Vern

Hear Vern's Call from Aconcagua

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Buenas días Mountain Zone, this is Team Omega on Aconcagua in Argentina. Today we move up to High Camp; we are starting our summit bid push. Unfortunately, looks like the weather might be changing. Our barometer dropped during the night and we've seen the first clouds today that we've seen in almost a week. So please keep you fingers crossed for us...[Unintelligible...Transmission Fails]

Good morning once again from Aconcagua. We got cut off — we're camping real near a cliff and the satellites just don't have long enough time to download my message.

Anyway, I've just been snake-wrestling my sleeping bag into my stuff-sack so we can go higher to Camp II. The critical numbers for today, the 22nd of September: at 7:12 this morning, we're at 16,300ft — we're actually at the same camp, but that's what the altimeter's reading now, so you can see the barometric pressure has been changing. The temperature is 16 degrees Fahrenheit, we have 10.2 out of the west, so the wind is starting to build.

Mr. Bob had 83 for his blood-oxygen saturation and 59 for his pulse. I also had 83 for my oxygen saturation and 41 for pulse. Keep your fingers crossed for us, wish us luck. Bye for now.

—Vernon Tejas, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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