Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Adventure to the Antarctic

During this quieter season, when the snow is consolidating, and hikers are preparing for the holidays, and in recognition of the cold conditions:

Adventure to the Antarctic!

Kurt Wedberg, professional guide and occasional poster here who guides Whitney, is leading an expedition down south!

As I get occasional messages from him, I'll post them here, as a number of the "community" know him.

thurs

Hey guys,

Greetings from Santiago. All my bags made it this far! I cleared
customs and rechecked my bags and am now awaiting my flight to Punta
Arenas.

Kurt

fri
Hey all,

Tomorrow we have a meeting with the people taking care of our Antarctic flight. The meeting is at 10 AM. After it is over we give them all our gear to be weighed and ready to fly to Antarctica. We keep our clothes with us so when flight time comes we change into our mountain clothes and head to the airport. We get stamped out of Chile and off we go! It sound happen as soon as tomorrow afternoon but will probably be on Sunday the 3rd.

We just had a great dinner tonight. I had a great garlic scallop soup followed by parmesan king crab legs. We washed it down with a glass of a nice Chilean red wine. Boy this mountaineering stuff is hard work!

I hope all is well at home.

All the best,

...Kurt...

That's the hard life.

Tell Kurt not to forget the 8 dogs down there..or at least if he does...leave them with a movie camera so they can film their exploits... :p

Chris

sat
Hey guys,

Today we had an orientation meeting with the people coordinating our Antarctica flight. We will fly on a Russian IL-76. It is a jet designed for flying in Siberia so it is well suited to Antarctic conditions. We are scheduled to fly tomorrow morning December 3 but 50% of the time the plane doesn´t fly on schedule. Weather is critical. For the past two days the winds have been a steady 18 knots with gusts to 24. They are cross winds and when landing a big jet on the ice that is enough wind to put the flight on hold. We will get a call in the morning at our hotel. If the weather is flyable we will have about 1/2 hour to put on our mountain clothes and get to the airport. If it is not flyable we will be informed on weather updates every couple of hours unless it obviously deteriorates enough for them to call off the flight for the day.

So much of any expedition revolves around proper planning and good logistics. At the top of the list is safety and we are quite happy to hang out in Punta Arenas until the pilot thinks it is OK to fly. If he doesn't think it is good flying weather than neither to we!

Hi OK slo top that one! TRY making it look like Mammoth has real snow to ski and the airport is open for 747's. or was that going to be next year for the airport? Still cold and dry here the snow in Oct. is mostly gone.Best sking now would be the Mc'ds when the sprinklers freeze and repture shooting water down the drive thru ramp. I made it in the side door wearing cotton and those instep crampons,wasn't going far just trying to get some coffee.


A great thing will happen this week The City Of Los Angeles will direct water back to 62 miles of the Lower Owens River and they have also agreed to control 12 more miles of dust on the Owens Lake , How this relates to WHITNEY well the Lake puts 1 million tons of dust into the atmosphere and we are about 10 miles from the Lake we may get some of that dust, The Lower Owens is that twisting patch of green in the Valley Floor that you see from the Summit. that will now expand to about a half mile wide patch of green with wildlife . Thanks Doug

Fantastic news, Doug. I'm always amazed by the dust storms. Let's hope it actually get implemented in a meaningful way!

sun
Hey gang,

Greetings from Punta Arenas, Chile. We waiting for weather to improve but it never did. This morning I received a phone call at 9:30 AM saying there were strata cloud layers at 1800' and 6000'. Winds were diminished to a steady 13 knots with gusts to 16. The pilot thought the winds were OK but the visibility was not acceptable. At 2:30 I received an update saying the cloud layers had thickened and we wouldn't be flying. So we hired a driver and left town to go see penguins. There are a couple rookeries within an hour drive of Punta Arenas. It was a pretty cool experience. We saw a lot of them plus some other exotic birds and a fox.

Tomorrow we could get a call as early as 6:30 AM if the weather has improved. If not then we will receive a call at 9:30 with an update. So, from here on out it is hurry up and wait. We need to be ready to go at a moment's notice so we can't stray too far away but there isn't a whole lot to do until we know one way or the other if we are flying. This is a similar game we play on Mt. McKinley so it is nothing new. We are ready and psyched to go when we are informed.

I hope we get some snow on the home front soon.

All the best,

...Kurt...

And in a related note, from the Punta Arenas newspaper:

"Due to inclement weather in Antarctica, we are sad to report that the local stocks of beer in Punta Arenas have declined precipitously. Beer stocks are expected to recover soon after the departure of the SMI Expedition."



Chris

Thats quite a story and effort. Thanks for pointing the site out.

