Berg

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Hi, Mountain Zone, Wally Berg the afternoon of January 14th from the Embree Glacier. Sitting here in a beautiful afternoon: the sun's out.

I'm looking at a weather beacon number 18889. We mounted it out on some steel rods out here on the glacier. This morning at about 7:15, his time, I called Kirk Cox in Midland, Texas. Kirk's the science manager for this project. Kirk's an old hand at doing stuff in the field like this. In 1992, he [Unintelligible] digging trenches out on the glacier there and using a bunch of instruments trying to measure the movement of the glacier above Camp I on Mount Everest. Kirk was here in the Embree, briefly last year, and is helping us with this project. He confirmed quite sleepily, since I had woken him from what it seemed to be a pretty deep sleep, that data from this probe is getting through. And he described to me that, in fact, it had been a few degrees above 0 Celsius in the sun and with negligible wind when I first powered it up yesterday.

So we're getting data out of this thing. I'm sorry I can't post this data on Mountain Zone. Right now, we're working on the automation, so that someone interested in what the temperatures are say, at Vinson Base or Patriot Hills or here in the Embree Glacier or the wind speed, relative humidity, etc. could just punch it up on the computer. We're working on the automation, but the key thing is as soon...[Unintelligible]...the data's getting through and then we've got months to play with it and tweak it around. Thanks once again and compliments to Rich Fletcher and Matt Reynolds at MIT Media Lab. This is their instrument and this latest version of it appears to be working very well down here in Antarctica. We'll see how it does over the next few weeks and months as the darkness comes in and the extreme temperatures descend upon this area and, of course, all of us people down here climbing and having fun are long gone.

I had a wonderful ski at the basin, today. We did have some pretty bad weather to start this morning about 17-knot gusts, on our winds, and broken clouds throughout most of the morning. But I did take a ski up the basin again this afternoon, looked closer at Mount Anderson, once again, and took a lot of photographs. Mount Press is the really impressive objective from this part of the Embree Glacier...[Unintelligible]...I'll post some photographs of this mountain, on Mountain Zone when I get back — beautiful summit.

And of course, Mount Anderson still is waiting its first ascent at something like 4,157 feet [meters], so we'll keep you posted on progress on that. It looks a little daunting from this side; I am going to have to say. I've got the map out and it looks to me like it is one of those peaks that's going to be a challenge from any side. Once again, Mount Bentley was a rather rewarding climb. This northwest ridge on Bentley that we did the other day, but I'll have to check closer when I get home. Veikka when he climbed it from the other side from the west; he had the first ascent of Bentley. And at this point, I am way too much of a peak bagger to claim that, even though Bob and I successfully climbed on the ridge that was our objective, we made a second ascent of Bentley because we did, in fact stop about 200 feet below the summit. Yeah, and I have to correct myself [Unintelligible] back here. Correct me, I called that the northwest ridge of Bentley, but it is, in fact, the northeast ridge of Bentley. These other ascents of these peaks have been done from the west side. The Embree Glaciers is on the east side of the Sentinel range.

So, correction there, we climbed our main objective out here, the northeast ridge of Bentley, which I believe that the map posted — that we tried to get out to Mountain Zone, so you'll be able to check it out. If not, we'll get the photos and the maps up at a later date. [In background] Anything else? [Bob Elias] I can't believe it is going so well here. [Berg continues dispatch]

Okay...[Unintelligible]...this morning will enjoyed a good organizing afternoon out here in the sun on the Embree Glacier. We'll keep you posted as time goes on here.

— Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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