Antarctica's highest mountain went unseen by anyone until a 1958 flight
Mount Vinson, at 4,892 metres the top of Antarctica, was only suspected until US Navy aircraft spotted it in January 1958. Its first measured height overshot by nearly 250 metres, and today climbers pay around US$45,000 each to stand on a crest built from ancient seabed sandstone.
Vinson Massif is a block of high ground about 21 km long and 13 km wide in the Sentinel Range of the Ellsworth Mountains, looking out over the Ronne Ice Shelf roughly 1,200 km from the South Pole. Navy planes flying from Byrd Station first saw it in January 1958, and in 1961 US-ACAN named it for Carl G. Vinson, a Georgia congressman who backed Antarctic research. In November 2006 the same committee formally split the name: Mount Vinson for the summit, Vinson Massif for the whole mass. The area falls inside Chile's claim, which is not recognised under the Antarctic Treaty System.
Getting the height right took decades. A 1959 figure put the top at 5,140 m. The Omega Foundation left a satellite receiver parked at the top from 1998 until at least 2007, and its 2004 team of Damien Gildea, Rodrigo Fica and Camilo Rada fixed today's value of 4,892 m. The rock beneath is the Crashsite Group, some 3,000 m of steeply tilted quartzite and argillite laid down in shallow seas, carrying Late Cambrian trilobites near its base and Devonian fossils in the tough Mount Wyatt Earp beds that form the crest.
The first ascent grew out of lobbying by two American Alpine Club groups, merged in 1966 under Nicholas Clinch. Newspapers hyped a rival bid by Woodrow Wilson Sayre, who planned to fly in with pilot Max Conrad, but the plane had trouble and they were reportedly still in Buenos Aires when Clinch's first four climbers topped out on 18 December 1966. All ten team members summited over three days, and in 2006 several peaks south of Vinson were named after them.
Summer brings round-the-clock daylight from November to January, yet average temperatures sit near minus 30 °C, and wind can pile up to 46 cm of snow at base camp in a year. Technically the climb is modest, which, along with its place among the Seven Summits, explains its popularity: about 1,400 people had tried it by February 2010. In January 2008 four Italian Army Alpini skied a 270 km approach from Patriot Hills over 13 days, hauling 75 kg sledges, before opening a new route.
Source: Vinson Massif
