Mount Vinson | South Pole: Ski The Last Degree Cybercasts: January 2014

Hello there friends, family, and loved ones. This is Team Climb For A Smile and Team Four Continents all reporting in from beautiful downtown Punta Arenas.

Yes, we have flown off the white continent all the way in to the tip of South America, where we are enjoying a fabulous repast of salmon, and lamb, and dessert, and discos always.

Anyways, we’re having a great time and just wanted to thank you all for following along as we adventured to the top of the Antarctic continent. And now we’re going to adventure home, so stay tuned and you’ll see us soon, right at your front door.

Ta ta for now from the whole team! (Team members cheering and yelling “bye” in background.)

Hey there friends, family, and loved ones, this is Vern Tejas reporting for Team Climb For A Smile. We have made our way from Vinson Base Camp after a hearty meal. We’ve had a pancake and bacon breakfast after we slept in, and we’ve finally, with clear air, was able to fly all the way to Union Glacier .

So we’re now at Union Glacier. We’re set up in a wind storm, great for kite skiing but not so great for sleeping, and we’re resting and waiting for a plane. Hopefully tomorrow, the big bird, the Illuyshin 76 will come and take us back to South America. So we’re doing better. We’re getting closer, one step closer to home. So stay tuned for the next unfolding of the chapter of Team Climb For A Smile. And hopefully we’ll be talking to you next from, wonderful tip of South America, Punta Arenas.

So ciao ciao for now! We’ll talk to you soon.

Hi, this is Garrett Madison calling in for Alpine Ascents Mount Vinson Expedition Team Four Continents.

We just flew today from Vinson Base Camp to Union Glacier Camp in Antarctica, and are now awaiting our flight back to Chile. We should be flying out tomorrow if everything goes on schedule and be back in Chile sometime tomorrow night, on the 21st of January.

So we’ve had a very successful expedition. Everybody made the summit of Mount Vinson and had a wonderful time here in Antarctica. And we’re very excited to be heading home, back to our families and friends, and back to civilization.

So this will conclude our cybercasts. It’s been a wonderful time here in Antarctica and we look forward to next season.

Hey there friends, family, and loved ones, this is Team Climb For A Smile.

And what we did today was descend for some oxygen. Yes, it was a grueling day, packing up, putting everything on our backs, going down to the Fixed Lines and then sliding everything down to the bottom. Everybody was quite happy with that. Then we did a forced march from our Low Camp all the way down to Base Camp with sleds.

And we just had a great meal of chicken and taters and everybody seems to be fat and sassy, especially with the Austral cervezas going down. (transmission choppy)… Vinson Base Camp (at about 7,000 feet above sea level) now and in good spirits. It’s so warm down here; it’s like going to the tropics. We’ve got oxygen and bare hands. Well, we’re enjoying it.

Stay tuned for the further adventures. Find out what happens tomorrow to Climb For A Smile.

Hi, this is Garrett Madison calling in for Team Four Continents, Alpine Ascents Mount Vinson Expedition. Today is Saturday, January 18th and we have descended down to Base Camp.

And we had a nice walk down today, clear skies, no wind. A beautiful way to walk down from High Camp after our summit yesterday. And we are currently waiting for a Twin Otter to take us to Union Glacier Camp.

All’s well. Everyone’s doing fine and we’re looking forward to that flight back to Union Glacier Camp. We’ll check in soon.

Hey there friends, family, and loved ones. Yes, it was a beautiful day, a little breezy but spectacularly clear. We could see almost all of Antarctica from the top of Mount Vinson!

Yes, every one of us made it to the top, 4 o’clock in the afternoon, light breeze. We could take about three photographs before our fingers started falling off, so we don’t have a lot of photos but we had a great time. The Team moved really well on the way down, and we got back here at 7 o’clock and had a great Indian meal. (“Thank you very much guys” said to Team Members in background.)

And now we’re looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning; we’re going to sleep in till 8:30, okay?! Be there or be square. Talk to you tomorrow. Ta ta for now!

Hello there friends, family, and loved ones this is Vern Tejas reporting in for Team Climb For A Smile. Today was a good one.

We really appreciate your prayers and your best wishes. We had calm conditions for the first time in about five days. And we were able to push not only ourselves up to High Camp, but we were able to grab our cache that we had made of depot items that we need up here, so we’ve got everything at High Camp: food, fuel, all of our heavy Antarctic equipment, and butter, very important, and butter. So we’ve got butter and everything’s better with butter, I hope you remember that.

We’re now camping at about 12,300 feet above sea level. It’s a beautiful evening. The sun’s just going down behind the rocks. It’s 10:38pm; we’ve got probably about another 30-40 minutes of sunshine before it goes behind the rocks, which will officially make it very cold and very nighttime. So we’re going to jump in our bags here shortly and try to get a full night’s sleep before we take a look at the morning.

We have a bad weather report for Sunday, so Saturday might be our only window of opportunity. And if everybody feels good and the weather looks reasonable, we’re going to see if we can push up. So stay tuned, find out how that works out. Bye bye for now!

Hello, this is Garrett Madison calling in for the Alpine Ascents Mount Vinson Expedition with Team Four Continents. That’s Hugo from the Netherlands, Ron from Australia, and Mirza and Samina from Pakistan.

Today we are on the summit of Mount Vinson. It’s a beautiful day, no wind. We’re all alone up here enjoying the views. And we’re looking forward to heading down soon, back to our High Camp.

Everyone’s doing well. We had a great time climbing up to the summit and we’re looking forward to a safe descent. We’ll check in soon.

Hey there friends, family, and loved ones, this is Team Climb For A Smile reporting in from Low Camp.

It was windy today. We couldn’t really get up enough nerve to brace ourselves against the wind, so we’re acclimatizing here at Low Camp. We’re going to need to move soon though, cause we’re running out of butter. Those penguin burgers take a lot of butter to cook. So we’ve been having good meals and good talks, getting to know everybody quite well, and hoping that tomorrow the winds are going to drop enough that we can actually move up to High Camp.

As you know from yesterday, our food and fuel is all most there at High Camp, in a cache. And all we got to do is get our bodies up there and get it. A day or two of good weather and hopefully we’ll be able to climb this thing. So please keep rooting for us, we appreciate that. And I just want to tell you, those penguin burgers were tasty.

So ciao for now! We’ll talk to you tomorrow. Stay tuned for the further adventures of Climb For A Smile!

Hi, this is Garrett Madison calling in for the Alpine Ascents Mount Vinson Expedition Team Four Continents.

And today we took a rest day at our High Camp. It’s been very windy all day, blowing lots of snow, so we’ve stayed inside our tents and enjoyed a few nice warm meals, and hoping that the weather forecast proves correct tomorrow and that we have a calm day tomorrow to make a summit attempt. So we’re all warm in our sleeping bags now, drifting off to bed, and hoping tomorrow we awake to calm winds and a blue sky.

Everyone’s doing great and we’re enjoying our time here at High Camp. We’ll check in soon.