Berg

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Mountain Zone, Wally Berg with a dispatch from the Embree Glacier still, on the 22nd of January. Bob and I have been in a pretty much storm...a full-on storm here for the last 30 hours on the Embree Glacier. This is in contrast to, you know, occassionally unsettled weather we've been describing through the rest of our stay out here that kept us having from a long climb on Anderson, for instance, allowed us a long climb on Bentley. We've kept you updated on what we've been doing with weather that generally has come and gone. But we've had a real bout of bad weather here for 30 hours. And we are into what I would called the nail-biting phase of our transport down on the ice in Antarctica.

To describe the situation to you, during yesterday's bad weather here, we were in constant contact with Dave Hahn, over at Vinson Base, and in a hole that turned out to be pretty small. John, the Twin Otter pilot, and his partner Mike were able to set down at Vinson Base, and those pilots were down at Vinson Base with clouds closed around them for a number of hours yesterday.

We had nothing but clouds over here, so it didn't really matter to us — clouds and high wind. But then later in the afternoon, John was able to get the Twin Otter off, break through the clouds, fly above them, and get all of those guys back to Vinson...or back to Patriot Hills.

The situation now is, we just talked to Patriot Hills. The winds are up a little there, and they're not really flyable to bring that Hercules C-130 down from Chile. But when they are, they're going to bring it, because they now have 34 people: the Theil Mountain Meteorite expedition I've talked about, the South Pole folks, [and] all the Vinson climbers are waiting at Patriot Hills, obviously eager to get home. And Bob Elias and I, the Omega Expedition, are set out here and stuck out here, in the north end of the Ellsworth, very much on our own, very much okay. But it is, as I described earlier, definitely a nail-biter situation as to whether or not we'll be on that next Hercules craft, off the ice. If we're not on that one, the next one could be some time after that.

Looking ahead on that score, I might as well mention the other interesting thing going on down here is we have received word that the M&G ISA British Women's Polar Crossing Team — that team that we befriended last November in Punta Arenas, when we were all stuck there — are now, we believe, only a couple of days away from completing their unassisted crossing, walking from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole.

We're thrilled about this news. We know how happy Caroline, Pom, Ann and Rosie and Zoe are about their accomplishment. And, you know, we quite honestly are hoping we don't see them because we'd like to be on that next C-130 out of here. But more important things are afoot, and one is they're about to complete their very successful and long endeavor. And we've got everything we need out here on the glacier, anyway. So, even though we're in full-on get us out of here mode now, in terms of communication, Bob and I are quite happy in our tents, our little Base Camp we set up here. We've got everything we need here, and it's part of the game in polar travel. So, we'll keep you posted as to how the situation develops in the upcoming hours and days.

— Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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