Mountain Guide Wally Berg
Wally Berg
Hasta La Punta. We'll Be Back.
January 20, 1999 — Punta Arenas, Chile
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Mountain Zone, Wally Berg here calling you on my 19th day in Punta Arenas, and my last day in Punta Arenas.

I remember back some time ago, Pete Athens began to relate that he had heard this town, Punta Arenas, called Youngstown, Ohio, circa 1950, and also Young San Francisco. Images like that were offered up to describe this actually quite beautiful place where we're staying. But in a lengthy visit like this, basically, you've run through things to do here and ways to view it positively.

Our latest deal is we consider Punta Arenas our advance base camp now. Climbers are used to waiting, waiting out storms, waiting out logistical problems with transport. It might be yaks, it might be porters, it might be an aircraft someplace.

But Punta Arenas is a unique one in that you're waiting to even get transported down onto the ice, down to the continent of Antarctica when you're here. It's very close, but you're still not there, and at least it seems to us a little more reasonable to consider this our advance base camp because in fact we chose a "drop-dead date", as we called it, of today, Wednesday, when we would fly one direction or the other, knowing that a rescheduled expedition to follow up on this effort later this year was already in place by Alpine Ascents and ANI. People are going to have to fly back down here, get another hotel room, but beyond that, everything's covered, and the full support of both ANI and Alpine Ascents has allowed this thing to continue.

The three of us chose Wednesday as our last day, knowing we had to make a decision to go one way or the other. Yesterday morning, waiting for that fuel flight, we were informed that winds are still up at Patriot Hills, but the pilots were mobilized out at the airport, waiting for them to drop. We were watching a low pressure that had reappeared, or not reappeared - another low pressure had appeared out on the Weddell Sea, and we were concerned what this would do.

The pilots were flying in what they thought would be a window, wanting to fly in what they thought would be a window. They ended up going home, standing down to keep their duty hours in line. But in fact they were able to remobilize last night and fly, but our chances of flying down to the ice are non-existent today. Therefore, we're going to follow through with our plan to go home and come back later this year. We got the very good news this morning that my Christmas Day turnaround people I keep telling you about, did in fact touch down at Punta Arenas about 8:35 this morning. I didn't actually see any of these folks. They're exhausted. Some of them had... Some Russians had some problems with Customs, not actually having their visas in order, which we've found to be a pretty laughable and ironic situation to come out of Antarctica and get stuck after all they've been through waiting to get out in Customs. I'm not sure quite how that went, but I'm sure they're glad to have their feet on the ground here, anyway.

We're told that the few people who were waiting in town to go down on that flight are optimistic about their chances. We're told the weather is not that great right now, but certainly they're going to get out of here.

We just feel it's not enough time in the season to do the climb the way we want. So myself, Dana Isherwood, Joe LeRoy and John Van Dyke are all heading north today with resolve to return.

Dana just brought me a stuffed penguin. I've been talking a lot now - this is a... not like a real penguin that's been killed and stuffed, but it's, you know, it's a stuffed penguin that is a reminder of Punta Arenas, and between Dana and I, certainly a reminder of our resolve to get on a rope together someday and go climbing. I've been looking forward to doing this climb with this particular group of people, all eight of the climbers who came down here as well as Pete Athens, and it was a sort of a bittersweet moment, a tearful moment, in fact, as we all split up today. But we'll be back.

We've been to advance base camp, we know this routine. Next time, we're going to get through here in shorter order, we're confident.

And that's going to be a Mountain Zone page as well, so with that note and our commitment to return here, I'm going to sign off and wish you the best at Mountain Zone. Thanks for the coverage, and we'll be in touch when we get back to the states.

Wally Berg, Expedition Leader
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