Hello MountainZoners, this is Vern Tejas. I'm at Base Camp on Mount Vinson.

Man, oh man, was that a long day. But it was a good one. We started bright and early when the sun hit us--first sun we've had in more than a week--showed up and hit us hard in our tent at Camp II, and we got up and took off at 9 o'clock in the morning. Larry Lunt and myself made our way up through the windy conditions, quite sunny, which is a great, great change after spending the last four or five days storm-bound.

We were able to approach Mount Vinson, we did the scenic tour around the East Ridge, and up along it was blowing about 50 kilometers as we approached, and we were able to stand on the summit, slightly protected by rock itself, and see the view. The view of Mt. Shinn and Gardner and Everly and Tyree, all sticking their heads up above a sea of clouds. Talk about fantastic, it was wonderful.

So we were above the clouds, and enjoying God's view. They say it's so nice up there...well you can actually see the curvature of the earth. I agree with them. I was able to pull the Martin out of my pack and write a little tune and play it on the summit. And that was called "Frostbite Blues." Larry was kind enough to take some photographs for Martin Guitar, and we'll be sending them their way.

We had a wonderful descent, came down to high camp in a couple of hours, then made it all the way back to our Base Camp. We ended up being on the trail for about 14 hours yesterday, so it's good to be back down here and recovering from a long, long workout.

And those of you who are interested in some specifics, I can give you the details, and the stat report, on the summit.

Let's just take it this way, on the summit, my O2 saturation was 73, pulse was 96. The altitude registering on my watch was 4,955 meters above sea level, that's 16,208 feet. Now that shouldn't be confused with the regulation map elevation of 16,002 feet, so you can see there's a little difference with the barometric pressure in the watch. Also, for barometric pressure, we have 522 millibars at the summit. It was 30 below centigrade, 20 below fahrenheit.

We also had wind, as I mentioned, 50 kilometers on the ridge on the way up, but actually on the summit measured 38 kilometers, that's about 22 miles an hour on the summit. That, coupled with the temperature, was quite chilly. We ended up with a wind chill of about 68 below, that's fahrenheit, 68 below fahrenheit. Again, there's a sea of clouds below us and a thin haze above us, some "Finger of God" clouds, formations of long wispy clouds that blow over the summit gave us quite a nice show. We enjoyed that immensely.

Since I've gotten in Base Camp, my blood oxygen saturation has returned to a more normal range, 92. My pulse is down to 56 this morning when I got up, and we're back at the elevation of 1,980 meters above sea level.

So thank you very much for joining us. My guess is that there's more to come, so check in, in the next couple of days, and see if anything else develops.

But for now, I'd like to say this is Vern Tejas, working in conjunction with the Omega Foundation, trying to learn how to live a challenging life in an ecologically friendly way. Cheers.

— Vern Tejas, expedition leader and MountainZone.com correspondent