Vinson Massif

Vinson Massif is the highest mountain in Antarctica, a remote bulk of rock and ice rising to 4,892 metres at Mount Vinson, its principal peak, deep within the Ellsworth Mountains. Only about 1,200 kilometres from the South Pole and discovered as recently as 1958, it is among the most isolated and least-visited of the Seven Summits, reachable only by ski-equipped aircraft and attempted by a few hundred climbers a year in the brief Antarctic summer.

The massif forms part of the Sentinel Range of the Ellsworth Mountains, lifted along an ancient line of crustal weakness and almost entirely buried in ice, with only the highest ridges and faces exposed above the surrounding glaciers. The cold is extreme and the air dry, but the polar high-pressure systems often bring long spells of clear, still weather that make the standard route a strenuous snow climb rather than a technical one. The 24-hour summer daylight removes the usual constraints of darkness from climbing here.

First climbed in 1966 by an American expedition sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the American Alpine Club, Vinson takes its name from a U.S. congressman who championed Antarctic research. There is no permanent population and no infrastructure beyond temporary camps - climbers fly in from Chile to a blue-ice runway and on to a base camp on the Branscomb Glacier. As one of the Seven Summits it has become a prized objective despite - or because of - its sheer remoteness.

• Antarctica
  The frozen continent at the bottom of the world located on