Mountain Guide Wally Berg
Wally Berg
Getting Less Hopeful
January 11, 1999 — Punta Arenas, Chile
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Good morning, Mountain Zone. Iceberger here, calling you from Punta Arenas of course, after the morning scheduled radio contact with Patriot Hills. Not particularly as encouraging or as action-oriented as the news we were hoping to get this morning. Steve Penfield had arranged actually after the 9 o'clock sched, to talk via satellite phone at ten-thirty with Koos, the captain of the C-130 crew. Clearly, Penfield after all this work that they've been doing down there trying to get this runway cleared, I think wanted to give the captain some detail and get an assessment about where they stand and what he really needs.

And where we got is the threshold is entirely clear. The run-out or rollout is clear. The center section of the runway still has some snow on it. Basically they've cleared a 40 meter wide path through that center section. And Koos, when kind of pressed today about what he could absolutely do, said that he would go down with 60 meters of this cleared. Now that's a great deal more snow to be moved, of course, even though Steve and all of those people down there working have obviously already done a great deal of work and cleared most of the runway.

So they need to clear 20 more meters to get this 40 meter wide path up to 60. And this is for a 600 meter length. So there's still an appreciable amount of snow that has to be moved.

You know, I'm always involved with talking about the quality of snow in terms of the different characteristics it takes as it changes due to wind influence, time, other factors in the avalanche control business in Colorado and certainly some of the same things are going into play here. This is densified snow. It's been transported and it is drifted out there, and they've got a great deal of work to do to move this snow.

I suspect, I envision that the snow they're trying to move now is in fact quite dense and has drifted. There's not an even cover over this 600 meter length we're talking about, and it's a matter of just getting out there and breaking it with shovels, plows, scoops dragged behind snow mobiles, and getting it pushed out of the way. I can appreciate they have a great deal of work to do.

So anyway, we are hoping that Penfield will give us an assessment about how crew strength and energy will translate into hours left working. But Koos is not going to fly down there today, almost certainly, and we just need to get an idea whether we can look to go tomorrow or not.

Weather is still stable at Patriot Hills. Winds are not significant enough to scatter much of that snow off, but also they would be fine if we could undertake a flight.

So not exciting news as I would like to give you this morning, but we'll certainly continue to keep you posted as these developments which we're watching very closely transpire. Pete Athans and I for the time being are hanging close and listening to the radio calls. So take care and I'll talk to you guys, no doubt, in the next few hours.

Wally Iceberger, Expedition Leader
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