior 25 years, only 144 human beings had reached the summit before we arrived.
I was #146.
Note: as of February 2010, only 1,400 climbers have attempted to reach the summit of Mount Vinson. Due to the advent of regular commercial expeditions from multiple companies, that number is possibly double that by now [I shall try to find more recent data] but it is still a very small number by comparison to the other six of the Seven Summits. For comparison, Mount Everest has been summited about 5,500 times since it was first climbed in 1953.
With the advent of safer travel to Antarctica, the mountain has received much attention from well-funded climbers in recent years. Now, multiple guide companies offer guided expeditions at a typical cost of around US $45,000 per person.
Heading South.
No matter where you are leaving from, Vinson is to the south. Not quite the straight line south as depicted below, but the route to Vinson for me went like this: New York JFK to Miami to Santigo, Chile to Punta Arenas, Chile, the tip of South America. And there, from Punta Arenas southward is where it gets fun, interesting, unique, and risky. This risk is exactly what you think about while you sit for a few days in Punta (three days in our case) waiting on the all-clear from Antarctica that it is safe enough to depart across the coldest stretch of ocean on planet Earth.
The Drake Passage, known for its rough and often turbulent seas, and high winds, makes it a challenging crossing for ships traveling between the two regions. I kept recalling the scenes from the movie “Moby Dick” with Gregory Peck and an ice-encrusted crew tossed around in those freezing waters. The fact that we were flying over the passage in an ancient plane, a DC-6 called the Ice Princess, did little to assuage my concern about this part of the trip.
The distance between Punta Arenas and Patriot Hills is roughly 2,000 miles (approximately 3,220 kilometers) in a straight-line distance. It feels longer, perhaps because the prop-powered DC-6 is so slow, perhaps because it only flies at about 10,000 feet altitude (and often much less), but also because you are keenly aware of your destination: Patriot Hills, Antarctica.
Patriot Hills was founded in the early 1990s by a private company called Adventure Network International (ANI), which specialized in providing logistical support and expedition services for individuals and groups traveling to Antarctica. The camp primarily served as a base for climbers and explorers planning expeditions to Mount Vinson.
As we waited on a flight window to Antarctica, we had several briefings by ANI owner-operator Anne Kershaw who ran the show since the tragic 1990 death of her husband Giles Kershaw in a plane crash on the Jones Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Giles was a pioneer of Antarctica aviation and ANI essentially was “Antarctica Airline” for decades, before selling out to Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions (ALE) in 2003.
We go over the plan in these briefings: Punta Arenas, special customs rules and passporting for Antarctic travel, then a long hop over the Drake passage, from the small Punta airport to the remote blue ice airstrip at Patriot Hills, Antarctica, and of course the specs on the legendary “Ice Princess,” a specially outfitted and stripped down, aging 1956 DC-6, the last piston engine-powered, propeller-driven model from the Douglas Corporation. Starting in 1959, Douglas began converting these planes into freighters to extend their useful lives. The airframes were fitted with large forward and rear freight doors and some cabin windows were removed. This was one of those.
In the briefing we had, we were told this plane had made many many round trips from Punta Arenas to the blue ice runway in Patriot Hills. Still, a 36-year-old prop plane is a 36-year-old prop plane.
So, given those circumstances, before departing from Punta Arenas, one must visit the statue of Ferdinand Magellan and give his foot a rub for luck.
Magellan is renowned for leading the first successful expedition to circumnavigate the globe. The statue has historical significance in the region and represents the connection between Punta Arenas and Magellan’s voyages. The monument not only pays homage to Magellan’s pioneering voyages but also serves as a reminder of the historical importance of Punta Arenas as a port city and a hub for exploration in the southernmost regions of Chile.
Rounding Cape Horn by boat, just to the south, was considered the crux of the round-the-world voyage. Many ships were lost there in the violent seas (again, superbly depicted in the movie “Moby Dick”) and so it has become a tradition amongst voyagers to rub Magellan’s bronze foot for luck, which as you can see from the above photo, gets a lot of rubbing.
Seeing the Ice Princess up close for the first time, on the airstrip, was hardly a confidence builder. Even by 1992 standards it was outdated, ancient, rickety, and spartan, but durable and reliable. ANI lauded its dependability, its four engines, and its service record in Antarctica. I however noted that it said “Ice Princess II” on the nose and wondered where Ice Princess I was; no one seemed to know.
In any case, we were committed and there wasn't any time to worry about it further. A newspaper crew from the local Punta Arenas paper showed up to take pictures, did some interviews, and get some info for a feature they wanted to run upon our safe return (which they did, see end of story).
With that, we climbed the ladder into the Ice Princess cargo bay, wove our way around the crates, and found the smallish passenger compartment.
And so we bade farewell to South America, took one last look at Punta below as we gained altitude, the plane banked right, and we dove off the end of the continent toward Antarctica. I settled in for the long slow fight to Patriot Hills.
One regret I have about this expedition is that I did not bring enough film. This was way before digital cameras and excellent tiny cams plus video on your phone. Video cams weighed ten pounds and used a giant VHS cassette, so they were out most of the time. My cold-resistant 35mm Nikon FM2, the standard for high altitude, weighed five pounds. Weight was always a factor, but film management was another: keeping those film canisters safe and available was an integral part of expeditionary thinking, and you only had so much you could carry.
