January 29, 2008 by admin.

I received a call from the guiding company today. Lei is on top of Aconcagua! She is doing great. Her message was, “Hi Mom!” She should be down in a couple of days with some pictures and a full report. Congratulations Lei on a successful set of expeditions!

Posted in Aconcagua | 1 Comment »

January 26, 2008 by admin.

Lei has been in basecamp for 4 days, and will go up to camp 1 this afternoon. She arrived at basecamp on Jan 22, rested for one day, did a carry to camp 1 on Jan 24, then another rest day. There is a weather system in the area and the forecast is not good until Jan 29, so she’s spending more time in basecamp to wait out the weather instead of waiting higher on the mountain. She’ll move up later this afternoon (Jan 26).

Lei reports:

Weather wise, this season has been good so far, most teams can get a decent summit window with a reasonable schedule. My planned summit day is after this storm system pass on Jan 29. Hopefully, I will have my luck this time.

Health wise, I´m in perfect condition. Having spent more time to slowly acclimatize, my oxygen saturation level is consistent at high 80%, near 90% (oxygen saturation level in blood at sea level is 100%). I am feeling very comfortable here.

On another note, there´s a change to my guide. My guide Damian left the mountain yesterday morning due to a family emergency. I was very depressed and sat in a corner of base camp by myself for several hours yesterday morning to gather my thoughts, and steer myself towards positive thinking. My new guide Esteban is a very caring person, his warmer personality and very positive attitude helped me feel better and cheered me up. We are looking forward to a happy and fast ascent ahead (given that I have acclimatized perfectly and am feeling strong).

Next update will be after summit.

Posted in Aconcagua | No Comments »

January 16, 2008 by Lei.

After a 5 days’ delay by storm, I just got out of Antarctica this morning, and caught my flight to Mendoza by a narrow margin. I’m sitting here in steaming Mendoza at a hotel with hot shower (the first real one in a month!) and flushing toilet. Then I will depart for a 5-day acclimatization training trip tomorrow before making my third attempt on Aconcagua.

Posted in Antarctica | 1 Comment »

January 16, 2008 by Lei.

Starting Point: South 89: 02.038, West 94:27.811,

Ending Point: South 90:00.000

Distance: 107 km

Date: Jan 3 - Jan 9, 2008, 7 days’ hard work.

I underestimated the workload of last degree ski before the trip. I never imagined the sled would be so big:

We started the trip with the sled weighing 50-60 kilos, and it looks even bigger than me. Though Antarctica is generally a big flat plain, it’s full of “sastrugi’, the snow drift. Though they may not be so high most of time, they are enough to hold up my sled from time to time. In addition to the snow drift, the journey is a gentle uphill all the way.

This trip is as much a mental game as a physical game. The big white plain, nothing else. You need a lot of patience to get through each “boring” day:

My skis point to due south

The average temperature for the trip is around -25 C, even with bright sunshine and blue sky. A light wind of 5-10 kts would bring significant wind chill effect. That makes cool picture though:

The last day was the hardest day. A constant head wind of 15-20 kts brought the wind chill to -40C:

We could see the destination from 7 miles away. What seemed so close was still many hours away:

South Pole Station on the horizon 3-4 miles away

It was the goal that kept me going even though I was very exhausted already:

I finally pulled into South Pole!

I bet no one expected such a modern structure at South Pole!

US Amundsen-Scott Station at South Pole

Posted in Antarctica | 1 Comment »

January 16, 2008 by Lei.

Vinson is called mini Denali by a lot of people.

They share very similar landscape and scenery:

You may think it’s cloud out there, but no, it’s just glacier:

First, we made a single carry trip from base camp to low camp by carrying a back pack and pulling a sled behind us:

Between low camp and high camp, we make a double carry to climb a steep slope along 1200m of fixed rope. By “double carry”, we climb this route twice to carry half of our load up each time, because the slope was too steep to pull a sled.

Summit day was a long day. I finally got good luck with weather with climbing on this trip, but it was a painful day for me because I was having a stomach cramp and diarrhea whole day, maybe from the insufficiently-hydrated dry-freeze food the night before. Nonetheless, I was very excited to make it even in such a weak condition:

Posted in Antarctica | No Comments »