As the tallest mountain in Antarctica at 16,050 feet, Mount Vinson is also the second most expensive to climb due in large part to its location
To most people, Antarctica is the most exotic and forbidding of lands. The Antarctic continent is both huge and virtually empty. There are very few people considered to be permanent residents. However, at any given time 1,000 to 5,000 scientists and workers are performing duties there, but there are no cities.
The continent, the land, is not a colony or property of a single nation. In 1959, a dozen countries which had been active in scientific projects signed the Antarctic Treaty, pledging cooperation and essentially agreeing to keep the continent open to all signatories. Since then, forty-one additional countries have signed on to the treaty.
Antarctica is a vast ice sheet that is home to scientific researchers representing many countries. It is difficult and expensive to reach and so cold that much of the time only a small number of hardy tourists and adventurers with large bank accounts even consider traveling there.
Antarctica is the southernmost of the world’s continents, and while the bottom layer of the continent is land, it is almost (ninety-eight percent) completely covered in ice and snow. It is 5.4 million square miles and the geographic South Pole is located there.
Strangely, although it was centuries after explorers reached distant continents by ship from Europe and Asia, Antarctica was first sighted in 1820 by a Russian ship.
The first thing twenty-first century humans have in mind when thinking about Antarctica is of the fantastic cold. The lowest recorded temperature on the continent (-128.6 Fahrenheit) is difficult to fathom.
During the annals of exploration, Antarctica was the last great puzzle to be solved. Many famed adventurers sought to make their reputations by racing to the South Pole, and in ensuing decades trying to find new routes across the ice, new ways to traverse it and new ways to explain it.
English seaman Captain James Cook sailed within seventy-five miles of the coast in 1773. Nearly seventy years later, James Clark Ross discovered and named the Ross Ice Shelf. In 1935, Lincoln Ellsworth discovered the highest mountains in Antarctica and the mountain range is named after him. The tallest peak in the Ellsworths, part of the Sentinel Range—and the highest on the continent, making it one of the Seven Summits—is Vinson Massif or Mount Vinson. Vinson stands 16,050 feet above sea level and is located 600 miles from the South Pole.
Nicholas Clinch, who died in 2016 at eighty-five, led the first ascent of Vinson in 1966 as part of a ten-man American Alpine Club group. Clinch also led the only American first ascent of an 8,000-meter peak, the 26,500-foot Hidden Peak in Pakistan. His team reached the top of the world’s eleventh tallest mountain, Gasherbrum I, in 1958.
Vern Tejas, who has climbed Mount Vinson thirty-nine times, made the first solo ascent of the peak in 1988. Tejas has had dozens of adventures in Antarctica and on Vinson. It is possible he has spent more time on the continent than all of those famous explorers put together.
As of early 2017, the cost of a commercially guided trip to Mount Vinson was $41,000. The climbing season is between November and February, which is the Southern Hemisphere’s summer. However, temperatures of minus-thirty degrees, or colder, are common on the climbs. Not nearly as time-consuming as an Everest or Denali trip, it is expected that the summit can be reached in between five and nine days from base camp. The view from the top is of snow and ice as far as the eye can see.
My first trip to climb Mount Vinson was in 1988, a few months after I completed the winter solo of Denali.
Two climbers from Hong Kong that I guided up Denali wanted to do more climbs. We had a great time on Denali and they wanted me to guide them. I’m all about having fun and being safe, and they appreciated that. First, they wanted to go to Mount Elbrus in Russia. They were not paying a guide fee, but my expenses were covered, and I cut a deal where I would be able to paraglide off the summit.
I was into paragliding off the tops of mountains at that time, and they said sure. One of those guys was a photographer, and he took pictures of me doing it and wrote a magazine story. It was in Cathay Pacific in-flight magazine, and there is me flying through the air over Europe. We all had a good time doing Elbrus, and then they said, “We’d like to do Vinson.”