I brought 30 rolls of 36 shots = 1080 pictures. Something like one roll per day was my thinking, so incredibly limiting and stingey by today's standard of practically unlimited shots. I had already used up 2 rolls in Santiago, Chile and Punta, and another roll at the airstrip, and I quickly realized once on the Ice Princess that I had to ration it more carefully or I wouldn't have enough for the mountain.
That’s a long way of saying that I didn't take nearly enough pictures inside the Ice Princess of the crew and my quite famous travel companions, which included — in addition to our team leader Phil Ershler — Doug Scott (of Everest and Ogre fame), Conrad Anker (who went on later to find George Leigh Mallory’s body on Everest), Robert Mads Anderson of Seven Summits Solo fame (who I would later work with at Foote Cone and Belding, and then trek into Everest with along with Peter Hillary in 2019), Antarctic explorer Roger Mear, the founder of the Scarpa boot and equipment company, Colorado climbing legend Jay Smith, and others. I could have used up many rolls documenting this flying carnival of mountaineering legends. Instead, I tried to sleep, and I did for a bit until the pancake ice appeared.
The contrast between South America and Antarctica could not have been more extreme. From browns, greens, people, cars, buildings, boats, planes, civilization, and then directly to ice, nothing but ice, as far as the eye can see. Not a sign of civilization or life, for thousands and thousands of miles. The most inhospitable place — and a whole continent of it — on the planet.
First Sighting: Pancake Ice.
Forming pancake ice is what rough waters do as they begin to freeze. Ice particles form, coagulate, and bump into each other incessantly, forming these mini island-sized pancakes before freezing further into the ice shelf that grows exponentially during the Antarctic winter. Miles and miles of little white pancakes, and then suddenly you are even further south, and over The Ice.
(Parenthetically, ironically, and randomly coincidental, I am writing this section of the journal about pancake ice while sitting in the Pancake House in Snowqualmie Pass, Washington, 30+ years after.)
The Antarctic continent is 2500 miles across and for the most part, and except for some of the coastline and the rocky tops of the highest mountains, it's all rock-solid ice. Ice that in certain places on the East or West Antarctica ice sheet is more than 12,000 feet thick. That amount of ice makes up about 90% of the world’s freshwater ice, which represents a significant portion of the planet’s total ice and freshwater reserves.
It has no indigenous human population, a mostly seasonal population of 5000–7000 scientists and support personnel working at various coastal research stations and at the South Pole, and perhaps 1000 who overwinter the six-month-long Antarctic night.
So to put this into perspective, imagine a land mass larger than the continental USA, completely covered in ice, with a temporary population of one small town dispersed at a few very far apart locations. Remote, desolate, untouched wilderness on a scale that is difficult to comprehend or process.
Antarctica is otherworldly, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Stark, cold, beautiful desolation.
Mark Hoppus
Patriot Hills, Antarctica.
Established as a private, temporary camp for Antarctic expeditions and logistical support, it was not a permanent settlement. The camp was situated in the Ellsworth Mountains, close to the base of the Antarctic Peninsula. It was founded in the early 1990s by a private company — Adventure Network International (ANI) — which specialized in providing logistical support and expedition services for individuals and groups traveling to Antarctica.
It also had an ice runway, the Patriot Hills Blue Ice Runway, which allowed for ski-equipped aircraft, mostly Twin Otters, to land and take off. However, the Ice Princess did not have skis, it had traditional aircraft wheels because it was based at a traditional airport and tarmac in Punta Arenas. Thinking about how my 4WD SUV would handle on solid ice as hard as concrete, it seemed kind of tricky, if not crazy, to land on blue ice with traditional wheels, but these pilots and this plane did not seem phased by it at all.
Patriot Hills in 1992 was a blue ice airstrip about a mile long, two or three hut tents, a radio shack, a few personal tents nearby, and a parking area for four Twin Otters. That’s it.
In my mind, the Ice Princess and Patriot Hills of 1992 do not seem like a long time ago. But then I see what's happening on current Vinson expeditions, and I look at the modern aircraft now landing on the blue ice at Union Glacier (below) and those 30+ years can seem like an eternity.
In 2010, the Patriot Hills camp was closed and dismantled, and the Patriot Hills Blue Ice Runway was no longer operational. The Vinson jumping-off point was moved a few miles away to Union Glacier, another long and exposed strip of blue ice.
The Union Glacier Camp in Antarctica was established in the 2008–2009 season. It is a seasonal field camp located in the Ellsworth Mountains of West Antarctica. Like Patriot Hills, it primarily serves as a logistical hub for supporting scientific research, exploration, and adventure tourism activities in the region.
The camp provides accommodations, dining facilities, and various support services for researchers, mountaineers, and tourists traveling to Antarctica. Union Glacier Camp is operated by ALE (Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions LLC), a private company specializing in logistics and expedition support services in Antarctica. It has become the essential, vital hub for those seeking to explore and study the Antarctic continent, including those attempting to climb Mount Vinson, Antarctica’s highest peak.
