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.

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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

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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:

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December 28, 2007 by admin.

Got a call from Lei on the summit tonight. She’s bagged another one. This was her weakest summit though, because she was suffering from a stomach bug. (Probably too much good food the week before…) She wasn’t able to eat much before the summit and constantly wanted to stop to empty what little was in her system, but she made it. Tomorrow they’ll head back down to base camp and then back to the main camp. Congratulations Lei!

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December 23, 2007 by admin.

Got a call from Lei. They are moving to base camp today! Tomorrow she expects to move to Camp 1 where they will spend 3days acclimatizing. Then they should carry and move. She expects to finish the entire climb in 5 to 7 days. We should get an update from her when she reaches camp 1.

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December 20, 2007 by admin.

Heard from Lei today. She’s in Antarctica and having a blast. She and the others stayed up all night watching the Antarctica marathon. Nineteen people ran it, and one woman ran 100k… in 22 hours.

They’ve been stuck there as they need another flight to the mountain base and weather has been pretty warm and a little cloudy. She’s thinking that tomorrow they may be able to make it.

Lei reports that the Antarctica food is great and the life there is excellent. Unlimited food and drinks, a nice toilet, and many interesting people to share them with. She even has a mattress for a bed! She’s been walking around in only 1 layer with her down jacket, so she’s quite comfortable. It’s truly a five star experience.

Her next update should be in a few days from the base of Mt. Vinson.

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December 18, 2007 by Lei.

This Afternoon, we had our second brief meeting. The snow finally stopped by Sunday, and it was said to be the longest snow storm in 22 years memory. This morning 7:30am, the Dec 10 group finally took off and landed at Patriot Hill after about 4 hours´s fly. As we speak at 4pm, the flight is carrying 54 climbers and skiers back from Antarctica, and is scheduled to land in Punta Arenas around 7:30pm. All patience on Vinson paid off — all the people who hunkered down on Mt Vinson during the snow storm last week made to the summit eventually, except a group of 3 under Dave Harn´s guide who is still making the second summit attempt. Skiers also reached south pole and being picked up before their tea supplies run out Everyone is safe.

There´s only one plane and one crew that can fly this route, and they need 12 hours break after a long trip. So we are planning to fly tomorrow morning. The weather forecast does not look so good though, another storm is closing in, but we will try our best to make an attempt. Every hour would count at this moment. Sometimes, the flight may have to turn around after 4.5 hours´ flight because the landing window is closed, so the crew is always prepared for a non-stop round trip.

Let´s pray for the weather!

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December 17, 2007 by Lei.

The wild wild west scenery on way from Punta Arenas to Pueto Natales:

Guanacos wandering around in the park of Torres del Paine:

The Torres del Paine, looking from faraway outside park:

I went up to the base of the Torres at 5am to see the sunrise. Unfortunately, the Torres didn’t turn all red as we hoped. Not sure how those postcard pictures got those mystical colors, maybe need some special geological event.

The Glacier Grey is a giant glacier river flow into Lago Grey (lake Grey). The ice from the glacier breaks off at water mouth and became icebergs on the lake:

The Cuernos del Paine:

This is a bridge near park entrance/exit. It’s amazing how the driver can manage to drive a van across without scratching the car!

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December 15, 2007 by Lei.

The first two days in Punta Arenas were centered around the trip preparation, of course. Yesterday, I got my gear checked. They were a little bit concerned about my down jacket, which is a 750-fill of LoweAlpine from my friend Jing. To be safe, I rented a bullet-proof 800 fill North Face one. They only have size XL in stock, which looks like a sleeping bag on me, but it´s guaranteed to be safe!

This morning, we had our first brief meeting. We have total 46 (or 47) people going in on this flight and are all for Mt Vinson climb, including 4 women climbers. My group under ALE´s guide has 5 members, including 2 Korean, 1 Ecuadorian, 1 Serbian, and me. This is going be a interesting group. One of the Korean member is a world famous climber HongGil Um, who was the number 8th person in the world to climb all 14 of the 8000m peaks and who has seen a lot of his team members perishing on the mountain! The Ecuadorian climber is Patricio Tisalema Torres, a professional guide himself who soloed Mt Everest last year without supplemental oxygen.

The first brief meeting

At the moment, it was snowing hard in Antarctica, and has been so for a week. The Dec 10 departure group is still waiting in Punta Arenas, because of Ilyum flight can only land on hard blue ice runway. Even if the snow is going to stop by tomorrow, it takes 36 hours to clean up the runway. The earliest possible date to fly is Tuesday. So we are talking about 72 hours’ guaranteed no-fly zone and are advised to have some fun traveling! So I’m taking off to visit Torres del Paine for the next couple days, and come back for update on Tuesday.

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December 14, 2007 by Lei.

Punta Arenas lies on the western shore of the Straits of Magellan, in Chile’s southernmost region of Magallanes and Chilean Antarctica. Punta Arenas means SandyPoint. With a population of approximately 125,000, Punta Arenas is a small city with remote and frontier character.

The view of Punta Arenas city from a hill:

The sea port at Punta Arenas:

The green land that divides traffic on avenida:

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