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They started flying a single plane late morning on the 28th. This despite ALE telling us that we’d be their first priority – that we’d have two planes ferrying us out. Turns out one plane took off for the South Pole. So much for top priority.

The first half of the crew was on the third plane out, which was late afternoon on account of their late start. So the rest of us kept watching the skies, hoping against all hope that the cloud layer currently covering Vinson doesn’t drop any lower.

Luckily that didn’t happen, and we were back at Union Glacier after the 40 minute flight. Terry got checked out, and is going to make a full recovery – no lost fingers. Out of the 30-odd people on the mountain while we were there, it seems about 4 got hit with frostbite, one of whom would be losing some fingers. Just goes to show that even with modern clothing and technology, it’s still an extreme environment out there.

We got assigned clamshell tents – the ones with bunks, which was oh-so-nice. We got word that the Ilyushin wasn’t going to fly that day, so we just hung around camp. I had a hot shower the next morning(the heater had stopped working the previous night or I’d have had one earlier!), then I went for a 10 mile bike ride on one of the mountain bikes they have there. You get assigned a radio in case of emergency, but then you can take off on the same loop they use for marathons. Yes they do marathons out here!

That bike ride was one of the highlights of this trip, and one of the best experiences of my life. It was just me, the bike, and endless Antarctica. Utterly quiet, purely white, and completely alone. It was transcendental, and I doubt there are many places on Earth with such an amazing sense of isolation.

Halfway through my ride, the radio came alive with chatter “All stations all stations, the Ilyushin is inbound.”

We were going home, after almost a month spent on this continent. It had been a wild trip, and an experience that will highlight the rest of my life, but I was ready leave.

We had another five hours to wait, during which time I somehow fell sick – it started with the chills, but became one of the worst colds I’d ever had. It took me a month to recover from that, and at one point I’d completely lost my voice. The flight back didn’t help – 5 hour red eye on the Ilyushin, then thanks to the amazing Pirjo from CTT destinations, I had a flight back to the US later that afternoon. To Santiago, then Dallas – another red eye(in a center seat no less), then finally on to the bay area.

Experiencing dusk in the Santiago airport was incredibly disorienting. All of a sudden, things became darker and I could not understand why. Then I looked outside and saw that it was night – something I hadn’t seen for a month. What a crazy experience that was!

I wanted an adventure and I certainly got one. Antarctica was an experience I will never forgot, and already I long to go back. It is one of those a priori special places. I only hope that it remains that way in the future, a remote, difficult-to-access land with so much reward.

A huge thank you to Mike and Jeremiah for being kick-ass guides. They’re among the very best you can find in in the world. CTSS is a new company, but Mike is a legend, and climbing with them was an absolute pleasure.

My next big climb is Denali in the summer of 2020. As usual, I’ll have a blog up for that, so look forward to it, and thanks for reading about my journey!