Wally Berg

Flying South
January 1, 1999 — Somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere


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Hello, Mountain Zone. This is Wally Berg. It's New Year's Day, and I'm doing exactly what I did a year ago on New Year's Day: I'm flying south in a big way. It's been a very amazing experience, almost hard to describe, to leave Summit County, Colorado — I left Copper Mountain early this morning in a beautiful light snowfall. Leave Summit County in the middle of winter and fly south and absolutely change seasons — really an amazing experience. In a few moments I'll get on a 10-hour, 11-hour flight to Santiago, Chile, and I'll step off the plane in Santiago tomorrow morning in an absolutely different season.

The really amazing thing about where we're going, though, to begin this trip, is I'll get on a domestic flight from Santiago a couple hours later, fly south for three or four more hours, and then all of a sudden I'll be so far south in Punta Arenas, Chile, down on the Straits of Magellan, that it won't be warm anymore. But at least I'll get a taste of summer in Santiago for a couple of hours.

Had the very happy and surprising experience of running into my old cohort and friend, guiding campadre, Ron Matuse at DIA, and I thought we were just passing quickly in the corridors there, but as it turns out Ron is flying south on the same flight to Santiago with me to guide Aconcagua for Alpine Ascents. In our busy schedules I had not really picked up on that. So, two good old friends get to spend a few hours on the plane together tonight and waiting in the airports. And Ron will be going to Aconcagua with the Alpine Ascents climb, and I'll keep flying south from Santiago, of course, and meet Pete Athans and the rest of our Alpine Ascents climbers for this journey down to the ice, which is scheduled to begin the morning of the 5th.

You're going to keep hearing from me, and I hope everything is going well. Happy New Year. Bye.

—Wally Berg, Expedition Leader

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