By popular demand, here is a blog post about my trip to Antarctica from six months ago, in January of 2024.

Antarctica is the hardest continent to get to, but once I was there it was probably the easiest on which to accomplish my goal of climbing a glaciated peak. Every peak is glaciated!

I’ve wanted to fly to the interior of Antarctica since I was in high school. I’m not sure what started it. Maybe National Geographic’s coverage of the Huber brothers’ first ascents in Queen Maude Land. I used to have reoccurring dreams about flying over it. The clouds would break, and suddenly we would see land below.

Fast forward 25 years later, and I was flying to Antarctica. It was so cloudy that we didn’t see land until we were almost to the runway. I saw a pyramidal peak under me on the right side of the plane with a wind scoop around it, and soon we were on the ground.

Trip Planning

Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions (ALE) is the company that handles logistics for pretty much every climb in the interior of Antarctica. If you climb Vinson Massif with another guiding company, you will still be flying in on ALE’s plane (actually flown by Icelandair), staying at ALE’s Union Glacier camp, and flying to Vinson on Twin Otter planes contracted by ALE. I highly recommend just booking with ALE direct for any climbing trip you’re planning on doing. You stay in nicer tents at Union Glacier, you get priority on getting on a plane, and if you climb Vinson they have at least one of the camps already set up so you don’t have to carry nearly as much.

For the trip I did, going with ALE is pretty much a necessity. Their Climb Antarctica trip is essentially a bespoke trip to climb random peaks in Antarctica. We mostly stuck around Union Glacier, but if you are willing to pony up even more cash you can fly out and do more remote climbs in other places. I had a guide, Celine Jaccard, who is an expert in polar mountaineering. She planned out the trip with different contingencies depending on weather after we had a Zoom call talking about what I was interested in climbing (snow, rock, no ice climbing). We also had our own snowmobile for the whole trip.

Day climbs around Union Glacier

The first few days we stayed pretty close to Union Glacier and did a few climbs we could easily snowmobile to.

Charles Peak

After a morning practicing crevasse rescue, we snowmobiled to Charles Peak. Snowmobiling was often the coldest part of the day for me. That’s when I would put on all my layers, including my overmitts, and make sure that my face mask was blocking any air flow from the bottom of the full-head helmet I was wearing.

The first climb was around the windscoop that I had spotted from the plane. We climbed around the pyramidal peak through the scoop. The scoop is where the wind normally blows around the peak, creating the scoop and quite a bit of ice. Fortunately the section we had to go up was not very steep, and wind-free that day. Celine said it was the only time she had ever been to the scoop and it had not been windy. We climbed up the snow slope to the adjoining peak, Charles Peak, then took off our crampons and unroped for the rocky section to the summit. I would learn that the summits of peaks in Antarctica tend to be the rockiest parts of the peaks because the wind blows the snow off the rocks at the tops of the peaks. We traversed around to an easy snow slope descent, then walked on the glacier back to the snowmobile.

Gateway II

On our second day we climbed Gateway II, the shorter peak on Gateway, via Lilly’s Coulier. ALE maps snowmobile routes with ground penetrating radar (GPR), but once we reach the end of the GPR’d route, it’s time to switch to skis. So we snowmobiled out as far as we could, and roped up and skid out to the base of the coulier.

A note on cross-country skiing in Antarctica. It sounds cool. Cross-country skiing is in fact my favorite activity, probably even more so than mountaineering. So at first I was kind of wishing I’d done something like ski the last degree* instead (assuming I could come up with that kind of $$$). But then I skid in Antarctica. The snow is a mixture of hard and soft snow with sastrugi, which are basically small sand dunes of snow. The snow is literally ancient, since new snow in Antarctica is minimal. So you pick up speed on the hard snow and then hit some soft snow or a sastrugi and fall over. Fun.

Lilly’s Coulier was steep. We simulclimbed with Celine placing protection in the rocks on either side of the coulier. Once Celine was almost out of gear, she would belay me to her, I would give her the rack back, and we would start again. The slope was mostly snow, with a little bit of ice higher up.