Time for us to fly: I recall we spent about 18 hours in Patriot Hills. A couple of meals, a couple of naps, last-minute gear checks, and trying to process that we were in an insanely remote place that was about to get even more remote, and accepting the fact that any connection to home, family, work, or even civilization was fading fast, soon to be non-existent.
And then we heard the startup motors for the Twin Otters, the taxis of Antarctica (and the Arctic for that matter).
The Twin Otter is a versatile and rugged twin-engine turboprop airplane from de Havilland Canada, known for its short takeoff and landing (STOL) capabilities and its ability to operate in remote and challenging environments. It is renowned for its impressive STOL capabilities, which enable it to operate from short and unpaved runways. This makes it ideal for accessing remote and rugged locations, including mountainous regions and polar environments.
It features fixed landing gear, which is sturdy and designed to handle rough terrain. This gear configuration enhances the aircraft’s ability to land on unprepared surfaces and is known for its durability and ability to withstand harsh operating conditions. It has been used in extreme environments such as the Arctic and Antarctic regions since it was introduced in 1965. It has a strong reputation for its ability to access locations that are otherwise difficult to reach with conventional aircraft.
About the Twin Otter pilots: they follow the sun. The Arctic and Alaska in the summer, and the Antarctic in winter. Aside from all the training and certification you need for this plane, it also requires an advanced sense of adventure, a tolerance for risk, and the ability to fly by the seat of your pants. Possibly the most dangerous kind of flying there is: small planes, high winds, extreme weather, little support, poor vision, little hope of rescue…makes me think of this MEN WANTED ad (authenticity often disputed) for Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctica expedition…
Parenthetically, since this Antarctic expedition, I’ve flown in the Twin Otter on many occasions, most notably into the Hillary-Tenzing airstrip in Lukla, Nepal on the way to Mount Everest. Known as the most dangerous airstrip in the world, this fact was punctuated by a fatal crash of a Twin Otter the day we were departing, and visible directly from our tea house room and on takeoff. Video here: Hillary-Tenzing Airstrip.
Flying Twin Otters across Antarctica is purely by visual flight rules, fly-by-sight. There is no air traffic control system, and no radar guidance, so these little aircraft can only operate in clear visual conditions i.e. sunny, clear days. Cloudy days, low visibility, fog — any adverse weather conditions must be avoided and this is so much more important in a world of few visual cues where sky and ground are often both white. Clouds can merge with ground, the horizon disappears, and you have no sense of up/down, altitude, or speed. And that’s what we experienced: a total whiteout, while flying at a very low altitude. Dangerous.
Our pilot thought it best to land while we could still see, about halfway to Vinson, out on an open icefield, and almost certainly where no humans had ever set down or trod before. Middle of nowhere, sitting in a little plane, waiting for the sky to clear. So after several hours of trying to sleep inside the little plane, we realized it would be more comfortable, and frankly warmer, to break out the tents, set up camp, and wait out the whiteout in our sleeping bags.
My most vivid memory of this occasion was a walk I did around this camp, a big circle around the plane and over a glacier that in all probability was miles thick, had hidden crevasses, in fringe whiteout visibility, and with Pink Floyd’s “Delicate Sound of Thunder” in my Walkman. I cannot hear any track from that album, still, without transporting back to that time and place. I slowly walked several laps around the camp, right on the fringe of visibility because it was after all a whiteout that caused us to land.
Every so often, I drifted into the white abyss and lost sight of the camp, which in retrospect was a pretty dumb thing to do. “Hey cool, there was the camp and now it's gone, as if it was never there!” Had I wandered farther off in the wrong direction into the deep white, or into a crevasse, well, there would be one less person on the plane out. And while not incredibly risky, it did set the tone for a few other similar solo ‘experiential excursions’ during this expedition.
We waited perhaps 12 hours before the whiteout lifted and we could resume the flight to Vinson Base.
According to National Geographic: “Though it is not a difficult climb from a technical perspective, the frigid temperatures and remote location of the mountain make it a challenging climb. Most climbers take what is known as the “Normal Route” up the Branscomb Glacier, which takes an average of 10 days. Climbs are typically made during December and January — the Antarctic summer — when the sun is out 24 hours a day and temperatures hover around -20°C (-29°F).”
Which is a pretty fair assessment. I often refer to it as “a very long and cold uphill walk on the ice” but one where it is vitally important that you can be self-sufficient for a long time and comfortable and confident in extreme cold because there is no break from it. None. No campfires, not enough fuel for a stove other than to cook and melt ice for water, no heat sources at all. I recall that we did however have the luxury of fairly stable weather, minimal winds on most days, and a few days of a relative heat wave where the air was still and the temp rose to about -5F.
Vinson Base is set up in a wide-open and relatively flat spot at the bottom of the Branscomb Glacier. The Twin Otter had no issues seeing the landing zone and set down as smooth as silk on the ice.
As I recall, we unloaded the Twin Otter pretty fast. The ANI pilot kept the engine running to prevent a freeze-up and avoid any restart / getting stranded issues because servicing a Twin Otter at Vinson Base is not easy. It involves sending another Twin Otter from Patriot Hills with parts and techs, and hoping you can get the repair done in the middle of nowhere (as we were to find out later on).
