Hello, MountainZone cybernauts, Vern Tejas reporting in from Antarctica. Well, I took advantage of some fine weather, crystal clear and calm. I shot for the summit, and were able to make it in 9 hours and 8 minutes to the top of Vinson from Base Camp. That's a gain of about 9,400 feet, and so I'm climbing just about 1,000 feet an hour, or the European standard of 300 meters an hour at altitude, and that's respectable, I really enjoyed it.

But it was a great workout, and I was able to measure my oxygen saturation as well as my pulse rate throughout the duration. I found that it dropped significantly, from about 95 at Base Camp (I'm talking about my oxygen saturation), to about 83 up at the summit. So it's kind of a linear scale--the higher you go, the lower your oxygen is.

And I was also able to measure, as I mentioned, pulse. And for me, going in that time, remember I have a very low pulse to begin with, in the high 40's, but I was cooking at about 135 to 140 for the first 9 hours of the trip to the top of the mountain, and that seems to be significant. If I dropped much lower than that I wasn't be able to keep my speed up. If I went higher than that I started getting dizzy, so 140 is just my training threshhold, and I was able to hold it for 9 hours. And on descent, you've got gravity working with you, it was in the range of 115 to 125.

It took about 5 hours for the descent, making the trip 13 hours and 55 minutes round trip from Vinson Base Camp to the summit, and back to Base Camp, over 22 miles, and just a fabulously good time. As I mentioned, I really had to work to keep it within that range. To do the speed, I had to keep it up, but I didn't want to go over 140, because that can be cause for dizziness and hyperventilation and gasping and things.

Now, I've completed six of the seven summits. My goal this year was to climb seven summits in a year, and with Vinson, I've only got Aconcagua left, and I'm heading that way in a couple of days, hopefully.

Currently, I have left Vinson Base Camp and flew just a few minutes ago back to Patriot Hills, where the wind is gusting and there's terribly anxious people waiting to get back to South America so they can go back to the "real" world, if you will. So I'm enjoying some precious time with them. As I mentioned, it's windy, so maybe we'll be getting our kites out here pretty soon and flying them around the glacier, great fun, on skis, and there's also there's a dune tricycle here that's really good in the wind as well.

So, thank you very much for checking in with us. We'll be reporting back in from South America. More than likely from the Aconcagua climb, which is just around the corner. So keep thinking of us, and we're going to keep reporting until we get off of the continent.

Thank you much, ciao for now. Vern Tejas, at the bottom of the world.

— Vern Tejas, expedition leader and MountainZone.com correspondent