Rest Day at Union Glacier

Another relaxing rest day at Union Glacier Camp in between Mount Vinson climbs. The climbers from the second team are waiting to catch their flight back to Punta Arenas and the third team is ready to fly into Union Glacier. Guide, Terray Sylvester, phones in today’s expedition dispatch from Union Glacier Camp, Antarctica:

Hello, this is Terray calling in for the second Madison Mountaineering Mount Vinson expediton. It’s Wednesday, January 5th.

Today we woke up to a bit of stormy, cloudy weather. So, we hunkered down, took hot showers, enjoyed some great meals, and attended a history lecture on the famous polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. And then in the evening, we watched a movie and stepped outside to see that the skies had cleared. Antartica has some of the clearest, cleanest air on the planet and of course it is sunny 24 hours a day here. So we stepped out into bright blue skies with mountains that surround us on both sides and the massive glaciers that pour down between them as well as the flat expansive ice that extends out towards the Weddell Sea to the northeast of us.

Tomorrow we will have a rest day while this group of guests waits for their flights and with luck we will go explore the Drake Icefall, which is a several hundred meter tall icefall just to the west of us.

So, we will be in touch!