Then with all due haste, the little plane taxied up the glacier, revved up the engines, and took off on its return to Patriot Hills. And at this point, if there was ever any doubt about how remote you actually were, this is where reality sinks in: you are in a place where only handfuls of humans have been before, you are quite alone, you cannot communicate with the outside world (pre-satellite phone era), there is no water that isn't in ice form, there is no hospital or pharmacy so you better not get sick or hurt, and hopefully Patriot Hills will answer you when you radio back for pickup in three weeks.
Life at Vinson Base was exciting, surreal, and wonderous. We shared the camp with Doug Scott’s team from England who were taking the same route but a few days behind us. There was another team of two that I was to learn many years later were the CEO of the Scarpa boot and equipment company and his guide, Oswald Oeltz, of Mount Everest fame. They didn't speak much English so we mostly just smiled and waved at them.
I was eager to witness something that only happens at the poles of this planet: during the Antarctic ‘day’ the Sun goes around and around the horizon, it never sets, it never gets high in the sky, it just orbits above creating a never-ending cycle of lighting and shadow conditions that can make the same spot look completely different in just a few hours.
The thing that is most beautiful about Antarctica for me is the light. It’s like no other light on Earth, because the air is so free of impurities. You get drugged by it, like when you listen to one of your favorite songs. The light there is a mood-enhancing substance.
Jon Krakauer
Not only is this visually interesting but the lack of darkness requires a very disciplined approach to time management because without it, the adrenaline could lead you to working and climbing in very long and ultimately debilitating shifts. We stayed on Punta time, watched the clock carefully, ate meals on schedule, and adhered to set work and rest hours to help regulate our circadian rhythms.
We also wore sleep masks and used earplugs to help block out light and minimize disturbances that can disrupt sleep, and on a few occasions, I popped some Halcion to shut out the camp noise and get some deep sleep. Later I was to learn this prescription sleeping med, which was regularly doled out to mountaineers, had all kinds of nasty side effects which fortunately I did not experience.
We built up the ice block walls around the tents for precautionary wind protection. We organized gear, continuously melted ice for water and cooking, and loaded up on calories that we didn't have to carry up the mountain. I borrowed a set of skis with skins and went on a solo hike to a rocky ridge about three miles away, ever vigilant for the dreaded hidden crevasse despite the ANI pilot’s assertion we were on a spot on the glacier that was totally crevasse-free. Still, the emphasis on the ‘hidden’ crevasse element is what sticks in your head. Lucky me, no crevasses, just creaking, squeaking, crackling, and groaning from the glacier from time to time, and some total alone time on a glacier near the South Pole. Very cool.
We waited at Vinson base for a suitable window of clear weather where we at least knew we were not heading into a storm, and when it finally arrived, a couple of days later, it was time to load up the sleds.
On The Ice.
Day 1 departing Base Camp is pretty simple: a five-mile uphill slog up the Branscomb Glacier, take a sharp left turn when you come up to the mile-high wall that is the Massif, head up the valley to the top of the glacier, and put in your Low Camp. Not too steep but unrelentingly uphill carrying heavy packs, maybe 50 lbs, plus pulling a sled, probably 50–75 lbs more, depending on if you got stuck with a tent (I always get the tent). All our gear, food, and fuel for about two weeks, plus a little extra in case of bad weather.
Slog is the word. You do not move fast with that kind of load and it takes a bit of time to get used to the sled, which is fastened to your waist harness and also to the climbing rope. Quite a workout and if you ever doubt the assistance you get from using trekking poles, this is when you really know how much they help.
What you want for ideal conditions when you are pulling a sled is a very firm surface; the last thing you want is fresh, soft snow, which is so much work. We had it perfect: glacial ice with a thin layer of snow on top for lubrication. The sleds were relatively easy to pull in these conditions. The snow made a unique crunch / squeak sound with each step that sounded like styrofoam squeaking, and I can still hear it in my head. No complaints. A long but satisfying day to get to a very special place and get a few days rest to acclimatize a bit before going higher.
Four miles up the glacier from Base Camp we made our Low Camp on the relatively flat terrain at the top of the Branscomb Glacier and just before it takes a sharp right turn and heads up to the Headwall that guards the upper part of the mountain.
Low Camp: two tiny tents and a three-foot deep, dug-out combo cooking pit / kitchen area. I felt very at home and happy in this camp; it was one of those places where you feel like you are meant to be there. The cold and wind were tolerable, we were surrounded on three sides by massive rock cliffs laced with steel-hard ice, no other people for miles and miles, and it did not seem that the nearby terrain had any hidden crevasses — always a danger on the flats of a glacier.
We decided to take a rest day to acclimatize a bit, which was fine by me because I really just loved this spot. I needed to explore it a bit, and I was antsy, didn't need rest, and so I went on a life-changing, solo adventure while my mates hung out in camp. My plan was to climb one of the rock ridges that towered over us, starting from a little ice and snow shelf that from my research was the spot the first expedition to Vinson in 1967 used to approach the mountain, a much more direct although much steeper route.
