CLIMBERS HUISA AND LÓPEZ CROWN VILLARRICA VOLCANO, IN THEIR PREPARATION PHASE BEFORE CLIMBING MOUNT VINSON 

The Andalucian climbers will head now to Punta Arenas, closer to Antarctica, where they will attempt to reach their fourth summit in the Seven Summit Project

Seven Summit club climbers Juan Antonio Huisa and Pedro López have crowned the summit of Villarrica volcano (2,840 m), in a preparation phase before their destination, Mount Vinson (4,897 m.) in Antarctica.  The ascent of the Andalucian expedition, which is sponsored by Consejería de Turismo, Comercio y Deporte, has been useful to probe the materials which the climbers will use in the Antarctic adventure.

This climb has been the last tuning before leaving to Antarctica.  Mount Vinson is great effort because of the immense logistic complexity needed to get to such a far away place with such low temperatures.  Zones close to the summit have been reached, during the Austral winter, with extreme temperatures of -88º Celsius and winds of up to 320 kilometers per hour.

During the ascent to the volcano, the climbers have been able to face the enormous activity in the mountain.  "During the entire ascent we could perfectly see the immense column of fumes that emerged from the interior of the crater.  Almost everybody gets to the border of the crater and turn around, but the border in the front is 30 meters higher, so we continued until we got to the highest point", said Huisa and López.

The crater has a diameter of 300 meters and is 60 meters deep.  They said, "we covered almost all the perimeter of the crater and when we were on the highest place, the wind changed, and a thick blanket of hot and sulfurous fumes surrounded us, we could hardly see anything and we breathed with difficulty.  It was dangerous but the view was spectacular, we were seeing incandescent lava, something incredible".

After their first objective, the climbers are heading now to Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, from where they will leave to the frozen continent.  The Andalucian climbers reached the summit of Kilimanjaro in December 2002, and later Mount Kosciusko and Elbrus, so the Antarctica expedition is the middle of their Seven Summit project.

Translated from Spanish by Jorge Rivera

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