Wally Berg

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Up the hill a ways from the city central, and I'm looking out across the Straits of Magellan, of course. Punta Arenas is a beautiful place. We're up here in the wind — the wind always blows a little in this town.

Pete Athans is seam-sealing our new North Face tents, and here on the morning of the 5th, we have some time to deal with some gear items a little more thoroughly, and as a group. The ten of us — Pete and myself and eight Alpine Ascents climbers — have some time to look around the area and do various things, because of the situation down on the ice.

We arrived here and were informed that down in the blue-ice runway at Patriot Hills, there's a Situation of snow on the runway, to land those big aircraft, the Hercules C-130's, of course, that snow has to go away. It's usually windy, almost always windy at Patriot Hills, and that's why that natural feature, that blue ice runway, exists. We just need for things to return to normal.

So currently, we're on hold. When we arrived here I was at first informed that the estimate was the runway was 70% covered with ice, and it was still snowing. The situation got worse and we had 80% coverage and quite a lot of snow depth out on the runway when we had our group briefing on the 4th.

And then the wind fortunately did begin to blow yesterday. We knew that it was up above 30 knots, gusting to 40. This morning, we've been informed there's a lot less snow. The depth is only about five inches. Snow is being transported. And they have snow-blowers down there, and they've gone to work to try to speed up removal of the snow.

The problem with using the snow-blowers is, once the snow is run through the blower it's densified, of course, so it's less likely to be moved by the natural forces of the wind. So they have to be careful of that. Of course some snow up-wind from the runway still blows onto it. So it's kind of a delicate judgment game trying to figure out for these folks down at Patriot Hills, whether to go to work in earnest with the snow-blowers or try to let some stuff move naturally before they densify it.

But anyway, they have begun work with snow-blowers and we're going to stay in touch, obviously, via short-wave radio and keep apprised of what's going on.

There will be a fuel flight that leaves before us, and the C-130 crew will need to come back, take the required rest before they fly back down. These are long flights — six and a half hours each way — so these guys aren't going to do a turnaround immediately, of course.

So we'll keep you posted as time goes on, what we're doing here down at the tip of the continent at Punta Arenas, and what our prospects are for getting down onto the ice.

—Wally Berg, Expedition Leader

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