I wanted to peer over the edge at their route, then ascend the ridge above it that topped out about 500 feet above the glacier. But more than that, I wanted to take this extreme experience of being where humans could barely survive, and push it still further, totally alone.
So I headed out across the glacier, ever wary of the potential for a hidden crevasse. On two occasions on this short walk, the ice ‘settled’…my weight caused a tiny movement that cracked and creaked underneath, and in both cases, I was thinking “Yep, I’m about to fall unroped into a bottomless hidden crevasse”. The only rock I ever touched the whole time I was in Antarctica was along this ridge walk on the red line, above. I took a few shots of it (below), and a few souvenirs, because the amateur geologist in me was fascinated by the layering and was reminded that where I was at that moment, an icy ridge at altitude in Antarctica, was once the ocean floor.
I sat there for about an hour, on a small rock shelf, my boot dangling into the abyss, in a very meditative state but also hyper-aware of the situation and the circumstances. Not cold, not fearful, not the least bit fatigued but taking in the sound and sensations of the wind, the magnificent desolation and beauty of it all, in a state of pure mindfulness.
One of my favorite passages from Rene Daumel’s “Mont Analogue” kept coming to mind: “You cannot stay on the mountain forever. You have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”
Then it was time to go back down to the tents, my three companions, and dinner. Mission accomplished.
Speaking of Boots…
The number one question people ask about Antarctica is “How do you stay warm?” and more specifically “How do you keep from getting frostbite on your feet?” because they’re probably thinking about how cold their feet can be in ski boots, or when the temp goes below freezing at home and they’re in need of chemical footwarmers to keep the Raynaud’s at bay.
The answer at the time was the One Sport Everest Boot, the warmest high-altitude mountaineering boot in the world at the time, and I don't see anything out there now that is much better 30 years later.
This boot has a fully integrated system of supergaiter, plastic shell, removable inner boot with a total of 15mm of Alveolite insulation, plenty to keep your feet warm to -50° F, and a very thick sole. Combined with the aggressive Foot Fang 12-point crampons you have probably the perfect footgear for warmth and traction for high altitude, steep ice and snow, and extreme cold.
What made this boot so perfect were a few features that others lacked: An integrated overboot/gaiter means no fumbling with putting on overboots or gaiters, which is a real time-and-finger saver when it’s below zero in the tent. Velcro closures and no zipper pulls means you can easily adjust these with glove/mittens as well. This is really important.
Also, the firm outsoles mean that when you don’t have your crampons on, you still have traction from the boot sole which you do not get from overboots (have you ever seen a neoprene overboot on ice?).
But, expensive: $500 for mountaineering boots in 1992 was crazy, the outer limit, by a lot. But I looked at it like this: that’s $50 per toe that I’d like to keep. Knowing more than a few friends who had lost various toes on Everest and Denali wearing lesser gear, this seemed like a bargain, and a no-brainer.
Today, there are some excellent similar products out there by Millet, Scarpa, Asolo, and others, but now these new top-of-the-line boots are $1200 (at $120 per toe, still a bargain).
Up The Headwall.
Above Low Camp was a bit more glacier, than a sharp right turn into a large glacial bowl. It reminded me very much of Tuckerman’s Ravine on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Seemed about the same size, the same steepness, the same height from floor to top. Except in this case it was covered in a permanent, cascading glacier riddled with crevasses and jumbled ice blocks the size of houses. Not in the same league as the dreaded icefall on Mount Everest — no gaping mega-crevasses and not as much movement — but a minor league version of it.
Inching up the headwall was magnificent: pure alpine-style mountaineering on steep, undulating ice and rock-hard snow. No fixed ropes or jumars, just a rope team with expert ice axe, crampon, belaying, and alpine rope technique, a skill that now seems to be lost in a world of prepared fixed ropes and pulling yourself up by a jumar ascender.
The conditions made for ideal cramponing, very firm ice and snow with just enough give to provide our Foot Fangs a very solid and secure feel. That aural crunch with each step was like a metronome keeping pace, which often turns into a very odd and hypnotic mantra for me, that came to me years before on Mont Blanc at 3 am in the dark, just a week after my son and I were singing it at Yankee Stadium… “TAKE me out to the ball game. TAKE me out to the field. BUY me some peanuts and crackerjack. I don't care if I ever go back.” Repeat, for hours, if necessary.
You learn so much about how far you can push yourself and what you can do. How an experience like Antarctica helps you, it boosts your confidence.
Ben Fogle
The headwall tops out on a small snow platform, the ideal place to take a break, sort out any gear issues, and take in the vastness and beauty of that spot. Just above is the Vinson-Shinn Col, a relatively flat spot in the saddle between Mount Shinn and The Vinson summit. Below and all around, spectacular peaks and sub-peaks, bizarro glacial sculpting, and pure white off to infinity and the horizon. Throw in an ever-changing sun angle that revolves around and around and you have an unparalleled feast for the eyes, in fact, all the senses. Well, not smell…nothing smells in Antarctica (except dinner, sometimes).
