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 78 degrees south latitude, the mountain is shrouded in glacier and regularly sees temperatures plunge to -30F or colder, even during the summer climbing season. This is one of our favorite expeditions, as there are few places on our planet that can rival the raw wildness of Antarctica!

Joining us are two climbers who have traveled from around the world to begin this journey:

Rich Ward from Rockville, Maryland and

Mathij van der Meulen from the Netherlands.

The guide for the expedition is Jacob Schmitz.

The team spent the past two days finalizing their preparations and enjoying Punta Arenas.  If the weather cooperates (!!), on January 9th they will depart Punta Arenas on a Russian cargo jet for the four hour flight to Antarctica. They will land at Union Glacier, a massive, blue ice glacier, where they will unload and board a smaller, ski equipped Otter for the short flight to Vinson Base Camp.

The team plans to call in and give us updates on a daily basis, but communicating from near the South Pole can be challenging, as the satellite connections can be rather short at times.  We encourage you to follow their adventure, but please understand that there could be some lapses in posts.

Enjoy!!