I expected to be extremely sweaty and hot during this climb, so I started with only a sun shirt on top. But once the part of the coulier I was climbing in got into the shade, it got to cold pretty quickly. Celine taught me that if your feet are cold, you need more pants layers, and if your hands are cold, you need more layers on your arms. She helped me anchor my pack so I could put on my puffy pants and add on top layers on while we were on the steep slope.

Above the snow slopes there was a lot of talus. I was pretty tired from the steep climbing, so Celine short-roped me where the rock was particularly loose, and then we climbed to the top. It was an easy descent down another slope, and then we skied back to the snowmobile. I fell over right after telling Celine that I’d been cross-country skiing since I was three. We snowmobiled back to camp for another hot warm meal in the dining tent at Union Glacier. Pretty luxurious!

Sporli

We drove out to Sporli on snowmobiles. Another guide was waiting for his Vinson clients to arrive and tagged along. We cross-country skid to where it started to get hilly, then began hiking. It was colder and windier then previous days and I had trouble getting all my fingers into my Black Diamond Guide Gloves (I do not recommend these gloves).

Weather in Antarctica is, in the words of Apsley Cherry-Gerard, “a localized affair.” I would overheat, strip down to my sunshirt, then pass through a windy section and layer up, only for the wind to stop as I went uphill and overheated again. I never really got used to how much conditions varied and was constantly guessing wrong on which layers to wear.

Sporli is an easy snow hike until you reach the knife-edge ridge. It was a decent ridge with a steep snow on climber’s right side, good for placing an axe. There isn’t enough snow accumulation for cornices to be a big problem. Right below the summit there was soft snow over rocks, and I was glad to have two guides. One started belaying me from below while I led up, then when it got a little sketchy the other one scrambled up around me and belayed me from above. Like that scene in Vertical Limit where someone is belayed from both above and below lol.

From the summit we could see the Ronne ice shelf, the Sentinel range with Vinson Massif, the peaks around Union Glacier, and the fancy Three Glaciers Retreat.**

One guide lowered me off the summit, and then we walked back along the ridge and then back down the rolling snow slopes to our skis. From there we put on skis and I tried not to fall every time I hit some sastrugi.

Following in Honnold’s Footsteps

After a rest day, we set out to do the 3rd or 4th ascent of Mt Dolence, this time with a guide who was waiting for his Sidley clients to come in. Alex Honnold was the last person to climb this peak. He did a difficult traverse of the ridgeline, while we were climbing a steep snow coulier.

The approach requires scrambling over a talus-filled ridge. The section going down to the start of the climb was harder than the part we just went up.

We climbed the coulier in much the same style as Lilly’s coulier on Gateway Peak. Simul climbing using protection, which the guides placed in rocks. Although this was a lot longer. My calves burned and my Achilles hurt. I later suggested we name the climb “Rachel hates front pointing.” The climb was impossibly steep, the kind of angle that makes you wonder about what you’re doing but also tell yourself not to think about it too hard.

We got to the base of the coulier around 11am but didn’t get to the summit ridge until 5pm. We had weather coming in and potentially hours more of climbing to do to get to the summit, since we would pitch out the rock climb and then rappel down.

We rappelled directly down for about 5 rappels. We rappelled into shadow and clouds came in and I got colder and colder. I finally put on my down parka at the penultimate rappel, and then of course had to start quickly downclimbing in self belay position. I got so sweaty and was hot and thirsty but we weren’t in a good place to stop. I had to ask my guide to slow down just because I am unable to move that fast and not fall over, especially with my hair constantly getting in my face. It’s pretty much impossible to fix a ponytail without taking off a helmet.

After a sweaty eternity we finally reached the base of the coulier. It was somehow 10pm already. I drank water, delayered, fixed my hair, took off crampons, and went to the bathroom. We took another short break at the bottom of the scree slope to put on approach shoes. I knew I was really tired because I struggled to get my mountaineering boots off… because I forgot to untie them.

We finally made it back to the van around 1:30am, and back to camp at 2am. It was the job of one poor guy in the logistics office to stay in the office and watch our GPS tracker until we got back.

Despite the late hour, there were some roudy groups in the dining tent celebrating their successful climbs of Vinson and Sidley. It was quite odd to walk into the dining tent at 2am and see that many people, even with the 24 hour daylight.