Now, about that pyramid that peeks up from the ice out in the center / left distance…it shows up on a lot of the UFO sites as proof that aliens have a base in Antarctica. For all I know they may have one, but it's definitely not at that pyramidal little mountain, which when you are up close to it, you can clearly see it's not man-made nor alien-made, nor an alien base, but a totally natural granite mountain. But it is very cool to see, a geologic oddity for sure. See below:
Once at the top of the Headwall, the route opens up into a wide plateau that sits between Mount Shinn on the left and the upper part of Vinson on the right. It is an amazing setting, looking down and out across the white desert that is Antarctica and across the plateau to the wave-like glacier just above us. And that's where we put our high camp.
High Camp for us was our two tents and a cooking pit, pitched on as level a platform as we could cut out of the ice, and reinforced by walls of ice blocks that we cut out of the small ice ridge that was protecting us on the right. Yeah, cutting out ice blocks with a small ice saw is brutally hard work but was, in fact, the reason I spent so much time in the gym getting ready for this expedition: extra strength and stamina are important because you never know when you’ll need it and you above all must be self-sufficient and ready for anything. It really paid off that day: “We need 100 ice blocks after climbing up that headwall with 60 lb packs? No problem.”
It was a good thing we built and later reinforced those wind-blocking ice walls. Within hours of setting up camp, we were hit with 24 hours of continuous wind and whiteout. We hunkered down for a few days, cooked inside the tents, and melted ice for water (the joy of a hot water bottle or two inside your sleeping bag is much better, and warmer, than the pee bottle), more Pink Floyd helped, and we rode it out until the storm passed, leaving us a bright blue sky and a completely still, windless day with the summit a mere 4000 vertical feet above us.
I could not stop admiring Mount Shinn, at 15,292' only 700 feet less than Vinson, and unclimbed. It looked like a giant soup bowl with a steep pyramid atop it. It gleamed and beckoned in the bright sunlight. Various routes to the summit kept revealing themselves to me, and I wished for a little more time after we finished Vinson to give Shinn a shot.
It was not to be. I have since discovered that it had its first ascent in 2004. The successful summit was achieved by a team led by mountaineer Damien Gildea. And now, due to its vicinity to the more coveted Mount Vinson, Mt. Shinn has been climbed numerous times as a side trip on a Vinson expedition, once a ridiculously doable first ascent by us, in 1992!
At a time when it’s possible for thirty people to stand on the top of Everest in one day, Antarctica still remains a remote, lonely and desolate continent. A place where it’s possible to see the splendours and immensities of the natural world at its most dramatic and, what’s more, witness them almost exactly as they were, long, long before human beings ever arrived on the surface of this planet. Long may it remain so.
David Attenborough
So with a few days rest and with crystal clear weather now at High Camp, there was nothing left to do but turn away from Shinn and head up to our goal, the top of Antarctica. We set off for the summit, across the gentle uphill that is the Vinson-Shinn Col, facing the upper part of the mountain, a very steep ice and snow wall, that leads to the summit ridge.
The plateau was a good place to collect your thoughts, warm up the legs, and get your mind right for the steep section just ahead. A wide and seemingly un-crevassed 2000-foot ice, slope covered in hard pack that led to the summit ridge. Once more, another perfect spot to put our most excellent cramponing and rope team movement skills to good use. We made quick work of it, zig-zagging up but ever mindful of the long slide that would result from a misstep.
And then we were on the summit ridge. Not as steep as the section below, not very exposed in the risky fall sense of things, but totally exposed to the elements, and, the highest ridge on the whole continent. And there was the summit, just a few hours ahead. The perfect conditions for Summit Fever: nothing was going to stop us now.
The summit ridge: top of the steep snow slope, take a sharp left and follow the obvious ridgeline direct to the top, maybe 1500 vertical feet ahead. A few little rock obstacles but mostly a steady climb up the obvious ridge to the top. Practically no wind and a balmy -40F air temperature, which in the bright sun and without wind felt perfectly comfortable. Fingers, toes, and nose: no issues whatsoever with frostbite today.
So it just boiled down to concentrating on one foot in front of the other, “TAKE me out to the ball game” in my head for a few more hours, trying to absorb the increasingly surreal panorama around us, processing the insanely remote and lofty position we were in, and the realization that we were closing in on this rare summit, the highest point on the most remote continent on planet Earth.
The temperature was probably about -40F.
But I recall practically no wind, and almost still air, which is merciful because wind at that temperature and altitude can be trouble, and extreme wind, deadly. And despite the extreme cold, I have no recollection of being uncomfortable; perhaps it was being acclimatized to the cold, probably a little bit of youthful adrenaline and resilience, and a large part due to the people at North Face, Marmot, and those incredible One Sport Everest double-shelled boots.
Legendary climber Reinhold Messner had been to the summit a few weeks before us and it was reported that he found the view from Vinson to surpass even Everest. I do not doubt him. Crisp clear air let us see to infinity in all directions and the surreal neighboring peaks and beyond that, limitless expanses of ice merged with sky and cloud.
