Hello cybernauts, this is Vern Tejas at the bottom of the world, and the dawn broke clear and bright, however we stayed in until the crack of noon, because down here you've got to go when the sun is shining and not when it's behind the mountains.

So we got off to a rather casual start. Our whole team moved up to our first camp on the mountain, below the Western wall of this beautiful massif, the Vinson Massif. We also have a beautiful view as well, over to (transmission breaks up) and Mt. Shinn, and they are the 3rd and 4th highest mountains on this continent.

My teammates are very wonderful, jolly fellows. I have a very affable camp partner whose name is Tomas. And he's been training for this by climbing Mt. Ararat, looking for Noah's Ark over in Turkey. So that puts him in a class all by himself.

I have, speaking of class, a world-class guide absolutely, and his name is Christoph Hoebenreich and he's gone all over the world. He's been all the way to FranzJosephland and over to Shishapangma, and he's climbed this mountain several, half a dozen times at this point. So I'm in very good hands.

The team is in great spirits because of all this beautiful weather we've been having. One of the things that we did today was move up a camp full of food and equipment for the mountain, and we figure that each man takes slightly more than a kilogram, or a little more than a couple of pounds of food and fuel each day. We're planning for a six-day adventure here, so we've got, oh, what does that make it, about 6, 7 kilograms of weight there and then we also have another 6, 7 kilograms of group gear that includes the cook kit, the shovels, the saws, the tents and such. And you add all that up together with your own personal stuff of maybe 25 kg, and you're looking at, oh, that brings it up to 35, 40, somewhere in there. So 75, 80 pounds of gear, food and climbing material that we've moved up here. And we'll put about half of that in our sleds, and some of it on our backs, and then we just take it real easy.

And that puts us in position. Now, of course, moving the 2,000-plus feet that we did today, or 700 meters, puts us a little bit ahead of our acclimatization schedule, so we're looking at maybe taking it easy tomorrow. But stay tuned, and follow along with us.

Ciao for now, from the bottom of the continent, Vern Tejas.

Now, all you people who are in to specifications and like the statistics:

Pulse rate, when we got here today, excuse me that's the oxygen saturation was 90 and the pulse was 61. We're now at an altititude of 2,815 meters above sea level, and that converts quite nicely to 9,230 feet. The atmospheric pressure is 691 millibars. We have a temperature of 25 below centigrade, or Celsius, for those who are particular on such items. We also have -10 degrees fahrenheit. Wind of 1Km, coming down from the northwest, and we also have zero cloud cover, and beautiful conditions. Our latitude is now South 78 (transmission breaking up) ... and 991/1000, and we also have a longitude of West ... 48 minutes and 399/1000ths. We're at what we like to call Camp I (transmission fails)

— Vern Tejas, expedition leader and MountainZone.com correspondent