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It turns out that even getting to Antarctica is an adventure. First there were the flights – Portland to Dallas to Santiago to Punta Arenas at the southern tip of Chile, where I met up with the team at our hotel: Diego de Almagro. Not the fanciest establishment, but good enough to house some climbers for a few days. We tend not to be picky about these kinds of things – hard to be picky about hotels when you’re used to sleeping in freezing tents. Our flight to Antarctica was scheduled for the next day, luckily my baggage arrived without issues.

Soon after, we huddled in a room at the back of the hotel where Mike laid out several maps showing us the mountain’s relative location on the continent, and our route up. Antarctica was inching closer!

I got my gear ready for a quick run-through from Mike, where he recommended that I bring along some more food. That ended up being really sage advice, as I’d later find out.

They gave us launch windows – one in the morning, one in the evening, because scheduled flights are far too ordinary for Antarctica. They’d make the go/no-go based on weather at Punta and at the blue-ice runway of Union Glacier. That’s right – the runway is just ice. A mile thick.

After a quick outing to buy some snacks, we reconvened for dinner, where we celebrated Mrika’s 17th birthday. She’s attempting to set the world record to be the youngest woman to climb all of the Seven Summits, accompanied by her father Niti – which means they need to climb all of them this year. You often meet high-caliber individuals on climbs like these, and this team was replete with them.

Our first window was the following morning and despite waking up expecting to be in Antarctica in a few hours, we got the no-go call soon after. Bummed, we headed back to bed, though Mike tells us that delays are the norm for anything to do with Antarctica. Apparently he’d been stuck here in Punta for two weeks on one of his eleven trips down, on account of an oil strike and a missing part for the plane.

We had the day to ourselves, save for a meet & greet at ALE’s HQ down the road for all the people going down to Antarctica. Most of us were Vinson climbers, but we had some people skiing The Last Degree to the South Pole, as well as some penguin photographers in the mix.

The briefing at ALE really made the reality of what we were about to undertake sink in. They showed us their HQ at Union Glacier, which looked a lot like a lunar outpost… and the aircraft – a Russian Ilyushin-76 cargo plane – wikipedia calls it a “Strategic Airlifter” – capable of hauling us and our gear 5 hours south to Antarctica, as well as enough fuel for the return trip. It’s a really distinct-looking plane, manned by an all-Russian crew, which somehow makes it even cooler.

The next window was for that evening, so we used the opportunity to walk around town a bit. Punta is a launch point for people heading to Patagonia, so there are many outdoor shops, and it’s just a nice quiet seaside town, if a little humid.

We gathered once more in the evening, but it was again a no-go. We took it in stride, but these false starts were eating into our climb. Too many and it’d cause problems with our flights back home.

The next morning we woke and gathered as usual, half-expecting the inevitable. But the third time was the charm – we got the all clear, the ALE van picked us up, and we were off to the airport all decked out in our climbing gear. When the doors open on the other side it’s full-on Antarctica, possibly forty below(C & F are equivalent when it gets that cold), so we had our mountaineering triple boots on, decked out in down as we strolled through security.

Aesthetics aren’t really a priority with mountaineering gear so you inevitably look like a color-blind clown. Now imagine fifty such people all trying to get through airport security next to the normies. A veritable circus.

The Ilyushin itself was exactly as expected – cranes dangling everywhere, exposed dials, metal, fuses, and drab paint. Real Cold War vibes. Apparently each one of these planes were stolen from the USSR at one point – there’s a book that tells this tale. The flight engineer hung back with us in the cargo bay – we were told to identify him by “The Russian who smiles a bit more than the rest”.

You’d think a trip to an exotic destination like Antarctica might be comfy and posh, but nope – stuffed in with our backpacks, the legroom was less than anything you’d normally experience flying cattle class. This was full-on sardine class. Somehow that just made it even more awesome.

But then the ice floes of Antarctica appeared on that 60 inch LCD, and none of it seemed to matter anymore.

There is something about Antarctica – something otherworldly – that makes it truly unique. You can’t help but feel excited, even if you’re just looking at the blue runway rapidly approaching through a giant monitor on an Ilyushin cargo jet.

Temps were around 10 deg F as we got off the plane, visibility was poor, but wind was low. The craziest thing was that “The Blue Ice” runway truly was…. just ice. One mile deep, incredibly slippery and sky blue. I’d never seen anything like it before.

We penguin walked our way to the expedition vehicles; how the plane didn’t slide on landing is beyond me.

Oh and the expedition vehicles that picked us up? They looked like this:

Because Antarctica.

30 minutes later and we were at Union Glacier – ALE Headquarters and launch point for Vinsoneers, Last Degreers, and penguin photographers. Did I mention it was a moon base?

Full kitchen staffed by world class chefs, clamshell bunk tents, a library, bathrooms, heck they even had a mountain biking loop. All this in the middle of nowhere, no civilization for hundreds of miles. Detached and isolated from the world, you could really live here, and the staff that runs this place do, during their months-long posts.

We got a brief tour of the place and instructions on camp protocol, then set to pitching our tents. No clamshells for us.

The light wind made for good practice, but then we were on standby to leave for Vinson. They evaluate the weather every hour and give us a go/no-go, much like the gig at Punta. But dinner came and went, and they shut down operations for the “night” so it was off to bed.

The next “morning”: same deal, but things looked up as the weather cleared. We knew it was morning because the sun had spun a half circle around in the sky. Mid-afternoon, they started running flights again – we were on planes 3 and 4, since the Twin Otters couldn’t fit all of us and our luggage in one run. So I hung out with Ryan, sitting on camp chairs outside and talking cryptocurrency in Antarctica. Does life get any better than this?

Plane 3 made it out, but 4 did not, so I had to wait another day along with Ryan, Jeremiah, and Brad. A Canadian entrepreneur, a Denali lead guide, and Aussie military made for a fun evening! We had a great time trading stories, and even learned Jeremiah likes villages.

Continue to “Base Camp -> Low Camp”