Dang, this is nothing like mountaineering in the Alps, where the summits are only a day away from the warmth of a mountain hut, or a nice cozy lodge with hot meals and a fireplace, or a cell phone call away from the rescue helicopter. This isn't even like Nepal, where there are sherpas, porters, and tea houses just a few miles away. It's not even like very remote Denali, where there are usually swarms of other climbers and fleets of Twin Otters practically circling above all day. We had succeeded but we were by no means done with our challenge, and ever aware that we were as alone as climbers can be, there was no rescue helicopter possible, no Sherpa assistance, no shortcut down.
An interesting tidbit about mountain summits: the higher you go, the less oxygen there is in the air you breathe. At the top of Vinson, which is not even close to being considered really high at 16,077 feet above sea level, there is only about 55% of the normal air pressure, and thus the reduced oxygen compared to sea level (for comparison, at the top of Everest there is only 32%).
You can acclimate to Vinson-level heights over time, and we did to a certain extent. With time, your body produces more oxygen-carrying red blood cells to compensate for the reduced oxygen. The risk to having more red blood cells is the potential to develop clots. But, we weren't there long enough for this to be a factor. However, what was interesting to me is the fact that at this latitude, so close to the South Pole, the atmosphere of the Earth gets thinner at lower elevations because the rotating Earth creates a centrifugal force that makes the atmosphere thicker at the equator and thinner at the Poles. There is the theory that 16,667 feet above sea level is more like 20,000+ feet at the equator because of this, making the altitude effect a real risk, however, one that we did not notice at all, probably due to proper acclimatization, more than ample hydration at all times, and youth.
To those who have struggled with them, the mountains reveal beauties that they will not disclose to those who make no effort. That is the reward the mountains give to effort. And it is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who will wrestle with them that men love the mountains and go back to them again and again. The mountains reserve their choice gifts for those who stand upon their summits.
— Sir Francis Younghusband
We stayed on top for maybe 60 minutes. Took a bunch of pics in all directions, soaked it all in trying to etch it into place for all time, and tried to absorb the reality of actually being in this place where only 144 people had ever been before. There was no time pressure because we didn't have to worry about a sunset. We did have to worry about how far we had to descend to camp, the potential for a change in the perfect weather, and the fatigue factor / loss of focus that often occurs on the downhill from a major summit after Summit Fever wears off. So we headed down, and five hours later after carefully winding our way down the summit ridge and the 2000-foot ice slope without a misstep, trudged back into High Camp, tired but satisfied and victorious.
I have almost no recollection of our descent from High Camp other than it was clear and it was warm-ish. No sense of the danger while reversing our way down through the headwall and its jumble of ice blocks and crevasses. No sense of zipping past our Low Camp location, or admiring my solo perch on the ridge above the camp. And I was nearly out of precious 35mm film. I just remember we were practically running downhill, with much lighter loads now, and eager to get to base camp. I believe we descended about 8000 vertical feet and traveled 10 miles in about 6 hours, terrain that took us three long days going up.
So our sprint to Base paid off because we could see it soon enough. Spartan and remote as it is, there is a palpable sigh of relief upon the first glimpse, still two or three miles off. We ate up that terrain in a flash, found our tents, and our work was done.
And then you rest. You re-hydrate. And you devour as many calories as you can to start putting back what this expedition took off, which for me was nearly 20 lbs. (I was a lean and mean 190 lbs when we left. I was down to 170 when I got home.)
You also crank up the radio and call Patriot Hills for pickup: send the Twin Otter ASAP, hope the weather is stable, and continue to use up all the food you have left. The plane would be there in 24 hours, we heard from Patriot Hills. Yay. And, how do we spend our next and last 24 hours on the ice?
Well, we had plenty of fuel for the stove. We had butter, we had bacon, we had dozens of frozen mini-bagels: bingo, deep-fried bagel sandwiches with bacon, lots of them. Expeditionary cuisine of the highest order and one of the most memorable meals I’ve had anywhere, anytime. I’ve tried to make these at home and on camping trips a few times in the ensuing years; it's never come close to how satisfying these were then.
The thing about being in such a remote place is that there is a complete absence of the sounds of civilization. There’s only occasional wind. There’s no car horns, traffic, the hum of people going places, no radio, tv, or leaves rustling, or even rain. So the sound of a little plane nearby jumps out at you and you can hear it coming a long way off. And then you see it, a little red dot heading right for you, getting larger moment by moment until it touches down on the snow and glides past you to a stop. In theory.
It's not too different from the opening of the TV show Fantasy Island: a bunch of guys all of a sudden stop what they are doing and start yelling ‘the plane, the plane” and then you see it in the distance, and you know in a few minutes you’ll be loading it up, and then quickly on the way back to Patriot Hills, and then maybe back to Punta for dinner. And it lines up with the strip of markers you laid down for it, and it touches down, and…hey, didn't that sound funny when it landed?
There was a sharp crack when the plane touched down. Was it from the plane or the glacier? Turns out, it was from the plane, and it was the nose ski connectors breaking, and while they kept the ski on for this landing, were not nearly strong enough for another takeoff or landing. Fortunately, the very competent people at ANI were ready for this, and of course had plenty of spare parts, in Patriot Hills. So, radio back to base, and order up a new nose ski. Alas, it will be at least 24 hours to get it there, so…unpack the tents and sleeping bags again, crank up the stoves, and spend another 24 hours gorging on… another round of deep-fried bagels and bacon!
