Greetings from Vinson Base Camp, 7000 feet in elevation on the Branscomb Glacier. We were reasonably confident that we’d get here today, but it wasn’t a slam dunk. The weather wasn’t quite right at the start of the day for flying through big mountains, so we took it easy, enjoying breakfast and lunch in the fine dining tent at Union Glacier. The clouds out at Vinson began to break and a Twin Otter fired up to start doing laps. Ours was the third lap... off and on again as clouds drifted in and out, but finally on for real. We left Union a bit after 4 PM and considered ourselves lucky to squeak in to VBC... there were no more laps after ours as snow clouds rolled into the Branscomb. We began building camp at 5 PM. It took a bit to get sorted out, dug in and anchored down, but we were right where we wanted to be for all of that. Eventually the team assembled for dinner in our very own, freshly built dining tent. The snow clouds rolled out again and we had views of Vinson’s great Western escarpment and even of the summit pyramid up at 16,000 ft. It stayed cloudy and murky in every other direction, but we got enough sun to make going to bed easy. It is definitely colder here, up about 4,000 feet higher than where we started today, but right now, at midnight it is pleasantly calm and the sun is shining on our camp. Best Regards RMI Guide Dave Hahn