Vinson Massif – Antarctica’s High Point

Earth’s basement – Antarctica – is most famous for the South Pole and being extraordinarily cold.

The pole put a massive target on the continent for adventurers, leading to the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. The planet’s harshest climate caused those explorations to be rather gnarly. One of the two expeditions that raced to be the first to the pole, that of Robert Falcon Scott, succumbed to the elements, while the travels of Ernest Shackleton led to one of the most incredible survival stories ever.

After Roald Amundsen’s crew became the first to reach the South Pole in 1911, the age of exploration in Antarctica might have cooled, becoming the domain of intrepid but controlled and tiny scientific researchers. The place is so remote, so unforgiving, and so tactically difficult to traverse that the big prize could have deterred much more human exploration.

But Antarctica has more than just ice, snow, wind, and coldness.

It has mountains. Big mountains. And, as we know too well, the mountains will always call to someone. Are you looking to climb the Seven Summits, the High Points of each continent? You’d better figure out how to get to Vinson Massif, Antarctica’s entry. And, as you might have guessed, ascending this High Point is far from a walk in the park(tica).

A common mental image of Antarctica might be a flat, infinite sheet of whiteness. While it does have vast expanses of nothing but snow and ice, the continent is full of crags. The Transantarctic Mountains, circled by the dotted red line in the graphic above, stretch 2,200 miles! They are the fourth-longest chain on the planet. These are not tiny mountains, either; the ceiling of this range is Mount Kirkpatrick, which rises 14,856 feet (4,528 meters) above sea level.

Vinson Massif lies in a range to the west of the northern reaches of the Transantarctics, called the Ellsworth Mountains, circled in orange in the graphic above.

A massif is a geological term for a large chunk of mountains, smaller than a range but usually featuring multiple peaks. The entire massif is designated as the High Point of Antarctica because it’s a single unit, but the subpeaks have garnered individual names. The highest point is sometimes called Mount Vinson. Though it is the highest point, from some angles it does not look as imposing as its surrounding peaks because it is compressed between the ones that jut starkly above the surrounding lowlands.

Vinson rises 16,050 feet (4,892 meters) above sea level.

The Ellsworths are beautiful rocks.

The photo of Mount Vinson above is taken from the plateau just below the peak, which often serves as a spot for the high camp of climbers. From this vantage point, it looks a lot less impressive than the others in the range.

But if we zoom out a bit to look at the route one might take up the mountain, its true nature emerges.

Antarctica is so remote that we did not know these mountains existed when humans made it to the South Pole!

Not until 1935, during a flight to the Ross Ice Shelf, did Lincoln Ellsworth first spy the mountains that now bear his name. We didn’t see the Vinson Massif itself until 1958 when it was spotted by a US Navy aircraft. The South Pole had been reached 47 years prior! Officials named the massif after Carl Vinson, a U.S. Representative from Georgia, who was instrumental in funding research efforts in Antarctica.

High mountains, of course, lure mountaineers. In 1966, a group of 10 scientists and climbers managed to make the first ascent.

Though Vinson Massif is not as technically difficult to climb as some of the other major peaks of the world, only approximately 1,200 people have stood on the top of Antarctica. Stunningly, not a single person has died climbing it. These two figures might be related in several ways. A sample size as low as 1,200 will feature significantly fewer deaths than other, more accessible mountains. That said, the high monetary and opportunity cost of visiting Antarctica tends to attract more experienced climbers. An expedition to Vinson Massif will require extreme planning; with little access to the outside world or help, a climber must be cautious and prepared. This reality leads to fewer incidents.

Almost every climber approaches from the west, where both the access and route are easier.

In 2001, a group, including legendary mountaineer Conrad Anker and climber-turned-writer Jon Krakauer, became the first to scale the eastern headwall. Along the way, they carried out scientific experiments on the ice and snow, plus they took the first accurate measurements of the peak’s height with a GPS unit. PBS NOVA produced a wonderful film about this expedition, called Mountain of Ice. Krakauer juxtaposes the search for the South Pole with the team’s route over terrain that no human had ever visited. The film is linked above and is certainly worth a watch.

If you want to add your name to Vinson’s register, be prepared to shell out some serious cash. Expeditions begin in the range of $50,000, and this total does not include getting to Antarctica. With terrible weather and multiple aircraft hops, the trek can take more than a month.

If time and money are no impediment, though, the journey to Vinson would certainly be massive.