Right on schedule the next day the replacement part arrives, and the pilots begin the process of swapping out the broken ski. How do you lift the nose of a Twin Otter in the field, on a glacier, so you can put on a new nose ski, you ask? You throw a harness over the tail, and five guys pull the tail down, and like magic, the nose rises up off the ice. I was one of those five, and dang it, I wish I had a picture of that, but it was very resourceful to see how these ANI pilots had all the answers to what seemed to be a serious challenge.
The wounded plane departs. Just to be safe, that's the one that heads back to Patriot Hills sans passengers. We load up the gear into the remaining plane, and we are off for the short hop back to the blue ice of Patriot Hills where hopefully the good ole Ice Princess will return and sweep us back to Punta and civilization.
Back to Patriot Hills.
Over the course of two days waiting for the Ice Princess, people from other expeditions, the South Pole, and other Antarctic locales arrive in waves of Twin Otters for the flight home. Not unlike the bar scene in Star Wars minus the music. Some pretty motley and rowdy characters from all continents speaking multiple languages charged up with the machismo of adventure and success.
Doug Scott's team looked pretty haggard though. They were a few days behind us on the summit and got hit with high winds. Most of them had frostbitten or frost-nipped faces and hands; one had already lost all the skin from his nose and was certainly looking at major plastic surgery upon return home, poor bastard. And they told of an exploding pressure cooker that was something like a hand grenade with chicken shrapnel. That must have been fun.
These stories and others made me exceptionally happy that our trip was uneventful and straightforward, with no additional, self-inflicted drama, and I was doubly grateful that Phil Ershler had planned out everything so well. His vast experience made this a safer and more rewarding expedition than I could have hoped for.
A couple of days at Patriot Hills had us chomping at the bit to hop back onto the Ice Princess, and when it finally arrived back on the blue ice, we climbed aboard with all due haste.
I do not have a single photo from this point on, so I suspect I was totally out of film on the flight home, or just too tired to keep the camera handy, because it would have been pretty amazing to document what I saw as we flew back to the edge of the ice shelf, from maybe a height of 1000 feet above the ice: an army of sea lions draped over every little iceberg and piece of pancake ice, for about two minutes.
I was possibly the only person aboard who saw this except the pilots. Everyone else had closed their window shade to sleep and I only popped it open for a quick peek, and there they were, close enough to touch and clearly looking up at us flying so close. I was in the window seat, my camera was stashed where I couldn't easily get to it, and even now I’m not certain it was not a hallucination, but I still have the image in my head as real as any memory I’ve ever had.
Then, nothing but Southern Ocean and Drake Passage vistas (regrets I did not have any film left!) and sleep until Punta Arenas where we were treated by the fanfare of the local newspaper and photographers who the next day put us on the front page of El Magallanes:
From that point on it’s all a blur: Punta to Santiago to Miami to JFK, each leg of this itinerary another step at re-entry into the real world again.
But what was not a blur is that I had to reconnect asap with a few key clients. My office in midtown Manhattan at the time was a couple of blocks away from the ice rink at Rockefeller Center, and as I was walking to work it hit me hard, that less than 36 hours earlier I was on the ice in primitive and remote Antarctica, and here I am now, in one of the most densely populated and overdeveloped places in the world. Magellan could not have fathomed that any of it was possible. I had done it, seen the contrast with my own eyes, and I could hardly believe it was real.
What an incredible, amazing, interesting, small world we occupy.
With the perspective of climbs on all seven continents, Vinson is for me the most surreal, the most unique. It stands alone above all others as a life altering experience. There is not a speck of brown or green anywhere, the sky is unearthly, the sun never sets, it is as pristine and primitive and undeveloped as it was a million years ago, and knowing there are no other human beings for hundreds of miles in any direction surely adds to its alien feel. The idea that you can even get to a place that only century or so ago was not even on the map, a totally unknown massive continent, is mind boggling.
The overall experience is so overwhelming in so many ways, pictures hardly do it justice and it’s taken me 30 years to even try to find the words to explain it to others; I fear that this journal cannot do it adequately. Nevertheless, I hope that if you’ve made it this far, you’ve now had a feel for our landmark expedition to Mount Vinson.
And then it hits you: you are not in the mountains. The mountains are in you. Ansel Adams.
About the author
Martin Pazzani is a globe-trotting corporate exec, an entrepreneur, a fitness guru and author, a dynamic speaker, and an avid hiker, trekker, and mountaineer. He has taken 100,000,000+ uphill steps, across seven continents, over 50 years.
Throughout his long and eclectic career in numerous industries and business categories, he’s guided some of the world’s biggest brands, started a few companies, and worn many hats, from fast food burger flipper and furniture delivery guy to chief marketing officer and CEO. Over an equally long period of time, he’s pursued peaks from Antarctica to Nepal and across Europe, Africa, and North and South America, and amassed unique, broad perspectives, and insights that few possess.
His insights on longevity, healthcare, brain health, stress reduction, fitness, and hiking are what is in this book, Secrets of Aging Well: Get Outside.
“Secrets of Aging Well: GET OUTSIDE” is available on amazon.com here: GET OUTSIDE.
