Wally Berg

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While we're waiting for the captain and some of the ANI [Adventure Network International] folks to show up here and give us this briefing, I just thought I'd call and check in, update you on how we're all doing.

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What do you do when you're hanging out in Punta? Well, the one thing that goes on day-to-day here that I love to do — I haven't gotten to do yet myself this year, is you go out to the Colony to see the penguinos. Get a driver and cab, you can even rent a car — however you want to get out there — and drive out to the rookery. Apparently there's a lot of chicks out there this year. As you see the activity, especially in the late afternoon, the birds are pretty active; the penguinos are pretty active. I love to do it.

Yesterday, Scott Lefky and Bob Henstead went out there. Bob is our Alaskan... he's actually a Nebraskan who has been living in Alaska for years and years, and decided to be a mountaineer and a dedicated climber who's climbed all over the world. He is a rodeo guy, and he's done rope tricks on various mountains of the world, including from the summit of Everest in 1995 — one thing that kind of distinguishes Bob. I didn't yet get to ask if he was out there trying to rope penguins yesterday, although whenever I see Bob he's usually got that lariat in-hand, so I can't really say what was going on out at the rookery yesterday; maybe a little penguin rodeo action.

Basketball was another aerobic activity, fortunately. It got a group of guys: Joe LeRoy, Rob Kiesling, I think Chuck Baden, I'm not sure who else was over there. We had our little basketball action at a gym here in Punta Arenas going on yesterday.

The rest of us are still playing with our gear, watching the sky, trying to anticipate what's happening, which of course is really funny because the weather here in Punta Arenas has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on down on the ice a few thousand kilometers away, but you still sort of want to look up to the weather gods and ask questions about when you might get the breaks you need.

I'll give you the report on the conditions, the snow-coverage at the runway, after we get it here in just a little bit, as well as update you on other information regarding our anticipated departure.

I also ought to let you know that for the first time ever when I've done dispatches to Mountain Zone using a cyber-cafe down the street, we actually are able to see the site. And I have not seen it myself, but a couple people looked at it and thought it looked great. I'll do my best to try to fill you in as we go.

A really interesting group of people here. I mentioned Henstead's summit on Everest. I'll try just one or two people at a time to kind of let you know who's who and tell you something about these folks, but it would be a group that I... it would be easy to leave someone's accomplishments and uniqueness out. It's really an interesting group of people.

In particular, in my mind, is Dana Hisherwood, who besides being our only woman on this climb, is probably our most distinguished adventurer, certainly, amongst the climbing group. She has a very impressive resume of climbing, adventuring, sea-kayaking trips on every continent all over the world. Really a remarkable woman.

And of course, a very unique situation here: Pete [Athans] and I are good friends and won't often get to do the trips like this together again, as close as we are and as much as we enjoy doing things together, it's going to usually work out that we just can't do trips together. But it is sort of a unique situation in that going down to guide this trip, Pete and I together as a guiding team, the two of us, of course, have nine Everest summits between us. Maybe not something that we want to broadcast or toot our horns about in any redundant sense, but it still does occur to me that this is a very unique situation and one we should all be really proud of, in terms of two good old friends getting to do another trip together.

So we'll continue to keep you posted. This is, I'll tell you honestly, is a very big meeting in terms of our morale this morning. Just as it is for the other passengers of the C-130 flight: Skip Horner and his two clients, Rodrigo and Bob Elias, who I'll talk about more in a dispatch soon. Bob Elias and his Omega Foundation, was one of the very key financial sponsors to my Everest expedition last year. Bob and Rodrigo and a couple of other clients of Rodrigo's are flying down to climb with us, as well. Very interesting group of people beyond just the group of Alpine Ascents clients on this trip.

So we'll continue to get you information, and look forward to it. Hope you're all well. Bye.

—Wally Berg, Expedition Leader

DISPATCHES