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Patriot Hills, Antarctica

With Jenny on board, the big jet took to the air, and left our storm behind. It had also left about 17 passengers behind, people who had been waiting in Punta 10 days or so for their fight to Antarctica, climbers mostly.

The new group moved to the dinning tent, for dinner and their briefing. There I met my climbing partners: John Bates of Knutsford, Cheshire, and Andrew Forbes of Cambridge. They are very personable and I look forward to climbing with them.

What I did not expect was that all the climbers were invited to set up their tents in the same area as my tent, behind a long, low berm. Good bye, peace and quiet. I was invaded!

It was all good fun, until I discovered that the strong wind had ripped the Velcro open at the top of my tent's windward door, and that the spindrift had partially melted on both sides of the Velcro and frozen. Repeatedly I tried scraping and melting it with my hands. But to no avail. The Velcro wouldn't close. That meant a gaping hole in my tent fly, thorough which the spindrift was streaming powerfully like it came from a firehose.

The inner tent door was still functional, so keeping my feet away from that end of the tent, I covered myself with the quilt, read for an hour, then at 3.30 am all seemed ok, so ignoring the terrific wind and my chatty neighbors, I drifted off to sleep.

I awoke at 7:00 am to find the wind gusting to 55 knots (official), and had half-filed the windward vestibule with spindrift. The leeward Velcro had failed also. This Velcro is a special feature of (x) brand of tents; buyer beware.

I sill have not figured this out, but now that I am a client of ANI, on the roster for Vinson, I'm officially invited to their meals. I showed up at breakfast and was warmly welcomed. I am also entitled to use one of their guest clamshell tents, with mattress and stand-up headroom, so Fran showed me to one of those. Ah, this is the life!

Lunch was a gourmet special with about a dozen entrees. I can't remember the last time I've eaten so well at lunch. I had two.

I spent the afternoon writing and dozing in my cozy clamshell, listening to the wind gusts coming through like freight trains. A few sounded extra powerful, but otherwise the official readings were 50 to 60 knots.

Dinner was another excellent meal, and again I had two helpings (building my reserves).