Wally Berg

The White Vastness Beckons
DECEMBER 27, 1999 — COLORADO
Christmas is over, and I am thinking about my departure south on New Year's Day for another Vinson climb.

This trip was a highlight of my year in 1998. The opportunity to return 'to the ice' is extremely exciting for me. Nothing can compare to a trip to the interior of the continent of Antarctica. The vastness, the purity, the overwhelming expanse, are enticing. Climbing Vinson is dipping one's toe into a realm of openness and exploration that was known to the great Antarctic explorers. A stark and serene world.

In my anticipation, I am reminded of the opening paragraph of Apsley Cherry-Garrard's classic 1922 account of the Scott expedition to reach the South Pole:

"Polar Exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised. It is the only form of adventure in which you put on your clothes at Michaelmas and keep them on until Christmas, and, save for a layer of the natural grease of the body, find them as clean as though they were new... Taken all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an Emperor Penguin."

Cherry-Garrard titled his book, "The Worst Journey in the World". It has been called the "War and Peace" of travel literature.

As I enjoy the peace of the Christmas season in Colorado with my wife, the white vastness beckons.

—Wally Berg, Expedition Leader

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