Tues

Greetings from Punta Arenas, Chile.
It is feeling like that Ground Hogs Day movie. We wake up to the same routine and watch another day unfold. Today we were called to a meeting to brief us on happenings in Antarctica. The weather has continued to be stormy. At 6:30 today winds were 22 knots gusting to 29 with 30 km of visibility. 7 okta of strata at 3000 feet is still creating very flat light making landing conditions not good. Meanwhile on Mt. Vinson there has been a rescue in progress. They have kept in quiet until now but last night a couple web sites started carrying the story so they wanted to brief us (I couldn't find the web sites but if any of you do let me know). A group guided by Jagged Globe out of England was trying to descend from Camp 2 on Mt. Vinson. Deteriorating weather had forced all parties to retreat with most of them not reaching the summit. Jagged Globe was one of the last to leave and a short distance into the descent one team member fell into a crevasse. The guide pulled him out OK but needed to stop and bivouac with the group (I'm not sure why they were not able to keep moving). The person who fell into the crevasse has frostbite on both hands. They have since been able to move as low as Camp 1 but no further. They need to get to Vinson Base Camp to get a twin otter to air transport them back to Patriot Hills (1 hour flight, approx 90 miles) where the big Russian IL-76 lands. So far weather hasn't allowed flights for the twin otter. Some other groups have gone up to try to help them but as of earlier today (Tuesday the 5th) they were still at Camp 1.

We continue to wait patiently for weather to get calm and clear enough to fly. This will also mean it will good enough to bring out the injured climber too.

I'll keep you posted on progress. In the meantime please keep the climbers on Mt. Vinson in your thoughts and prayers.

...Kurt...

Wed

Hey Gang,

Well we are still in Punta Arenas. We received calls throughout the day and a trend was shifting towards clear skies and diminishing winds. By the end of the day winds had picked back up to 29 knots with gusts to 32 though so they called it off. Clouds have had multiple layers too. 4 okta of strata at 3000 feet, cirrus at 8000 and 15,000 feet. Drifting snow seems to accumulate enough to be an issue when winds get this strong. Visibility varies but contrast has improved today. We will wait until tomorrow for another report. The injured party on Mt. Vinson has reached Base Camp now and they are settled in waiting for weather to get good enough to fly to Patriot Hills, which is a 1 hour flight on the twin otter.

We have been waiting for four days now which is not out of the norm. The record I have heard is eleven days before getting a chance to fly in. Another scenario is they think weather is good so they rally us to the airport dressed in our mountain clothes then they send us back to the hotel because things changed again. We have to stay ready on a moments notice though so we try not to stray too far unless we are told conditions could not change enough in a short period of time to make a difference. In that case we go see penguins or tour a museum.

Patience is important to have on big expeditions. Sometimes we spend several days at a camp at 14,200 or 17,200 on Mt. McKinley in weather that will not let us go up or down. At least here we are in a comfortable environment while we wait.

If the pilots lose patience perhaps we can get our good friend Chris (BeachAv8r on the message boards) to come down and fly this Russian IL-76!

I hope all is well at home. Tomorrow is December 7; Pearl Harbor Day. We will make sure to remember that day whatever we do tomorrow.

All the best,

...Kurt...

We need a status check on Rev Wedberg and the SMI contigent. Wher are they?

Have not heard, and from that I judge that their flight has finally left, and they are down there where there is no simple communication. I'd imagine that they are having to push things, to make up for lost time, although I know that a certain amount of extra time is budgeted for that.

Got a Sat phone call from Kurt this afternoon.

They are in antarctica! If the weather gods cooperate, they will summit Vinson on the 15th, but one never knows. They expect to move to Base Camp tomorrow, and start working up from there.

Kurt and company at Camp 1 on Vinson. "Beautiful beyond belief". Even by Antarctic standards, the delays have been long. Spent a few days at Camp Patriot before the Otter was able to fly to the mountain, and when Kurt and the team landed, they packed right up and made Camp 1.

2 AM and still light, but the sun goes behind a ridge and temps. drop to -40. So the guys stay huddled in their bags until around 11. Will carry loads to Camp 2 next, then move next day, perhaps summit in 2-4 days depending on weather and climber condition.

Kurt sends his best to all, hopes to be back for Christmas but owing to Dec. 27 start of Aconcagua expedition not sure.

Keep thinking good thoughts for good guys.

John

Friday, got a call from Kurt on his Sat phone. He was at camp 1, having just gotten back from doing a carry to camp 2, Adv Base Camp. On the way down, they found the abandoned gear from the rescued people from last week. Since they had empty packs, they packed up their packs with gear, and carried it down to camp 1. Kurt asked me to contact the expedition company to find out what he should do to get the gear to them. I've e-mailed them, and await a reply. Weather is holding and beautiful.

Sunday phone call from Kurt.

He is in his sleeping bag at camp 2, having just returned from the SUMMIT! Will be heading down tomorrow, cleaning the camps. Weather is holding, spirits are high.

It was clear, but very cold on the summit. He estimates -40 to -60, and he wore his down Everest suit.

He should be able to post from civilization in a few days.

All of us in Dawg country say congrats on ya'lls summit. Who all got there? Did Dr. Mikee scratch his name in the book too? Just like Kurt and crew to clean up after folks. Godspeed for the downclimb and return flights...