Berg

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Hi Mountain Zone, it's Wally Berg calling you from Punta Arenas on the morning of the 12th of November. I've hesitated to start into daily dispatches about doing what we know as the Punta hang: the day-by-day, blow-by-blow report of what the weather's doing down at Patriot Hills and the various reasons why we can't fly. But in fact that is that is all that's going on right now.

Down at Patriot Hills there's been a lot of blowing snow, poor visibility, high winds. We're, of course, watching this hour to hour and day to day so that we can get things underway. Specifically, Dave Hahn and a group of folks who are going out to the penguin rookery, that we transported back out to the coast from Patriot Hills, and a number of other folks are waiting to be transported down on the C-130 any day now. Bob Elias and myself, and the Embree Glacier project, will leave actually behind them along with a group of British women who are going to get underway for a transpolar crossing to the South Pole. So a lot of big projects waiting in the wings here and we'll have to keep you posted on getting underway.

In the meantime, just hanging out with Dave and another good friend of mine — a lot of good friends — but specifically Dave and Anne Ward, who will be a physician for Adventure Network at Patriot Hills this year and elsewhere down on the ice. She'll end up over in Queen Maud Land, going to Maud Land eventually. Anne's a good friend of mine from Everest days — old Everest days, 1990, when we were together there. And we're reliving old times about that expedition and other adventures we've shared. It's great being with Dave and Anne and other good friends here, but...[transmission fails].

— Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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