Antarctica and Mount Vinson 2026
Sometimes our club members do some extra curricular activities and it’s worth reporting them. Jon Watts has recently completed a trip to the Antarctic and Mount Vinson and this is his report.
This is not a tale about diving; rather the reverse! Mount Vinson summit, at nearly 5000m has a 2/3 bar atmospheric pressure. It’s situated in the Sentinel Range of mountains about 75km from the sea but still 1200km from the South Pole and there is absolutely no life – No animals, No birds and No plants – not even any lichen. Except for the wind, there is total silence. In January, when I was there, the sun never sets – the sun was as bright at 0200 as it was at 1400.
There are no permanent structures on Antarctica. The Antarctic treaty states that all structures must be removable and ALL waste must be removed, whether commercial or scientific.
I travelled with ALE (Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions) who run a temporary base at Union Glacier for 3 months from November to January. I signed up with a group of 14 (10 clients and 4 guides). ALE provided the 757 flight from Punta Arenas in Chile: Tent accommodation; a small village of communal structures at Union Glacier – dining room with a team of chefs and fresh food, library, equipment store, meteorology with 2 meteorologists, communications, operations, medical facilities with 3 doctors; Twin Otter flight to Vinson Base Camp, where there was a more basic set up with one communal tent, one chef and a small team of Rangers. I started to realise that the unbelievable cost of the trip was justifiable!!
After Base Camp we were on our own. We had short wave radio comms with ALE, but we had to carry everything we needed in with us, and had to bring absolutely everything back out. Any rescue would have to be done by us as no one could get above base camp. We were on our own! 5 days up and 1 day back to safety.
The route up Mount Vinson is not difficult. You need to be familiar with ropes and harnesses, crampons and ice axes and you have to be comfortable carrying 20kg for 8 hours or so, but in the main you are walking over glaciers or climbing ice slopes with fixed lines. There are serious dangers – crevasses, cold injury, remoteness without the possibility of rescue – but careful attention to clothing, maintaining hydration, getting the calories in, sleeping well and anticipating dangers minimised these risks.
The place is truly awesome! I have never been to a place so remote, so clean, so huge, so dramatic. The days were hard work, which meant sleep came easily. It was cold, but my equipment was well up to the job. My summit day was in glorious sunshine with hardly a breath of wind; the views from the top were breathtaking! I could see for 100 miles in every direction and, with the exception of the ALE base camp, there was no one else in sight.
Did I have any problems?
Well, Jan 6 was the cold snap in UK, so my train to London was cancelled, frozen signals in London meant no tube connection to Heathrow and ice on the runway lead to long delays for flights out. I successfully navigated most of these obstacles, but my kit bag didn’t make it across Madrid airport, and I arrived in Punta Arenas with only my hand luggage and insulated climbing boots. LATAM were amazing and I was reunited with my bag 48 hours later.
I also managed to pick up a throat infection on the flight over which peaked with a temperature of 39 at Vinson base camp. This turned out to be a blessing, as I pealed out of the main group in order to give myself 24 hours to fight the virus, and followed the others up the mountain 24 hours behind at each step and had that perfect summit day.
Finally, my planned return from Vinson Base Camp to Union Glacier was thwarted when the Twin Otter had to be used to rescue a Kite Skier who had broken her pelvis 40km out on the Ice Shelf. This meant I missed the 757 return flight and had a further 5 day stay on Antarctica and achieved a further 3 mountain summits.
I had 24 hours in Punta Arenas to race over to Terra del Fuego to see the King Penguin colony before flying home.
Would I go again? If only!!! The cost makes this very definitely a once in a lifetime trip.
Would I recommend it for you? With ALE 100%, they’re amazing.
