We had our usual one hour ashore here at the Almirante Brown station. The walk up the hill was steep and a fair distance. You can see the top of the hill from behind the red buildings (prior email) in the first photo. The people on top of the hill look small because it was a ways up. It was also very steep.

Vicky told me to go ahead up the hill that she was going to just stay at the bottom and watch the penguins. I said okay and started up by myself. I stopped to catch my breath about a third of the way up. When I turned around to look back, Vicky was coming up the hill with a full head of steam. I waited for her to reach me and asked her how come she changed her mind about climbing up the mountain. She said that she wasn’t going to until a couple of 85 year old women passed her up saying it would be an easy climb. You can see Vicky in the second photo, having reached the top at record speed.

The snow on the mountain here at Almirante Brown was rather icy and hard compared to the other glaciers and mountains we hiked in Antarctica. It really did take us a good thirty minutes to get up to the top and enjoy a few minutes up there and to take the photos that you have seen in the last two emails. So when it was time to go back down, I was both looking at my watch and thinking about how hard it was going to be going down hill on the hard frozen ice. Near the trail, there was a bare-butt toboggan run. We talked it over and said “why not”. Vicky and I came down the mountain in a few seconds, leaving us plenty of time to watch the penguins. You can see Vicky at the bottom of her slide in the third photo.