Yahoo, MountainZoners! This is Vern Tejas on Mount Vinson and boy, did we get spanked last night! As we went to bed the wind came up, so we figured we'd better get out and reinforce our walls, but not to much avail, because three or four of the blocks were blown down in the morning and the tent rattled all night long.

You should have been there this morning when I went to, um, take care of bodily functions! Whoo-hoo! Gives you a real appreciation for indoor plumbing, I'll tell you.

Well, this is our third, fourth day of waiting down here, to go up, third day of the storm, and we're getting just a little bit out of reading materials. Matter of fact, Christophe has been reading his toothpaste container for the last few days, and he's getting a little tired of that. We think maybe next he'll go to maybe, some kind of medicines or something.

But it's been pretty interesting, and we're starting to think that maybe the slopes above us are getting a little bit questionable with snow being distributed on them by the wind. So we're getting a little antsy about the potential avalanche hazards.

That taken into account, the weather has been improving steadily this afternoon, and we're very hopeful that tomorrow we may be able to move up. So keep your fingers crossed, and maybe tomorrow.

So, those of you who like stats, we've got 'em. We've got stats right here.

We've got a sat of 91, and we've got a pulse of 50. Hasn't changed much, but it looks like we're thoroughly acclimatized to this elevation, which happens to be 2,815 meters above sea level. That's 9,240 feet. And you see this fluctuate a little bit, and that's indicative of the barometric pressure change, which the barometer is saying is now 691 millibars, or that's Hector... for our Euros. We've got a minus 10 degrees, which is quite warm, that's centigrade, and that's a plus 10 fahrenheit, which gives us in this wind condition of zero to 100 kilometers per hour, about a 63 below fahrenheit wind chill factor. The sky is about half-covered with clouds, beautiful lenticulars (broken transmission)

Ciao for now, from Antarctica.

— Vern Tejas, expedition leader and MountainZone.com correspondent