Day 54
S79 45' 39.60", W82 51' 24.84"
///mushed.hyperlinks.devolve
The weather is slowly improving and Louis tests him mountaineering kit ahead of potential flight.
“Hi good evening everyone. It’s Lou reporting in on day 54 of the expedition.
We were on standby again, all throughout today, waiting for potential weather window for the flight across from Union Glacier to Vinson base camp. But sadly it didn’t work out for the day. Everyone’s saying that tomorrow is looking a lot more optimistic. There’s also a flight from Punta Arenas with about 60 expeditioners coming in, that’s due to come in. That’s looking positive. Everyone’s thinking that the weather gods are going to play ball tomorrow, and all the flights can take place. Hopefully it’ll mean me and Martin can move across from here to Vinson base camp, and then begin the next phase of the expedition, to summit Mount Vinson, which I’m really excited about.
We had a great day here today; the weather actually here in UG was pretty decent all day. We started off after breakfast, ALE, the logistics provider, laid on a crevasse rescue training session, so me and Martin went to that. That was a really useful refresher on all the rope work involved in dealing with emergency crevasse rescue procedures.
Then there were a couple of talks that we attended. Then Martin actually gave a talk to everybody here on the Adaptive Grandslam and the expedition. That was brilliant. I’ve heard it all before so I didn’t sit in for that. I headed out and went out on the skis, and got a few miles in on the skis for a bit of exercise. I took with me my Mount Vinson mountaineering kit – the boots and crampons and stuff. And put all that on and spent a bit of time moving about on blue ice using ice axe and crampons. To get a bit of exercise but testing out my mountaineering gear as well just to make sure that’s all functioning well.
Then we had a very inspirational movie night. They put on The Alpinist, which is an absolutely fantastic documentary about a young Canadian climber called Marc-Andre Leclerc. Truly inspiring alpinist-style climbing. Very similar – for those that have seen it – to Free Solo with Alex Honnold; it’s very much in that vein. I won’t give you any more spoilers for those that haven’t seen it, because there’s some pretty epic scenes in there. We really enjoyed watching that, and that’s got us really fired up now for Vinson.
Fingers crossed that tomorrow the weather gods play ball and we start moving forward to the next phase. We’re getting a reasonably early night and preparing. All our gear’s packed. Praying that after breakfast we get some good news and we can hopefully do the next blog from Vinson base camp. That’ll be great.
That’s all from myself and Martin here in Union Glacier in Antarctica this evening. We look forward to updating you tomorrow.
Onwards.”
// FOLLOW THE CHALLENGE //
Watch and listen to all the updates, live on the Shackleton map
or donate here and enable more adaptive athletes to take part in adventure challenges!