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Mt Friesland summit
09:04 a.m. EST Dec 22, 2003
They boys made it! Just a couple of days ago the helicopter was going to pick them up. Instead they pushed back their departure day with the hopes of getting a break in the weather for a shot at Friesland’s summit. Well, it all paid off this weekend when they summited and were also able to record the exact height – 1700.2m
“We did it! On Saturday 20th Dec at 11am Rodrigo, JB and I summited Mt Friesland.
We'd set out from basecamp at 6pm the previous evening in OK weather, thinking it would clear up, but as usual it got worse. But we decided to push on, and climbed the ramp with only about 50m visibility. That was bad enough, but there were a lot more crevasses than we had thought, and they were much bigger. Winding in and out, testing snow bridges, backtracking, jumping, all in a sea of fog, never able to plan our route.
Eventually we reached a steeper slope, which we realized led up to the col, so we knew at least where we were. The col was smaller and steeper than we had thought, so we didn't spend long there. Not far above the col, around midnight, we had to belay over a dodgy snow bridge, which took some time, but after that quickly got up on to the ridge proper.
Antarctic bivi
It had been lightly snowing for an hour or so and the sun had gone down around 11pm and we got to a point there it seemed to drop off everywhere and there was no clear way ahead. We decided to bivi and wait until morning for clearer weather. We had a small tent, but no sleeping bags and only one sleeping mat. So from 2am until 8am the three of us were scrunched up on the floor of this 2-man tent, shivering ourselves in and out of sleep. My pillow was two water bottles with a pair of gloves on top. One of my more unpleasant nights in the hills!
Would they make it?
Luckily, the morning was clearer and we got a nice view of the route ahead, though as usual that was soon lost in the cloud. We set off at 9am along the ridge. There were several large gaps in the ridge, as if it had split in two, and huge crevasses ran both across the route and along it. Several times we would walk along a narrow gangway with a 1000m drop to our left and a large gaping blue crevasse to our right. This is not unusual, but when climbing a mountain like this, with only one recorded ascent, we had no way of knowing if it was even possible to complete this ridge - it could just be completely cut off and impossible. So we just had to continue in hope.
Summit!
Luckily, all the parts connected - after a bit of backtracking, front pointing, belaying, traversing etc - and we came to the final steeper slopes, separated by yet more crevasses. The weather started to clear a bit, we continued moving together, with some easy front pointing taking us up the steeper bits, often with loose powdery snow over harder old ice. We had the obligatory false summit to tease us, and then finally came up the side of the last dome. Why the side? Another crevasse! Right until the end we had crevasses - this last one split the actual summit in two - but after one last step-across and a short stroll, we were on top. 23 days after landing on the island!
Following the breadcrumbs back down
We fired up the GPS at 1125 and then set about the business of eating, resting and taking photos. Around 1330 the weather started to cloud over again and the wind picked up. Just after 1400 we switched off the GPS and left the top. The descent was pretty straightforward, now that we could follow our tracks. Just over and hour later we were back at our old tent bivi site and had a rest for an hour or so. Then back down to the col, again belaying over the dodgy snow bridge, and on down the slopes into the valley. All this in the usual 50m or so of visibility. Climbing in the clouds. We had wanded the route on the way up and now collected our wands, usually placed near the lip of crevasses, as we descended into the fog.
Safe and sound, back down
Occasionally the clouds would clear to reveal just what a maze of holes we had blindly negotiated on the way up. In no time we were back at the skis and slid back to basecamp in half an hour. In a blizzard, of course. We weren't getting let off that lightly!
We've now processed the data by connecting to AUSPOS. How high is Friesland? 1700m!
That's 16m higher than the old official height of 1684m. (We got 1700.20m to be precise). We'll repeat the AUSPOS submission in a few days to double-check.
We were lucky. We pushed up in bad weather, in minimal visibility, on a mostly unknown route. But the sun came out for us to stay on the summit for 3 hours - a luxury in these parts - and there were no high winds to blow us off that ridge. But if you don't try, you don't get lucky. Anyway, as Kurt Vonnegut said, "Don't congratulate yourself too much, your choices are half luck - and so are everybody elses."
Right now the weather is so-so, but we hope to call in the chopper as soon as possible. We would like to stay and do more GPS measuring of summits, but we just don't have the time nor the weather. Then it's back to KGI and then a small plane back to Punta Arenas.
Thanks to everyone for all the emails. I'm sorry I could not reply to most, due to limits on power and time. Every single one was appreciated.”
Merry Xmas,
Damien
On the expedition this year is Damien Gildea, 34, of Australia, Chilean Rodrigo Fica, 36, an Australian GIS specialist John Bath, 33, and a Chilean student, Osvaldo Usaj. The aim this year is to first ascend Mount Friesland on Livingston Island and record it’s proper height by means of a GPS.
The information collected by the Omega expedition will be combined with previous maps and research to make a more accurate map of the area that will be available sometime in 2004.
Image from summit courtesy of Damien Gildea.
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