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Dispatch
#9 January 14, 2002. Camp II, Mt. Vinson,
Antarctica. Hello
this is Vern Tejas for Alpine Ascents Mt. Vinson
trip. Yesterday was full of excitement.
We started off with a light wind heading up to our
Camp III. We were carrying all the food and
fuel and excess gear that we did not need at our
lower camps and we ascended the headwall. The
headwall is about 40 to 45 degrees, it's about 2,500
feet high. It became interesting when the
winds picked up later on in the day. But the
team held tough and decided to go all the way and
push on even though the winds increased to 20 - 25
mph across the Col between the third highest
mountain on Antarctica and the first highest, which
is of course Mt. Vinson. We finally dropped
our bags in a hole and buried the cache and headed
back down. In all total we were out for ten
hours, so we really put in a good effort, I was very
proud of the team.
We got back here and ate dinner at about
midnight, and sure enough we decided that we were
going to have to sleep in for the following day, and
that's just exactly what we did, I don't think
anyone got up until 2:00 in the afternoon when we
started eating pancakes. And we ate pancakes
up until almost dinnertime. So we are really pleased
to have our food and fuel up there, we've got four
days up there, we're in very good position to
attempt to climb this mountain in the next few days.
Hopefully the weather will come around, it's been
cloudy all day today, and tomorrow our big plan is
to push up to Camp III and get that established.
That will put us in shooting range of the top of the
continent, so keep your fingers crossed and hope for
the best and we'll be getting back to you from Camp
III here shortly. So that's all from the
Alpine Ascents Mt. Vinson team, thanks for tuning
in, we'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.
 Dispatches
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