Vinson: Team returns to Basecamp

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Posted by: | January 11, 2011
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Vinson Massif
Elevation: 7,200'

Back to Base

The great climber and author Greg Child once wrote: “Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the top is the answer to the question of why we climb.”

Climbing, and the reason we do it, is an elusive thing. There is no straightforward, definitive answer, and I’ve struggled with it since I began climbing in 1986. I guess to some extent it’s relative to each person. For some, it may be the overall challenge. Others are motivated perhaps by a specific summit or group thereof. To each his or her own.

For me, as I labored under a heavy pack today, dragging a laden sled behind me, the question arose as it often does: Why am I doing this? Why am I thousands of miles from my children, my wife, my home and my friends, struggling in tough conditions with aching feet and a sunburned nose? Why?

It was as if the mountain heard my query. As I moved, a gentle breeze brought a layer of Antarctic ice fog up the glacial valley. The sun above was muted, and a giant, iridescent sun-dog formed above me. The frigid snow crunched beneath my feet, and massive walls of rock, snow, and ice rose in every direction. It was absolutely silent, and yet deafening in its majesty.

Yes, this is why I climb. These moments of solitude that are wholly grounding, humbling, and innately inspiring. They rarely come to me on top of a mountain, and are never predictable. But, they always come, they always inspire, and they never cease to make all the pain, cold, suffering, and challenge worth it.

I now sit in my tent at Vinson Basecamp, the sun peeking through a thick fog above. The team is all happy and fulfilled, laughter and conversation filtering around.
It’s been a great handful of days on Mount Vinson. Tomorrow, or the next day, Ed, Cindy, David, and Ben will fly off on a Twin Otter, and the rest of us - Peter Seth, Caroline, Kent, and I - will stay on to do some skiing and climbing.

More adventures await.

-Jake Norton