Day 4 continued 07.12.22: Union Glacier touchdown.

December 7, 2022

Day 4 actually turned out to be quite busy. We flew into Antarctica with an Icelandair Boeing 757, included with Icelandair hostesses. That took 4:30 hours. Once we had had a tour of Union Glacier covering all of the facilities, we were offered a soup and were told to get ready for the “domestic” flight to Vinson base camp.

A word on Union Glacier. It’s a tent town purposely built at the beginning of every season. There are the tents for the guests which comfortably sleep 70. A tent for two could easily accommodate 6; and comes with a mattress and pillow, pure luxury in the mountains. There is a restaurant for 40-50 people coming with chef and sou-chefs. There are toilets, showers, telephone booths, a library, a small gym; and a shop to buy souvenirs “which you can only buy here and nowhere else in Antarctica, let alone the world”. You can rent snow bicycles and nordic skis and also play basketball in the snow. A real luxury holiday resort. Unheard of in mountaineering terms. If you add 100 plus staff living in separate accommodations, some 20-30 snow trucks, snow plows, 5 propeller planes and an unaccounted number of snow mobiles and other massive machinery; you are looking at a space station on earth. Impressive.

Anyway our stay was short. The weather was good, minus 10C and sunny. Perfect weather to fly to Vinson base camp. A cool 40min fly, west or south or …. difficult to say at this low altitude.

Vinson base camp is also plush. Our tent for two is already built and it’s a repeat of Union Glacier. We have a small common room and kitchen but still.… ready for 20 people. Three latrines. Very good food including mangoes, bananas and watermelon as fruit for dinner.

I am sharing with Steve from York, whose claim to fame is having climbed Everest and a couple of more 8000m with Nims!