The First Ascent of Mt. Vinson

A Story from the AAC Archives

by Grey Satterfield

When inspiration for our next climbing trip strikes, we’re flooded with options to seek out every last possible detail. We pour over guidebooks with full-page spreads of color topos. We log on to Mountain Project and read about every route on the cliff. We find YouTube videos with move-by-move beta of the routes and boulders we want to try. Then we hop on Google Maps and get to-the-minute estimates of how long it will take to get there. We whip out our phone and get a hyper-detailed forecast with temps, wind speed, humidity, and anything else we’d ever care to know about the weather.

By the time we arrive, there’s no mystery. We’ve discovered everything there is to know.

That wasn’t always the case. In 1966 the American Alpine Club sent ten American climbers into the heart of the unknown: Antarctica. Read the full story here and explore photos and artifacts from the expedition.