We made the same deal where I would guide them and then paraglide off. It was a guide-to-glide program. Everything went smoothly. We made the summit with no problems. In fact, I have never been skunked on Vinson. Every time I have climbed on the mountain I have reached the top.
On this trip I got to climb Vinson twice. After summiting, those guys went to sleep at base camp and I told them I was going to take a walk. I didn’t say what I was planning to do, but I got the idea to make a solo climb of the peak. When Robert Falcon Scott was leading the British team that tried to become the first to reach the South Pole, his expedition ran out of food and was trapped by storms on the way back. Captain Lawrence Oates, a member of the team who was weakening, sacrificed himself by excusing himself from the dinner in hopes it would aid those remaining. He announced, “I am going outside and may be some time.” It was a suicide statement. But the others all died, too.
I quoted Oates in a melodramatic way, although I had no intention of walking to my death. So the others went to sleep and I went climbing again, moving as quickly as I could on my own without any responsibility to take care of anyone else.
Everything was fine at base camp and I zoomed up the mountain and back in something like fifteen hours. This is the acknowledged first solo of Vinson, although there was a rumor, never confirmed, that a Russian geologist may have snuck up there. He was in the area. He could have made it or faked it. No one knows for sure.
I was definitely a driven young man at the time. I had just come off the first solo winter ascent of Denali and I was enjoying the opportunities it afforded me. Since I was quick at acclimating and I was already acclimated from the climb with the boys, it seemed as if it was a good time to give it a try.
Never was I going to be the fastest climber in the world, but I could go and go for a long time. I had endurance. For me it was just a big marathon. All I did was tag the summit and run down.
Vinson was not a very crowded mountain at the time. The wide appeal of the Seven Summits hadn’t kicked in yet. It was only 1988. The concept of more citizen adventurers trying it had not quite taken root yet. It was the cusp of the boom. I think only five other people went up that season. A couple of people had climbed it a little earlier and the flight that brought us out took them in.
Transportation is the big issue in getting to Antarctica. It was even more challenging then. Most people who wanted to climb Vinson flew in from Punto Arenas, Chile. Flights were rare and expensive and had to be specially arranged. Since then, more people go to climb Vinson, but also the South Pole has been opened up commercially with adventure groups booking people to ski the last sixty miles to the Pole. The continent became a little bit more approachable. Now there are dozens of flights per season.
Being Antarctica, it can get quite cold on Vinson. It’s the luck of the draw, same as Denali or Mount Everest. It can be colder in those places than on Vinson. It can get warm on Vinson, too. When I say warm, I mean only minus-thirty degrees. I know that not many people use that kind of temperature and the word “warm” in the same sentence. But I do have a nude photo of myself from the summit of Vinson. I have been asked what possessed me to do that at minus-thirty, but the sun was out and there was no wind.
It took some effort to peel off all of my clothes, but it was worth it. I did it, uh, because I could? I was on a guided climb, and you do sweat when you work at climbing, even in what we would call cold temperatures. I think I said, “It’s so hot out I could take off my clothes.” I was guiding a team of three or four. The climbers looked at me kind of strangely, but then they began egging me on.
All of a sudden, it was, “Go for it!” “Yeah, dude!” “What happened to your weasel? It’s gone.” I said, “It’s cold guys. What do you expect? He’s gone into hibernation.”
I know people cannot identify with minus-anything as warm, but we had been working hard to reach the top and you still have residual body heat. When you get up in the morning, you’ve got like fifteen minutes when your body actually stays warm from being in bed. You can do crazy things in that time. The nude shot was not a selfie. I have the pictures, so there is no threat of blackmail. I was only out of my clothes for about five minutes.
As the tallest mountain in Antarctica at 16,050 feet, Mount Vinson is also the second most expensive to climb due in large part to its location
Almost all of the tallest mountains in Antarctica are bunched closely together. One of the other biggest, Mount Shinn at 15,292 feet, is only a day-trip climb from high camp on Vinson. We were able to zip over and do it. I did it another time with a woman who was a strong climber on a Vinson trip.
