Editor's Note: For the past five years, Dave Hahn has spent much of the austral summer (November to January) managing Vinson Massif base camp for Adventure Network International. In this, his most recent column, he shares what it's like to live in a pristine 40-below wilderness for months at a time.

	The Arrival

Not much time left in this day...month...century...or millennium either (depending on how you like to count them). It is afternoon on the 31st of December, 1999. The view, if one could see it through the cumulous clouds, has not changed in any number of "people years."

I'm in a place where time seems a little arbitrary, where one day becomes the next without the moon and stars intervening. A book lover's dream – it never gets too dark to read at Vinson Base Camp on the Branscomb Glacier in Antarctica. Not during the climbing season, at least, which is why we are all here. But that should be rephrased under the current circumstances... since I'm the only one here.

"Make too many new footprints without a rope and eventually you will become an extremely well-preserved crevasse researcher. Adventure Network didn't hire me for that particular position (although there were many openings) and so I need to be a little conservative in my wanderings...."

The last batch of climbers left on Christmas Day. That was Willi and his Alpine Ascents gang, Skip Horner and his folks, and the three fine companions that I guided through a storm and a summit day. When the Twin Otter flew them all to Patriot Hills (about 120 miles away) we had high hopes of getting the next batch of climbers in the following day, including some of my best friends, fellow Rainier guides Paul Maier, Brent Okita and Heather MacDonald.

I was anxious to get them in and hear all the news and laugh over all of their old mistakes again. It didn't happen that way, despite our good intentions. The weather has been uncooperative; some would call it unfair... but that puts too much of a human spin on a place where humans don't get much done on schedule. (See also the modified schedule of Ernest Shackleton and crew back in 1914, 1915 and 1916) Lots and lots of clouds is the way I see it. Which means I can't call the airplane in.

It is "visual flight rules" in most parts of Antarctica, but particularly for a flight through the Ellsworth Mountains and an attempted uphill ski landing on a glacier at 7,000 feet, some clarity is required. The company I work for (ANI) wouldn't think much of me blowing the call when fuel costs about a billion dollars a barrel in these parts. Neither would the Canadian Twin Otter crew look too favorably on me trying to wreck their plane in such conditions. So it is just me in camp, looking out of the tent every 30 minutes or so to see what the inside of a cloud looks like.

"I'm sobered by the memory that I almost died during that storm. A little reality that I was not so proud of..."

I can usually make good use of time, even if it comes at the end of a millennium... washing socks, melting snow and packing food for future trips. That isn't such a bad life anyway in this beautiful place. I'm never opposed to a little time for reading a good book or napping a good nap on such days. There is very little adult supervision down this way... I can choose to eat a dozen big chocolate bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner in my glacier hideout.

Or I could go out skiing and climbing in the fog. But figuratively, I remember that I live in the middle of a great "candy store" in which eating too much will be fatal. This place has a heck of a lot of glaciers lurking about. Make too many new footprints without a rope and eventually you will become an extremely well-preserved crevasse researcher. Adventure Network didn't hire me for that particular position (although there were many openings) and so I need to be a little conservative in my wanderings.

The normal route on the highest mountain in Antarctica is often my best choice since I'm fairly familiar with it and since it starts at my tent door. I do like "highest" mountains, although I resist trying to rank their worth against anybody else's geographic obsessions. The "rules" of the Seven Summits game are a frequent topic of conversation down this way... someday, I intend to write them in snow (in bright yellow) so as to end all debate.

I like this particular mountain for its beauty, its setting, and its difficulty, but also because of my own history with it. Not all of that history has been happy or worth repeating though, I keep trying to sort it out so as not to make the same mistakes more than 20 or 30 times.

The clouds out on my glacier right now are just clouds, they don't mean to hurt anybody. What hit us last trip up the hill was a real wind-driven, snow-tossing, time-consuming storm. I'm sobered by the memory that I almost died during that storm. A little reality that I was not so proud of at the time but one that I figured I should do my best to remember. We had been hunkered down behind thick snow walls for about four days near Camp II when I decided that more food and fuel would be a good thing....

—Dave Hahn, MountainZone.com Correspondent
Vinson Base Camp
Branscomb Glacier
Sentinel Range
Ellsworth Mountains
Antarctica