Tomorrow, I will publish a guest blog post from my friend Dave G., who has set out to summit the highest continental points on all seven continents. Dave has completed five of the seven to date, most recently Mt. Vinson, just last month. I borrowed the photo from his Facebook page.
Here's some background that a friend of his provided on the Antarctica trek.
Vinson Massif is the highest mountain on the Antarctic Continent at16.057ft. The only transport is a Cold War era Russian militarytransport that lands on a field of blue ice. The plane cannot usebrakes (for obvious reasons) and must use reverse thrusters for about a mile to stop on the ice. The landing strip is as slick as a skatingrink and I suffered a severely bruised ego by falling on my ass twice.The warmest day was maybe 0 degrees but mostly was minus 10 to 20degrees. Summit day was minus 50 degrees. The bathroom, cooking areas,etc are carved out of ice blocks. You must sleep with anything liquid(water, pee bottle) or anything important in your sleeping bag or itwill freeze and you cannot thaw it out. It was a physically demandingclimb that included a fully loaded backpack and towing a fully loadedsled.
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