Danielle Fisher was a young girl with lots of energy, always chomping at the bit. I kept telling her, “Slow down, slow down, slow down.” She said, “Why?” I told her if she did not slow down and work with the team, I was not going to allow her to go to the summit. She said, “I want to get to the summit. And I want to go over and do Shinn.”
I made her a promise. “Here’s the deal,” I said. “Cool your jets. Climb with the team. We’ll go to Shinn afterwards.” She was practically jumping up and down with excitement. When we got to the top, she was still very strong and still wanted to climb Shinn. I felt compelled to allow the co-guide to take the others down, and she and I went over and zipped up Shinn and back down in about three hours and caught up with the team.
Danielle was the real deal. She was born in 1985, and in 2005 she became the youngest climber to complete the Seven Summits. The Vinson trip was in January of 2005, and later that year, when she reached the top of Everest, she finished her seven. Most of her climbs were guided by our company, Alpine Ascents.
Actually, when I got it into my head that I wanted to set a record for climbing the Seven Summits twice in one year, I did another Vinson solo. I had no guided climbs that year, so I paid money out of my own pocket for the flight. At the mountain, I was with another team and that group did not make the top. One guy said he wanted to try again, and I said I would climb with him.
We did it, and that provided a scouting mission for me. I could get acclimated and examine the ground to see how the route was lined up. A couple of days later, I went back up to do another solo and to climb Vinson twice within a week.
I was originally going to South America to do Aconcagua twice, but detoured to Antarctica first to do Vinson twice. So I did two doubles in one trip to that area of the world.
My goal, which no one else had done, or even thought about, was to climb the Seven Summits twice within 365 days. It was not a calendar year. The year began and ended with a summit of Everest. It was May 24, and the climbs were determined by the seasons after that.
However, I just missed, completing the circuit in 367 days. Then I tried again and it took 372 days. The first time when I failed to complete it, I thought, “Oh, damn. So close.” The weather was a factor, but you also can’t tell your clients to climb faster because you are on this particular mission. Two days! Damn! Sure, it’s going through my head, “I wish you would hurry up.” But you can’t say that. So I have climbed the Seven Summits on three different occasions in less than 372 days.
The third time, when I completed it, it was darned close, too. It was 363 days. I’m goal-oriented. I grew up competitively. By then, I thought I just had to get it done. No one else in the world seemed to have that goal at that time. I was competitive with me, pushing myself.
It was a goal I had selected in my head. I thought, “I can do this. Let’s see if I can do this.” The third time was the charm. I’ve never gone back since to see if I could do it faster. You could say, let’s see if I can do it within 300 days, but a year, 365 days, seemed to make sense.
My second solo of Vinson only took me about eleven hours. That’s ascending from 7,000 feet to just over 16,000 feet. It’s moving along. I never run, but there are people who do run on speed climbs.
I intended to ski down off the summit, but it was too icy, so I couldn’t do it. I had to carry the skis back down to 9,000 feet and then put them on. Carrying the skis was a waste of time. I could have cut thirty minutes off the eleven hours by not bringing them, but really, who cares?
Vinson had a base camp manager at the time, and officials frowned on going solo. I said to him, “You know, if someone were to go solo, would it be a big deal? This guy said, “Not if I never heard about it.”
I pushed very hard, enjoyed it, had a great time, and skied back into camp. He said, “How long did it take to do something I never heard of?” I said, “Eleven hours, twenty minutes.” He went, “Whoa!”
A funny thing happened during the summer of 2016. That same guy posted a picture of me from that ascent on Facebook. He remembers me, the guy who did the climb he never heard of.
It really is amazing how many times I have been to Vinson and to Antarctica, also for other reasons. Unlike Aconcagua, where you can hang out and drink wine and eat steak in Mendoza, you do not get attracted by those types of bonus features. Antarctica is about snow and ice and beautiful wide vistas of snow and ice. But I have had several things that have drawn me there over the last decades.
And they were dramatically different adventures from Vinson and its connection to the Seven Summits.