Weather Days

After our epic on Dolence, we had one day off for weather (high katabatic winds from the polar plateau) and then did an easy ridge scramble near Elephant Head where we looked at fossils. Antarctica was once part of the supercontinent of Gondwanaland, and was located further north. Much of what is now Western Antarctica is underwater, which means it has cool fossils.

We got back to camp in time to see Donna set a new record for the longest run in a polar region. Union Glacier is a weird place where someone you meet brushing your teeth in the bathroom turns out to be doing some insane endurance activity. Also note: Donna kept running for a couple of days after we all celebrated her achievement and made it all the way to 1400k.

Union Glacier was getting crowded with both Vinson and Sidley teams back from their trips and prevented from flying home due to weather. We were happy to “light out for the territories” and get out of town. The next day we took off for the base of Anderson Massif, which was about 2.5 hours away on snowmobile.

We were able to camp in a little bowl protected from the wind at the end of the snowmobile route. We had gotten frozen food from the kitchen, which works because the world is your freezer in Antarctica. We did a short ski tour after setting up camp, and it was the best snow I skid on in Antarctica. It probably helped that we were able to ski in our snowmobile tracks.

First Ascents on Anderson Massif and Pojeta Peak

Anderson Massif Traverse

We skid to the base of the southern part of the Massif, then headed up a steep snow slope. We were carrying our cross-country skis, which was a bit cumbersome. At first I A-framed them on my pack, but they kept falling forward and hitting me and it made the pack pretty hard to get on and off. Celine re-did them so they were at a diagonal, but that meant that they were farther back and put pressure on my left shoulder.

We were the first people (that we know of) to summit Roman Peak, which was cool, but a little underwhelming because it was a pretty easy snow climb and just one of many bumps on the ridge. At least we had good views of the Ronne Ice shelf. It got a little harder as we went uphill to the next peak, which was rocky. I fell on the descent of that peak as the steep snow slid off the rocks with me. I quickly self arrested but tore my insulated pants in the process. We tagged a couple more summits of the Anderson Massif but didn’t hit the true summit. It was getting late and I was getting pretty tired. We descended down and were finally able to put on the skis we had hauled so far, although we were still skiing in Antarctica, so I fell.

Pojeta Peak

The next morning, we packed up camp and headed back the way we came. About 45 minutes into the snowmobile ride, we stopped and started skiing towards a ridgeline. When we reached the base of the peaks, we took our skis off and switched to crampons. The climb itself was pretty easy. Somewhat steep snow, decent quality (from Antarctica). The only reason it hadn’t been climbed was because no one had gotten to it yet, not because it was hard. We did have to climb up some rocky talus, which was harder to descend than it was to ascend. The bottom of Pojeta Peak was the only place we glissaded in Antartica. It was a little scary because of how fast it was, but of course I ran into soft snow at the bottom and stopped.

The ski back to the snowmobile seemed to go on forever. I didn’t fall over as much, but it was mentally hard because we could see the snowmobile from really far away. We didn’t see it for awhile because of the terrain, and when we saw it again, it seemed like it was the same distance. We knew a storm was coming in that night so there was some urgency in getting back. We finally reached the snowmobile, took skis off for the last time, and snowmobiled back to camp.

The Westerly Storm

ALE staff were very busy when we got back to camp to get everything ready for the storm. I sensed greater seriousness about the incoming westerly storm than about prior weather events (unfun fact: stronger westerly winds are increasing glacier melting). They were reinforcing snow anchors on tents, taking down signage, and boarding up windows. The storm peaked with gusts at about 65 mph at about 5:00am. Of course I had to use the bathroom at about 5:15am, but on the plus side finally had an excuse to use my goggles.

Our return trip to Punta Arenas the following day was on schedule. I cried a little when I left, knowing that this would probably be the last time I set foot on the continent, although I was looking forward to seeing some the ALE folks in Alaska the following summer (which is now, as I am writing this).

*the people I talked to who skid the last degree said the skiing was terrible and it was very cold and you could not pay them to do it again.

**The Three Glaciers Retreat + South Pole trip is just a little bit more (relatively) than the Ski the Last Degree trip and the people who did the luxury trip were actually smiling at the end. So if you’re in the market for an $80K vacation, do the nice one.