Vinson Massif deserves recognition as the highest mountain on the coldest continent on earth. Located in Antarctica and situated in the Sentinel Range of the Ellsworth Mountains, its peaks rise above the Ronne Ice Shelf not far from the base of the Antarctic Peninsula. The massif is about 750 miles from the South Pole, and its highest point is Mount Vinson.
The website of the acclaimed PBS television series, NOVA, describes the mountain this way: “Vinson dominates a landscape of stark purity, where nothing other than ice, snow, and barren rock stretch as far as the eye can see. Antarctica, with Vinson at its ceiling, is the coldest and driest desert on Earth, receiving less than two inches of precipitation per year. Most of the snow on the mountain arrived there on the wind, blown from other parts of the continent.”
Weather on Vinson is controlled by the polar ice cap’s high-pressure system. Climate conditions generally are stable, but high winds and snowfall can occur, as is true of any arctic climate. Sunlight prevails 24 hours a day during the summer season, which runs from November through January. The average balmy temperature during these months is minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, but the harsh sun will melt snow on dark objects. Glaciers have formed over the eons as the snow has been compacted into ice.
Vinson Massif was first seen by human eyes in 1958, when it was spotted by passengers on a U.S. Navy aircraft flying out of Byrd Station. It was named for Carl Vinson, a Georgia U.S. congressman who had been a force in obtaining public funding for Antarctic research. The first climb of the massif did not take place for eight years, in 1966. An expedition in 2001 first climbed via the Eastern route. By February of 2010, 700 climbers had tried to reach the top of Mount Vinson, but only about 600 had succeeded.
The chief barrier to climbing the mountain is not technical, it is economic. Costs of a climb are exorbitant by any standard, especially the logistical expense of simply making it to the base of the mountain. Most guided trips cost about $30,000. Expeditions depart from Punta Arenas, Chile, the most prominent city on the Strait of Magellan, flying across Antarctica on a six-hour flight directly to Union Glacier, the base for Mount Vinson climbs. Formerly Patriot Hills was the base. From there, a one-hour flight takes climbers to the Vinson Massif base camp at 9,100 feet. Another thousand feet higher, Camp Two awaits. Camp Three, at 15,311 feet, is reached by climbing moderate snow slopes to the col between Vinson Massif and its nearest neighbor, Shinn. After a day or two of acclimatization, the summit is attempted with a three-mile traverse over snow slopes to the summit ridge, at which point, the summit is still 3,000 feet above the climbing party.
Vinson was first summited in 1966 by an American Alpine Club expedition. The event was well-publicized because, for a while, it was being touted as a “race” to the top. The AAC team was one of the two purported contestants. The other was supposed to be a group led by mountaineer Woodrow Wilson Sayre. The Sayre group, it was said, was planning to fly into the Sentinel Range in a Piper Apache piloted by Max Conrad, the “Flying Grandfather.” Sayre had a questionable reputation because he had gone into Tibet without authorization from China in an unsuccessful and nearly fatal attempt to climb Mt. Everest from the north in 1962. As it turned out, the “race” did not come off because Conrad had problems with his plane. He and Sayre were still in Buenos Aires on the day the first members of the AAC group reached Vinson’s summit on Dec. 18, 1966.
The first ascent of Vinson Massif was accomplished by two groups within the American Alpine Club that joined forces in 1966. In the forefront of the expedition were Charles Hollister, Samuel C. Silverstein, M.D., and Peter Schoening. Nicholas Clinch of Pasadena, Calif., was recruited to lead the climb.
Among the climbers, the most revered was Schoening, a mountaineering legend for his heroism in “The Belay,” a feat of skill he carried out in August, 1953. At the time, Schoening was a member of a group attempting to climb K2 in the Himalayas, the world’s second-tallest mountain; and considered by some to be a more difficult challenge than Mt. Everest. On the seventh day, climbing without oxygen, the group became trapped at over 25,000 feet on the Abruzzi Ridge. One member of the group developed severe blood clots in his left calf—a condition that could easily kill him if a clot broke loose.
In a raging storm, the climbers began to descend on Aug. 10, hauling their fallen comrade in a sleeping bag and on a shredded tent. Schoening was at the top of a steep slope, his ax planted behind a boulder and a rope passing over the boulder and ax and around Schoening’s waist and hip. Suddenly, one of the climbers lost his footing, dragging another climber with him, then another, until six climbers were falling and tumbling down the mountain, on their way to certain death thousands of feet below. All that stood between them and death was Schoening, and he held. With his rope stretched pencil-thin, he stopped their fall. All survived, though the man with the blood clots was later swept away by an avalanche and disappeared.
Other celebrated climbers on the first Vinson Massif were Hollister and Clinch.
Hollister, a world-renowned marine geologist, was also a hunter, fisherman and alpine/cross-country skier. A native of Santa Barbara, California, he grew up on a family ranch that was once was one of the largest cattle ranches in the state. With an interest in climbing that began early in life, he climbed Mount Rainer in Washington while serving in the U.S. Army. In college, he tackled the Cascades and the Sierras, then continued on to other peaks in North America and around the world. In 1962, he took part in the first ascent of the southeast side of Mount McKinley in a month-long expedition. He not only climbed Vinson Massif but also ascended four other peaks in Antarctica’s Sentinel Range, earning the John Oliver La Gorce Medal from the National Geographic Society for “contributions to science and exploration through the first ascent of Antarctica’s highest mountains.”
Clinch, a resident of Palo Alto, California, was regarded as one of America’s most skilled expedition leaders. He had led the first ascent of Gasherbrum I, also known as Hidden Peak/K5 (located on the Pakistan-China border) (26,250 feet) in 1958, and Masherbrum (25,660 feet) in 1960, the two highest peaks first climbed by Americans. Hidden Peak is the only 8,000-meter peak first climbed by Americans. Clinch’s account of the expedition was published as the book, A Walk in the Sky. His explorations included many ascents in the United States, the British Columbia Coast Range, Peru and China. He was made a Fellow of the prestigious Explorers Club in 1969, and received the American Alpine Club Gold Medal in 2006.
In addition to the more well-known Schoening, Hollister, Clinch and Silverstein, the other members of the expedition that first climbed Vinton Massif were J. Barry Corbet, John P. Evans, Eiichi Fukushima, William E. Long, Brian S. Marts and Richard Wahlstrom.