Mt Francais

A true alpine start this morning – 1:30am. To the south there is a yellow glow – this is a summer polar night. The sunset never ends but melds through the few hours of twilight into the dawn. We are a hundred kms north of the Antarctic Circle here.

 

Away at 3am. We rise steeply and quickly, nice snow providing grip for the skis. At a crevasse the first few people are on the rope to cross a large snow bridge, and after its integrity is established, the rest trudge over, one at a time.

 

In two hours we have climbed 700m onto the ridge that leads to Mt Agamemnon. The sun is hitting the peaks above, creating a yellow luminescence known as alpenglow. There is now a thousand metres of vertical to ascend, along a ridgeline that looks like quite short from our position, but only later do we realise how long it really is.  Skip plants the One Ton Depot flag to mark our track off the ridge for later.

 

It takes about 4 hours to climb along the ridge line. It is rather cold in the shadow of the mountain. Sweat freezes to the inside of the goretex. Digits go a little numb despite the activity. When the sun allows its rays to warm us we are rather thankful. Towards the top of the ridge it gets rather steep, ice just under the snow making it difficult at times to get a grip with the ski's edges.

 

When we hit the summit plateau we are pretty pleased but it takes another half an hour to get the summit. This is Mt Agamemnon, 2570m. The view is astounding. The Antarctic Peninsula sits on the eastern horizon. I feel like I can see half the peninsula, topped with a massive ice cap that plateaus at 2km high. There are peaks galore, including those on Adelaide Island 100km away, and Smith Island which sits above the sea fogs majestically.

 

After some congratulatory handshakes and some snacking it's time for Mt Francais, the main objective. Skiing down to the col (saddle) takes no time at all, then the skins go back on for the final ascent. It is another 500m up which we do in a little over an hour. The view improves again, for now the north is visible also. Mt Francais is the highest peak in the northern half of the peninsula, at 2825m.

 

As I come up to the summit there is an incredible sense of relief after the physical and mental effort – 12 hours on the go. Then an even greater sense of elation hits me. Most peaks provide satisfaction, but rarely happiness like this. When I consider the time of preparation and training, the cost and especially the sacrifice my family makes for me to climb these stupid lumps of rock and ice, I admit I became a little emotional. After regaining composure we could start congratulating each other. We spent about 20 minutes on the summit. Enough time to start getting cold. High cirrus clouds had been building during the day, and now the Iliad Glacier was filling with cloud. The weather was coming.

 

The ski down to the col was magical. It was fun, decent powder though a little lumpy at times, and a relief to finally be descending. However we had to get back around Mt Agamemnon first, and that took one and a half hours of dreary trudging. Then the long descent could begin. The snow was amazing down the steep head slope. Corn snow provided wonderful turns with a great sense of exposure. The quad muscles burned and I needed to stop every minute or so. And it just kept going. But the wind was picking up and one of the members was having trouble with the length and steepness of the slope. So we became very spread out. As we were waiting the conditions quickly became blizzard like – gale force winds and shotgun driven snow. I huddled like a husky dog as we tried to maintain visual contact in the deteriorating conditions. Eventually we all recollected bu t would we find the descent path through the crevasses? As we started the GPS tracking, the One Ton Depot flag came into view – it was rather amazing it survived the high winds.

 

So we were able to follow our tracks through the slots. Fortunately they were on the lee side and not covered in drift slow, yet. The final slope was about 40 degrees with beautiful fluffy snow – by far the best skiing of the trip. Glorious.

 

It was not far across the piedmont to the tents, with Tony waiting with tea. We were truly exhausted. The wind is now howling and the blizzard is gaining momentum. But we were out of it now, eating and rehydrating and relishing the day. Absolutely wonderful. We covered 30km and ascended and descended 2500m. Wow. This is probably about the 10^th ascent of Mt Francais. Not bad, huh?