Antarctica Blog

Today is a week of bad weather. Despite the cancellations on Saturday night we had two unexpected guests, a dentist and a veterinarian from the Bologna area. Needless to say they didn’t make it very far up the Grandes Jorasses and they were back in bed when we got up in the morning. It has been snowing lightly for three days. Last night the temperature dropped to almost -3°C (26.6°F). To convert from degrees Celsius to degrees Fahrenheit you follow the very simple formula: °C9/5+32=°F. I’ll let you use the new formula to figure out the daytime temp which has rarely gone above 3°C. Most of our thermometers are in Celsius. The only thermometer we have in °F is our meat thermometer, which I bought in the US because here in Italy they cost a fortune.
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Bad weather has forced us indoors for the past 5 days. Monday started OK and all of our 4th of July party made it out before the bad weather struck. Mid-morning we received a cell-phone call from a climbing party up at the Canzio Bivouac on the Rochfort ridge. Their intent was to climb the Jorasses Ridge to point Walker and descend to Boccalatte via the Normal ascent route: a common itinerary. But when they awoke to snow they realized that the worsening weather meant they needed to make an escape from the ridge. They called us for advice. The escape route from the ridge is sketchy but another party descended successfully a week before. It involves rappelling about 500m down a rock face of questionable quality and then traversing a heavily crevassed and seldom passed route across the glacier. They said they would weigh their options.

As the weather got worse a couple of climbers with a guide from Trentino, on the other side of the Alps, arrived to stay the night. They knew the weather was going to be bad but said they were going to come up anyway. A couple of hours later
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The 4th was great up here. It fell on the peak of the summer sporting season. There was the second stage of the tour de France, Wimbledon, French Formula 1 GP, Brazilian Moto ... [Continue reading this entry]

We had our opening flight yesterday. We flew up two Helo bags worth of supplies; among which was a small grill. I set it up immediately and we hadd grilled sausages, ... [Continue reading this entry]