Jacob called in a great expedition dispatch from high camp on Mount Vinson this afternoon. The team has finally caught a break in the weather and were able to make the move up a relatively steep section of the route that brought them to high camp. This section of the route is known for the…
As the days grow shorter in the northern hemisphere, why not chase the sun and head south?!? A team of climbers from around the globe are headed to the western edge of Argentina to attempt to climb the highest peak in all of the Americas, Cerro Aconcagua. Rising to almost 7000 meters, this peak is…
Rich Ward called in from our Mount Vinson expedition. The team got a slight break in the weather and pushed up the Branscomb Glacier yesterday. They made it to “Low Camp,” which is at nearly 10,000 feet (3050m), below a steep face that leads up to High Camp. The weather has been quite a bit…
Our final Mount Vinson expedition team of the 2015/16 season is still waiting at base camp for the weather to improve. It’s been a bit windy and snowy up higher on the mountain for the last few days and they’ve decided to remain patient in base camp for the weather to improve. It can be…
The January Mountain Trip Vinson Expedition made the flight from the Union Glacier Base to the Mount Vinson Base Camp yesterday evening and is settled in to their comfortable base camp. The weather in camp is pretty nice, but sounds windy and stormy up higher on the mountain today so they’ll spend the day preparing…
Jacob Schmitz called in from the broad, Union Glacier, after welcoming our January Vinson expedition to Antarctica. After flying from southern Patagonia and over the Antarctic Peninsula, Rich and Mattij took those first memorable steps off the Ilushyn 76 cargo jet onto the blue ice runway. It is a truly bizarre and amazing experience to…
Mountain Trip’s final team of the 2015/2016 season recently arrived in the port city of Punta Arenas, Chile, and the climbers have been busy preparing for the transition down to “the ice” with the objective of climbing Mount Vinson. Mount Vinson soars to a height of 16,066 feet (4897m) in the Ellsworth Range. Located at…
A largely unintelligible satellite phone call from Alex Strauss does little to convey the sentiments of the team. A bug that was picked up at some point before the expedition has really hit Jenni hard in the past days and given the challenges placed upon the human body at altitude, she just wasn’t getting any…
The team has elected to spend another day at Plaza de Argentina, or what we also call Base Camp, in order to allow Jenny some additional rest. Base Camp is relatively luxurious, in that the team is at 14,000′ and they have access to large shelters to hang out, read, play games, eat, etc. It’s…
The December 22nd Aconcagua Expedition made their first climb up to Camp 1 today at over 16,000 ft, where they left a bunch of gear and food and then returned to base camp. The goal for today was primarily to get up to higher altitude and continue the acclimatization process, preparing them to move up…